You’ve nailed your MVP and found early adopters. But now comes the big challenge: how to scale a startup in India beyond initial traction. You’re not alone in feeling the pressure. After months of hustling, many founders hit a wall between 10 and 100 customers. It’s a nerve-wracking gap: keep grinding or pivot again? (Remember, nearly 90% of Indian startups fail within five years because they built solutions nobody wanted.The good news is that proven strategies exist – and they’re often learned by trial, error and grit.

This post walks through the next leg of the journey, using real stories from Zepto, KukuFM, Classplus and others to bring the lessons to life. You’ll learn how to design a killer Go-to-Market (GTM) strategy, build an early founder-led sales engine, and make smart first hires to multiply your impact. Along the way we’ll drop subtle mentions of Salaah’s resources (like the Startup Launchpad program and free founder guides), so you have a roadmap and support system. Buckle up as we tell a founder’s tale of scaling up in India.

Designing a Go-to-Market (GTM) Strategy

From the outset, every startup needs a plan to reach customers – a go-to-market strategy. A GTM isn’t just buzzwords; it’s about who you target, what message you send, and where you send it. Praveena Sivasankar of OpenSourceDB sums it up: a smart GTM covers your target persona, your messaging and channels, and a conversion path,The aim is simple – save time, avoid guesswork, and get early traction.

For Indian startups, this often means starting narrow and local. As one GTM guide notes, many Indian founders go too broad (or rely only on referrals/LinkedIn). Instead, they advise: “Focus on a niche, offer specialized value, get fast feedback”.

In practice, that means picking a single “beachhead” customer segment, crafting a clear promise, and testing just a few channels at first.

• Pick one beachhead persona. For example, Classplus’s co-founder Mukul Rustagi realized their natural niche was hyperlocal tutoring centres – the neighborhood coaching classes that all Indian city kids know. He explains: these are “small and medium” coaching centres run by teachers, who “rarely do any marketing” and grow by word-of-mouth. So Classplus didn’t try to reach every teacher in India. They focused on this tight community.
  
  

• Craft a compelling hook. Your messaging should hit a clear pain point plus benefit. OSDB’s framework says your hook is “pain + benefit + proof”. Classplus’s message, for instance, became “Shopify for coaching centres” – promise easy digitization of classes and payments, backed by concrete demos. Zepto’s early founders similarly honed their pitch around ultrafast grocery delivery: first with KiranaKart (partnering with local mom-&-pop stores) and then by rebranding to Zepto when they found that model “did not gain traction”. They sharpened their GTM by doubling down on 10-minute grocery delivery using their own dark stores.
  
  

• Choose the right channels. Don’t spread yourself too thin. In India, that might mean mixing offline and online: campus ambassador programs, community meetups, targeted ads, or partnerships with local shops. KukuFM took a digital-heavy approach. Co-founder Vinod Meena notes they leaned on “aggressive digital distribution,” especially influencer marketing on YouTube, to reach millions of Hindi speakers. For a coaching app like Classplus, the early channel was often direct outreach: founders drove sales calls and demos at coaching institutes (think founder-led sales – see next section).
  
  

• Iterate fast with feedback. Building weekly loops into your GTM plan is key. Test one channel or message for a short sprint, see what works (open rates, sign-ups, conversations), then refine. KukuFM did this by launching content pilots in Hindi and observing usage. When they hit on formats that kept users listening for 13+ minutes per session, they expanded that model. The lesson: only move broad once you’ve proven product-market fit in one area. As OSDB advises, if you can’t answer “Who’s our persona? What’s our hook? Which channels?” in 2 minutes, pause and reset.

Classplus’s co-founders learn these lessons firsthand. For instance, they discovered that small coaching institutes “rarely do marketing,” so Classplus’s GTM focused on local networks and referrals.

Building Your Initial Sales Engine

With a GTM blueprint, the next step is founder-led sales: hitting the streets (or Zooms) yourself to land those first paying customers. Early-stage founders literally build the initial sales engine through personal hustle – before you can afford a sales team, the founders are the sales team.

One powerful example comes from KukuFM. Their first paying customer was a grain merchant from a small town, fascinated by KukuFM’s audio series on Chanakya. When that transaction went through, co-founder Vikas Goyal said it validated their entire effort: “it meant the team had created something worth paying for”. That one sale was a breakthrough for KukuFM – it confirmed that even a “Bharat” user was willing to pay for regional audio content. For us, this means: celebrate and learn from every first sale. That grain merchant’s feedback became a testimonial: “I’m using Chanakya’s lessons in my own business,” he told them.

Here are some tactics for your founder-led sales engine:

• Talk to (and sell to) the first users. Get on calls, meet in person, send emails – do whatever it takes. When Classplus first launched, Mukul and Bhaswat might have visited local coaching centres to demo their app in person. Collect these early users’ stories. KukuFM’s first subscriber story became core to their narrative.

• Offer pilot deals or MVP access. Let users experience value quickly. You might run a pilot discount, or even manually deliver the service via WhatsApp (as Dunzo famously did). The goal is to prove willingness to pay.

• Leverage word-of-mouth and referrals. If your early customers are evangelists, encourage them to spread the word. Classplus, for example, found many tutors joined because their neighbours did. Reward sharing via small bonuses or recognition.

• Gather feedback continuously. Use calls or surveys to understand objections and refine. If many prospects ask for a specific feature or price, adapt fast. Remember, KukuFM pivoted to a subscription model when they saw deep engagement. Similarly, Zomato (not an Indian example here, but analogous) famously tweaked pricing and offers after each round of feedback.

These steps embody founder-led sales: you, the founder, are learning to sell and improving as you go. There’s no substitute for the founder being in front of the customer at the start. It’s also incredibly cost-effective: you don’t spend on paid ads until you have a repeatable process.

• Quick case in point: KukuFM launched its Hindi audiobooks in 2018 with no ads. Instead, Lal Chand Bisu and team partnered with popular YouTubers and used in-app referrals. They grew so organically that within 18 months of going paid, they had 1 million subscribers. That made them larger than Spotify and Gaana in terms of Indian paid users – a testament to how powerful a lean, focused sales/marketing engine can be when run by the founders.

Hiring the Right Team Early

No founder scales alone. As traction grows, smart hiring becomes the final key to unlock growth. But startup team building is tricky: you need people who can do a lot with little. Both Classplus and KukuFM show how founding teams expanded with care.

By mid-2020, Classplus had about 200 employees and local sales staff in ~70 cities. They needed a rapid ramp-up because their market (India’s 700K+ coaching institutes) was vast and local. Early on, Classplus likely hired a first core team of a couple of developers (to build the app), a couple of sales reps, and support staff to handle on-boarding. Each hire was chosen to multiply the founders’ efforts: for example, hiring a zealous first salesperson to cold-call tutors and close pilots, while founders focused on product strategy.

KukuFM’s trajectory was similar but content-focused. The founding trio started with just a handful of people, but by 2023 they had ~200 team members. These hires spanned software engineers, creative directors, voice artists, and marketers – all needed to crank out thousands of hours of audio content. They deliberately recruited people who understood “Bharat” – local writers and performers fluent in Hindi and other languages.

• Hire for versatility and passion. In a startup you want generalists. A smart first employee might be an engineer who can also handle DevOps, or a marketer who can wear product and community hats. For a tech product like Classplus, that meant bringing on tech co-founders or lead devs who believed in the mission. (Founder Mukul Rustagi’s LinkedIn shows he had an IIT pedigree, so likely his first hires were technically strong.) For KukuFM, they hired storytellers and coders alike.

• Complement your skills. If you’re technically strong, hire business/sales talent, and vice versa. If the founders are both engineers, you need a business co-founder or early hire to talk to customers and handle sales. If you’re sales-led, hire a star engineer early to build product robustness.

• Start lean and scale as needed. You don’t need 100 people on day one. Both Classplus and KukuFM started with tiny teams. As their traction grew, they opened more roles. For example, Classplus’s growth to 200 people meant adding regional managers, customer success reps, and finance/HR roles over time.

• Equity and culture matter. Early hires often take lower pay for more equity. Make sure to communicate your vision and give them ownership. Seek “founder-fit” attitudes: people who will grind alongside you. (Salaah’s startup program emphasizes culture-building and has checklists for early team roles, showing how mentors guide founders to hire the right first roles.)

KukuFM’s founding team (left to right: their three co-founders) built a culture of rapid content creation. As one founder noted, “build a business, not just a startup” – hiring product and content people early helped them scale to millions of users.

Every hire should either solve a burning problem or open a new avenue. During the Covid lockdown, when thousands of tutoring centres moved online overnight, Classplus rushed to hire customer-support staff to help new users. Timing of hires matters: don’t hire for expansion until you have repeatable revenue or a confirmed roadmap.

Conclusion: Your Next Steps

Scaling a startup in India is not about luck – it’s about disciplined execution. Our narrative founders share this truth: nail your GTM, engage in relentless founder-led selling, and build a lean team to supercharge your efforts. Classplus found coaches needed a partner, so they positioned themselves as the go-to app for tutors. KukuFM bet on content and saw rural India pay for audio. Zepto pivoted fast and invested heavily in supply chain. Each story shows that growth comes from doing the fundamentals exceptionally well.

Now it’s your turn. Run your GTM experiments with purpose (focus on one segment, craft a strong hook, test channels quickly). Keep talking to customers every day – your first sale could be the proof point that convinces you to double down (as KukuFM did with subscriptions). Hire only when you need the firepower, and make those hires count (Classplus grew to 200 people by systematically covering India’s tutoring market).

If you feel overwhelmed, remember there’s help available. For example, Salaah’s Startup Launchpad is a 6-month hands-on program that helps early-stage Indian founders refine GTM strategy, build sales skills, and plan their first hires (salaah.co.in). They pair you with experienced mentors and even provide checklists and webinars tailored to the Indian market. Check out Salaah’s website for their course details or webinars. And don’t miss their free resources: their blog covers topics like idea validation and growth frameworks.

Scaling is a marathon built on many small sprints. Follow the footsteps of those who did it before you – experiment, iterate, and keep the faith. Your startup can be next.

Key Takeaways: A clear GTM focus, founder-driven sales effort, and a complementary early team are critical for scaling. By learning from examples like Classplus, KukuFM and Zepto, you can turn that early traction into explosive growth. For more guidance and hands-on support, consider joining Salaah’s programs or exploring their founder’s guides on startup GTM strategies, founder-led sales, and team building.