Capillary Technologies, an Indian customer relationship management software as a service company, provided cloud-based omnichannel customer engagement and related services to retailers and brands. In a country well known for software service companies, based primarily on labour cost advantages, Capillary was founded as a business-to-business software company (i.e., an intellectual property company). After entering several Western markets, which was consistent with its lofty aspirations, Capillary decided to pursue Asian markets. The new venture relocated its headquarters from India to Singapore and made strong efforts to gain revenue in the Asia region—including the large, but intensely competitive, Chinese market. Capillary started by working with Western multinationals that were its customers in other markets. The company then began attracting local customers, as it established a Chinese technology team to cater to the unique technological ecosystems prevalent in China. Over a three-year period, Capillary achieved 200 per cent annual growth. With the opening of a new office in Guangzhou, Capillary then hoped to further deepen its presence in the Chinese market. What could the general manager do to help Capillary reach this goal within the next three years?
Ace Company (Ace) was a Chinese start-up developing software for the Internet of Things (IoT). The company was founded in February 2015 by three colleagues for the initial purpose of providing an unprecedented universal IoT operating system, the absence of which was severely crippling developing development in IoT. By mid-2017, having proven the technical viability and market acceptability of its offering, the company was ready to scale up. However, the co-founders disagreed on the choice of growth strategy. One founder advocated extending Ace’s business to as many industrial scenarios and companies as possible, while the other founder was in favour of Ace focusing on and penetrating deeply into a few industries. The third founder was stuck in the middle and wanted to know which path they should choose.
By 2017, Beijing Testin Information Technology Co., Ltd. (Testin), had forged partnerships with multiple large multinational companies (e.g., Microsoft, IBM, ARM, Intel). Since it was founded in 2011, Testin had served over 800,000 application developers by conducting more than 150 million quality and security tests on over 2.5 million mobile applications. It had received several rounds of financing totaling over $80 million. Many Chinese Internet companies had tried to acquire Testin, and a well-known MNC asked Testin to sign an exclusive service contract. Wang and his partners resisted such offers and were determined that Testin should <br> maintain its neutrality. But as a five-year old enterprise, Testin’s big concern was how it could “stay hungry and stay foolish.”
An Indian-based software product start-up has succeeded in forging a valuable relationship with Microsoft, which has been vital to its international success. When the Microsoft relationship manager assigned to the company leaves Microsoft unexpectedly, the company’s chief executive officer needs to make some critical decisions regarding how to manage its relationship with Microsoft.
For small firms, partnering with a multinational corporation (MNC) provides great opportunities and great challenges. Conventional partnering approaches are unlikely to succeed, and firms must use less orthodox strategies. In particular, start-ups can employ three strategies for success: forming, consolidating, and extending MNC relationships. 1) Forming MNC relationships entails fathoming the larger company, targeting the right individuals, and not reaching out blindly. Early experiences with an MNC can have profound effects on the relationship forged. 2) Consolidating MNC relationships involves ensuring a strategic fit and increasing the odds of the relationship leveraging the best of the start-up and the MNC. It requires focus and goal orientation and, frequently, mid-course changes in direction, including dropping the relationship. 3) Extending MNC relationships entails recognizing the potential for conflict and balancing cooperation and competition. It requires shrewdness, and the recognition that aligning closely with an MNC may lead over time to overlapping goals and offerings.<br><br>In illustrating these strategies, this article offers various examples, such as the success of Mango Technologies in engaging with Qualcomm. Qualcomm was actually the third MNC that Mango reached out to, and the relationship was successful because Mango devoted itself to the technology front while Qualcomm negotiated bureaucracy. In another example, Lixter leveraged BizSpark One, an MNC partnering initiative run out of Microsoft’s Silicon Valley campus. Here, a small firm took advantage of Microsoft’s partnering initiative through being proactive and getting noticed early on.