Approach to building an MVP is fundamentally different from building a mature product, and very few teams can successfully navigate this transition. Let me explain why.
An MVP exists to validate the core workflow - the central problem the startup or business aims to solve. The operative word here is IF.
An MVP is designed to check if the technology can solve the intended business problem. It must prove the happy flow, deliver the core value proposition, and demonstrate product-market fit. If it does that, the MVP is considered a success.
But the moment the MVP must evolve into a mature system, everything changes.
The focus shifts from core functionality to edge cases.
From scenarios where the system should work to scenarios where the system could break.
This requires deep analysis of every possible path a user may take, mapping the universe of scenarios, designing the corresponding workflows, and validating them through rigorous testing.
Beyond logic and workflows, a mature product must also deliver on interface quality, user experience, performance engineering, and long-term scalability.
The transition, therefore, is not a linear upgrade. It is a shift from proving possibility to engineering reliability.
Teams that succeed in this transition understand that MVP building is an experiment, but product maturity is an operating discipline. The competitive advantage belongs to those who can evolve from rapid validation to deliberate, scalable engineering without losing speed or control.
The economics of building a business have fundamentally changed.
What was once sales-led and execution-driven has now become marketing-led and perception-driven. This shift has significantly increased the cost of entry and the cost of scale.
Historically, starting a business was relatively simple. You created or sourced a product and deployed sales. The primary investment was in inventory, relationships, and field execution. Sales generated immediate feedback loops, cash flow, and market validation.
Today, businesses are required to invest heavily even before their first meaningful revenue milestone. Brand positioning, narrative control, visibility, digital distribution, and sustained marketing infrastructure have become baseline requirements, not differentiators.
In practical terms, what was earlier a cost of selling has now evolved into a cost of being considered.
Selling must now appear non-transactional. It must signal aspiration, relevance, and market credibility. This has layered additional complexity and capital intensity into the operating model of modern businesses.
For CXOs and investors, this has direct implications:
Return on capital is now influenced as much by perception architecture as by operational efficiency. GTM strategy today carries a structural cost that did not exist a decade ago.
The critical question is no longer whether a business can sell.
It is whether the business model can sustain the rising cost of attention, relevance, and narrative without eroding long-term profitability.
In this environment, strategic advantage will belong to organisations that can balance perception with performance, and growth with discipline.
Over the past few years, starting around the time of the Covid-triggered lockdowns in early 2020, I’ve noticed a pattern that continues to deepen:
Small and medium-sized businesses in India (particularly those with annual revenues below ₹25 crore for services/trading and below ₹100 crore for manufacturing or other sectors) are seeing stagnating or even declining top lines.
And this isn’t because demand has disappeared.
It’s because the rules of the game have changed - and many are still playing by the old playbook.
Two structural shifts lie at the heart of this transformation:
(1) The formalisation of the Indian economy
(2) The unprecedented inter-state market access enabled by GST
Earlier, smaller businesses could thrive in protected, often informal ecosystems. Their customer base was local, competition was limited, and advantages came from relationships, tax arbitrage, or market opacity. But GST has collapsed those walls.
Today, a well-run business in Indore can sell to customers in Hyderabad or Kochi with ease - without being disadvantaged for being “non-local.”
And formalisation has changed buyer expectations. Customers, vendors, and even employees increasingly prefer dealing with companies that have transparent billing, digital payment processes, and predictable service standards.
The biggest beneficiaries of this shift?
Larger companies with formal systems, established processes, and better tech adoption. These businesses were already operating at scale and are now leveraging that foundation to tap new markets and improve efficiencies.
But the middle tier - those who aren’t quite informal anymore, yet not fully systematised either - are being squeezed from both ends.
They’re too expensive to remain small, and too chaotic to compete with the big players.
There is, however, a way forward.
The only viable response is to get-up or get-out.
And getting up doesn’t have to mean massive capital infusion or radical change.
Often, it begins with something simpler: introducing systems and processes that bring order, visibility and repeatability to the business.
It means using technology as a strategic lever, not just for cost-cutting, but to unlock scale, build better customer experiences, and create a culture of consistency.
This is no longer optional.
It’s existential.
The businesses that act now - by formalising, systemising and professionalising - will not only survive but thrive in this new economy.
The rest? They’ll slowly fade away, not because they lacked talent or hustle but because they missed the shift in how value is created and delivered in today’s India.
SME owners won’t pay for tech consulting: It’s a sentiment often shared, occasionally whispered, sometimes joked about and yet, rarely unpacked with the seriousness it deserves. And if we’re being honest, most Indian mid-scale businesses do have the ability to pay. What they often lack is the willingness. But that gap isn’t their fault alone; it’s on us, the consultants and advisors, to close it.
The reason this gap exists isn’t because these businesses don’t want to improve. It’s because no one has taken the time to truly explain what a Tech Consultant does. In many SMEs, “tech” still lives inside silos - the website is owned by marketing, the ERP is owned by accounts, and neither truly owns systems in a holistic, outcome-oriented way. The moment someone walks in with a PowerPoint and a retainer fee, the reflex is to see this as an optional spend. The perception is: this person isn’t building anything, not coding, not deploying - just “giving gyaan.” And gyaan, by definition, must either be free or deeply discounted.
But that’s precisely the problem. We’ve spent too long pitching solutions without first building the case for why the role of a techno-functional partner matters in the first place. Until the SME owner sees us as someone who can bridge code with commerce, systems with scale, and technology with team productivity - they will continue to see our work as dispensable, and our fees as avoidable.
Think of how AMFI spent decades shifting the Indian consumer mindset from “why pay an advisor?” to “Mutual Funds Sahi Hai.” It was never just about fund performance or cost ratios. It was about consistent storytelling and category-building. Tech consulting needs that same evangelism, at speed. Because the average SME is far more ready for systems transformation than we give them credit for - they just need someone to meet them where they are, and patiently walk them through the ‘before and after’ picture.
So here’s a nudge to every consultant who’s spent a few years inside code and commerce, who’s worked with both founders and frontend users, who understands that most systems fail not because they’re poorly built but because they’re poorly communicated: spend time with SME business owners. Understand their context. Speak their language. Don’t jump into tech speak. Show them how process clarity can reduce dependency, how data visibility can replace daily chaos, and how automation is not just a buzzword but a strategic advantage.
We all want the ecosystem to evolve. But ecosystems don’t evolve because of large-scale announcements or big-budget reforms. They evolve because individuals, across hundreds of small companies, start making slightly better decisions each day - with the right advice by their side.
At its core, engineering has always been a discipline of materials, machines and methods. The true engineer is not simply a user of tools or software, but someone who understands how materials behave, and can apply that understanding to build machines and methods that solve problems at scale.
The foundation lies in mastering the properties of materials. When we say water turns to steam at 100°C under standard atmospheric pressure, it is not just a scientific fact, it is a key that unlocked an entire era of mechanised progress. The ability to control pressure and temperature gave rise to steam engines, reshaped transportation, and enabled industries that once seemed unimaginable. The precision of material behaviour is what gives engineering its rigor and repeatability.
We see the same principle extend into the world of electronics. Some materials conduct electricity with ease, others resist it, and a special few, the semiconductors, allow us to tune their behaviour through external stimuli or doping. It is this delicate, engineered control that gave us transistors, microprocessors, memory chips, and the entire digital revolution. From AI-powered drones to self-driving cars, all modern systems trace back to an understanding of material science at the atomic level.
This, in my view, is the essence of engineering. The abstractions built on top, what we typically call “technology”, are simply the next layers of innovation. And while these abstractions are necessary, practical, and often elegant, they can also disconnect us from the fundamentals. With each passing layer, it becomes easier to forget how the underlying machine works, or what the material underneath can or cannot do.
There is nothing wrong with working at higher levels of abstraction. In fact, that is what enables scale, speed, and accessibility. But it does not absolve engineers from the responsibility to understand how things actually work. To build systems that are reliable, adaptable, and efficient, one must invest time in understanding the properties of the building blocks - be it physical materials or the logic gates inside a processor.
Call it deep research, call it curiosity, or just call it good engineering. But unless the next generation of engineers is encouraged to engage directly with materials, and to build - not just deploy - we will slowly lose the culture of engineering innovation. And in its place, we will be left with very sophisticated consumers of past breakthroughs.
