🎯 Strategy is About Making Hard Choices, Not Fancy Plans Here are three choices (out of many) that really played out in my journey, and are decent examples.
1️⃣ "Where to play and how to win" is not theory. It's a commitment.
Around 2012, when everyone around us was chasing global offshore work and SaaS clients, we made a conscious choice at INT.:
👉 Focus on Indian enterprises, especially regulated industries like BFSI and Healthcare. - It wasn't the obvious choice. - Margins looked better elsewhere. - Growth stories sounded sexier elsewhere.
But we knew something important: - We develop enterprise delivery capabilities for scale & security - These enterprises valued trust, continuity, and long-term partners. - They want value for money - and if you can make profit serving them, you can make profit in most geographies.
That single choice shaped everything that followed—our capabilities, our people, and our positioning.
Strategy begins when you decide where to play at a given time. The decision will not be right when you start, but you have to make it right. You may not have insight on how to make it right, but you need to find the way.
2️⃣ Strategy is a living logic. Test it. Break it. Adapt it.
We once invested heavily in building an ERP product for Indian enterprises. The initial traction was promising.
But over time, the reality became clear: - The cost of maintaining and selling ERP in India was too high. - Our target audience preferred established global brands. - Our internal strengths were better aligned with customisation and integration.
We shut the product down and pivoted to set on the path to become a system integrator. It isn't easy. But it is necessary. This step makes it a positive sum game for us and the OEMs.
You don't need to abandon your strategy every quarter. But if your assumptions change—and you're still following the old script—you'll burn time, money, and morale.
3️⃣ Strategy is creative problem-solving for creating competitive advantage based on our strengths
SaaS is supposed to be about: Recurring revenue. High margins. Scalable.
👉 Most SaaS businesses today are actually Software-as-a-Subscription, not Software-as-a-Service. - They optimise for ARR, CAC, and valuation multiples. - But in the name of "scale," they quietly drop the service element.
I asked a simple question: "Where is the real value being created — in the code, or in how it's adapted and serviced?"
So, we ran an experiment. 💡 Give the software for free. Charge only for service. - Clients didn't pay for licenses or per-user pricing. - They only paid for implementation, configuration, and support.
The result? - Clients got real ROI. - We created real trust. - And we got paid to deliver actual outcomes—not promises.
It was a contrarian strategy, but it worked because it solved a real problem: SaaS fatigue and poor ROI.
Strategy isn't always about doing what the market rewards. Sometimes, it's about doing what the customer values.