CREATING JOBS CHANGINGLIVES

Next-Generation FellowshipProgram

Competitive
Advantage

Ignite. Week5
https://www.wfglobal.org

WADHWANI FOUNDATION |CREATING JOBSCHANGING LIVES

Overview of the
program and
your learning
journey over the
13 weeks:
Milestone 4
Sustainability

Milestone 3
Growth
Week 9: business model
Building your business model
Milestone 2
Understand
Week 10: Finance
Week 5: Understanding the
Milestone 1 reaching numbers
customers
Delivering value
Week 11:
Week 6&7: Acquisition
Investability
Customer acquisition
Week 1: Raising funds and
and growth channels
Evanluate funding needs
Build product and Week 8: Milestoe 2 Week 12: Free
value proposition Present the Prepare your final
Week 0: Launch Week 2: requirements of the presentation
your startup Competition milestones
Introduction to Competition and
Building Startups testing Week 13: Milestone 3
& presenting your Week 3: Market Present the
existing business results requirements of the
Market milestones
Validation
Week 4: Milestone 1
Present the
requirements of the
milestones

2
 CONCEPTS
● Understand your competition
● How to collect info about your competition, where to start from?
● Howto run a competitive analysis
● What are the points of comparison you should include?
● Howto categorize competition
● How understanding your competition contributes to
your company’ssuccess

By the end of the week

you will be able to:
● Build a differentiable and
sustainable competitive
advantage
Steps:
1. Identify direct and indirect
competitors
2. Research and apprise your
competition
3. Conduct a Competition
Analysis
4. Identify your Competitive
WADHWANI FOUNDATION |CREATING JOBSCHANGING LIVES Advantage
WADHWANI FOUNDATION |CREATING JOBSCHANGING LIVES 3
The importance of
understanding your
competition Identify Research &
Apprise
Competition
Analysis
Competitive
Advantage

There is nothing known as a level playing field and business is all about creating an unfair
advantage. However, business is also not a zero-sum game – which means that you
don’t necessarily have to lose for me to win.

The trick is in creating a space where you can exist, sustain and grow steadily. Before, we
get started read this article on How Amazon thinks about Competition.

How Amazon Thinks About Competition - by Jeff Bezos

HBR Review

Let’s begin by understanding how you can determine who is your competitor and who is
not.
Competition
Entrepreneur.com

Understanding your competition is a great way to come up with ideas. For example, better
market penetration strategy, customer acquisition strategies and brand positioning could
be inspired from competition.

Simply put, if you collect enough info about your competition, you already have a reference on
how they are running their business, how they built their product, how they distribute it
and otherinfo that can generally benefit you.

10 ways competition can improve your business

Entrepreneur.com

A general rule is, competition will always exist, except in very few cases when you are the first
one to go to market. Even in similar cases you probably have indirect competition. In this
part, you will learn in-depth about the importance of running a competitive analysis, how to
do it and how it could potentially impact your business.

WADHWANI FOUNDATION |CREATING JOBSCHANGING LIVES 4

Identify, Research &
Apprise Identify
Research &
Apprise
Competition
Analysis
Competitive
Advantage

It is time to go get some data from the market about your competition. What
is important is to know how to collect the info. Worse than not knowing about
the competition is collecting the wrong info. It could be misleading and lead to
negative results.
Here are a few questions that you are trying to answer:
• What is the state of the target market? How large is it and how many
companies dominate it?
• What are the odds of surviving in the given niche?
• What promotional channels do your rivals use?
• What are the target audience interests and how do different companies
try to engage with them?

Step 1: Identify the players (60 mins) – Direct and Indirect comepitiors
Google: Your brand isn’t what you say it is, it’s what Google says it is”, –
British businessman, Chris Anderson once said. This rule applies to all, so to
find who your greatest competitors are, you can just ask the biggest search
engine in the world.
Run additional searches on portals such as Staista, Alternative to and Owler

Take stock of the names that come up in your keyword search and then find
more about these companies through other sources such as Statisa, Pi
Diametrics, SEM Rush Market explorer etc.
Outcome – identify minimum 5 and maximum 10 players to conduct your
competitor analysis.

Step 2: Analyze your competitors:

Go through their website and gather information on the following parameters:
- Product offering
- Unique Value proposition
- Pricing
- Market reviews
- Branding: How well known the brand is

Outcome: Gather data to complete your competition analysis

Know Your Competition
WADHWANI FOUNDATION |CREATING JOBSCHANGING LIVES
Entrepreneur.com 5
Analyse your
competition Identify
Research &
Apprise
Competition
Analysis
Competitive
Advantage

The next step is to project the data that you have gathered and give it a structured,
intelligent format so that you can create a compelling competitive advantage. Given
below are examples of some mistakes that start-ups make while putting together their
analysis and a decent preliminary competition analysis can be done.

An example of decent preliminary competition analysis

WADHWANI FOUNDATION |CREATING JOBSCHANGING LIVES 6

 Research & Competition Competitive
Identify
Apprise Analysis Advantage

Createyour competitive
advantage
Once you have mapped your current offering and compared it with your competitors it’s
time to take a hard look at your product features. Each additional product feature take s
time and money so you to have a very clear prioritization based on:
1. Customer needs
2. Competitor offering
3. Your solution - product features

Keep these side by side and then fill out the following grid:
Create Enhance
Create – features that customers value but are not offered by competition
Enhance – features that strengthen your value proposition
Reduce – features that do not add value your proposition Reduce Eliminate
Eliminate – features that are redundant

Amazon’s Competitive Advantage

Interview with Jeff Bezos

How to develop your competitive advantage

Forbes

Collecting and analysing data from the competitive

analysis will help you further understand your
competition and have a clear advantage that will make
you stand out and provide a better solution for your
customers.

WADHWANI FOUNDATION |CREATING JOBSCHANGING LIVES 7

 Call to Action!
Research & Competition Competitive
Identify
Apprise Analysis Advantage

Step 1: Competition Listing Template

Competitors

Direct Competitors Indirect Competitors

Step 2: Competition Analysis Template

C1 C2 C3 C4 C5 Your
Direct Direct Direct Indirect Indirect Venture

Product
Benefits

UVP

Price

Branding

Market
Review

WADHWANI FOUNDATION | CREATING JOBS CHANGING LIVES

 Call to Action!
Research & Competition Competitive
Identify
Apprise Analysis Advantage

Step 3: Feature Ranking

Create Enhance

Reduce Eliminate

Step 4: Why would the Customer switch to my product?

• Reason 1

• Reason 2

• Reason 3

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DDAATIONTION
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| LIVES 8
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FINAL COVER

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