Mentor Insight: How to Build for Emerging Markets
Marcus Obi on the most common mistakes founders make when targeting Africa, Southeast Asia and Latin America — and how to avoid them.
Marcus Obi
Operating Partner, Growth Capital Partners
The Assumption Problem
Most founders building for emerging markets make the same mistake: they assume their home market context transfers.
It doesn't.
Payment infrastructure is different. Trust signals are different. Distribution channels are fundamentally different. The successful founders I've worked with — the ones who've actually scaled — are the ones who approached their target market with radical curiosity rather than imported assumptions.
What Actually Works
Start with distribution, not product. In most emerging markets, getting your product in front of customers is ten times harder than building it. Solve distribution first.
Build for feature phones first. Even in 2025, a significant proportion of your target users in Africa and parts of Southeast Asia are on devices that cannot run a native app. USSD, SMS and WhatsApp-based products will consistently outperform app-first strategies in these markets.
Localise deeply. Language is obvious. But localisation goes deeper — to payment methods, cultural trust cues, regulatory frameworks and even colour associations. Hire locally from day one.
The Opportunity
The founders who get emerging markets right are building some of the most important businesses of the next decade. The market sizes are enormous. The problems are real. The competition from incumbents is weaker than it looks. This is the opportunity of our generation.