Emerging Markets Startups

Rappi is one of the largest superapps in Latin America with over 15M users. The company started out as an on demand delivery service and today has become an everything store across Latin America’s population of 650M people. We’re joined by Rappi’s Product Lead, David Vanegas, who attributes Rappi’s success to their users’ creativity, and the company’s speed and obsession with user feedback. Tune into this episode to hear how Rappi acquired its first 250 downloads with donuts, and ways the company captures user feedback via Whatsapp to continuously innovate.

Grab is the largest superapp tech company in Southeast Asia with over 250M downloads in a region with 600+ million people. Grab first started out as a ride sharing company but quickly grew into food delivery, payments and so much more. In this episode, we speak to Grab’s Head of Product for Deliveries, Zhibo Sun. Zhibo shares insights into Grab’s product culture, growth strategies and how the company has pivoted during Covid.

Like many emerging markets, saving money in Nigeria was expensive. Then came PiggyVest, a free savings and microinvestment product, that's now one of the fastest growing fintech startups out of Nigeria. PiggyVest built a strong following and grew to millions of people by word of mouth. Seriously, check their Twitter mentions. We spoke to Odunayo Eweniyi, the co-founder and COO of PiggyVest, about the company’s growth trajectory and product culture. In the first 20 mins we talk about Nigeria's challenges and local culture that gave rise to PiggyVest. The last 20 mins is all about growth strategies and how PiggyVest builds a user obsessed product culture. Key takeaways for building a product loved by the community: Help users feel heard by including their ideas into your roadmap Give users a sense of trust, it can be more important than efficiency Building loyal users who advocate for the product will stretch further than traditional marketing tactics Pay attention to tweets that go viral on New Years eve, they may just inspire your next startup idea ;)

Bykea is a ride sharing and delivery startup in Pakistan and the fastest growing startup in a country of 220 million people. Founded by serial entrepreneur Muneeb Maayr, Bykea is taking on the juggernauts Uber and Careem. The 5 year old startup is quickly growing due to its obsession with localizing the product to meet the needs of everyday Pakistanis and a “pounding the pavement” startup culture. In this episode we hear from Rafiq Malik, Bykea’s Chief Operating Officer whose passion for logistics and transportation enables him to run a tight ship while ensuring Bykea continues to experiment and grow every hour. Listen to learn: How Bykea continually uses localization to help them innovate and grow What helped Bykea grow quickly and be unafraid of the Ubers and Careems Ways to scale marketing in emerging markets

Have you ever noticed all your Filipino friends seem to have family all over the world? That’s because so many of them have migrated all over the world in the last century. Hence when Filipinos return home to build a startup, they bring a diversity of ideas and experience from all over. In this episode, we explore the Filipino startup ecosystem with Diane Eustaquio, Executive Director at one of the earlier accelerators in the Philippines. She shares with us unique insights and growth hacks like, if you want to grow product adoption in the Philippines, it better first go through word of mouth by way of family and friends.