How we created a new market in Russia
When startups share their success stories, many talk about how they started from scratch several times after unsuccessful attempts to build a business. Everything is clear with them: the idea “didn’t shoot”, but experience increased, which means you are richer for a new attempt than you were before.
In the case of a successful business, everything is different. Of course, you can start over again here, but the cost of loss is incomparably higher. And today we want to share our story - as being the leaders of the market that began to fall, we decided not to fight for survival, but created a new market and became the leader already on it.
By the beginning of the 2000s, a card telephony market had formed in Russia. Trade has come to life, and long-distance telephone communication (long-distance and international) has become more popular. At the same time, tariffs for traditional telephony services were high, and mobile communications, which had already become very common, remained expensive. Card telephony allowed to call several times cheaper.
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Began the boom of "card" projects. As one of these projects, Mango Telecom also entered the market. Things were going well, and by 2003, Mango Telecom was already a leader in the market of card communications. However, after a few years, it became obvious that the market was doomed. The struggle of mobile operators was a success - they divided the market for long-distance communications. On the other hand, changes in the law more strictly regulated the work of "card" operators. It was necessary to do something. It was obvious that turning into a traditional telecom operator was unpromising, although we already tried to move in this direction and even managed to create our own fiber-optic network by 2005. We decided that we would try something new - what about telecommunication services via the Internet?
The future has defined the case. Reflecting on which of the directions could help compensate for the losses caused by the fall of the card telephony market, our CEO drew attention to one of our additional services - in fact, a prototype of a virtual number. The service was not the main one, it was not the most demanded and brought a relatively small income. However, it seemed to Dmitry that our virtual number has much greater potential for business than just providing one subscriber with another. Signaller by profession, Dmitry was thinking about creating a full-fledged PBX, only on the Internet. This is how a completely new service for Russia appeared.
Since the new product was created for the business, it had to help cope with the typical business problems. Dmitry remembered the story of how the funeral home owner invented the first PBX, because all orders were received by a competitor whose wife worked as a telephone operator on the city switchboard. Our CEO himself has often seen sales managers, who have good relations with secretaries, receive many calls. Those who did not maintain such a relationship remained “aground”, and companies suffered losses due to the fact that strong sellers did not receive calls. Dmitry was well aware of how to solve the problem: set up an automatic call distribution or voice menu. At the same time, he knew that the users could not do it on their own: setting up the “iron” PBX is too complicated for an ordinary person. So we made the second step: PBX on the Internet has become so easy to set up so that it can be controlled by any user.
Here it should be noted that the two most important factors favored us. Firstly, we already had a technological base. Secondly, there were problems with connecting phone numbers in the country (they were not always available, and they were connected for a long time), that is, the service was in demand by the market.
Dmitry and several developers began to make a new product, without particularly advertising a new direction, even within the company. A few weeks before the release, Dmitry doubted whether the product would fully comply with the characteristics of the "iron" PBX. After deliberation, the release was postponed and the modified product was released for sale only after a couple of months.
At first there was no sales. At all. For the first month, no one VATS was connected. Dmitry decided not to give up and found the reason - a meeting with sellers showed that people who successfully sold virtual numbers did not even understand what the Internet was.
After learning, sales went little by little. Virtual PBX has become a fresh idea for the market. It began to connect online stores, manufacturing enterprises, firms engaged in wholesale and retail trade. There were other VATs, and now who only does not offer its solutions in this market - even mobile operators and Internet companies.
So it turned out that we created a new services market in Russia. In 2009, we sold our fiber-optic infrastructure, having finally decided on the direction of development, and by 2010 we became the market leader in virtual PBX. Now almost 40000 companies in Russia use our VATS, we have entered the market of Western Europe, and we think that this is just the beginning.
A great path has been made in terms of technology development: a cloud PBX has evolved from a virtual number prototype into a platform that, like a snowball, acquires new add-ons and add-ons, integrates with other systems, mobile communications, allows receiving analytical data in various sections, and becomes the central element of a unified communications system for business.
And our CEO says that the creation of the first virtual PBX in Russia is not a special merit: if the owner of the funeral home invented the PBX, then there is nothing heroic for the signalman. Now, if the signalman invented, for example, a milking machine - then another thing.
In the case of a successful business, everything is different. Of course, you can start over again here, but the cost of loss is incomparably higher. And today we want to share our story - as being the leaders of the market that began to fall, we decided not to fight for survival, but created a new market and became the leader already on it.
By the beginning of the 2000s, a card telephony market had formed in Russia. Trade has come to life, and long-distance telephone communication (long-distance and international) has become more popular. At the same time, tariffs for traditional telephony services were high, and mobile communications, which had already become very common, remained expensive. Card telephony allowed to call several times cheaper.
')
Began the boom of "card" projects. As one of these projects, Mango Telecom also entered the market. Things were going well, and by 2003, Mango Telecom was already a leader in the market of card communications. However, after a few years, it became obvious that the market was doomed. The struggle of mobile operators was a success - they divided the market for long-distance communications. On the other hand, changes in the law more strictly regulated the work of "card" operators. It was necessary to do something. It was obvious that turning into a traditional telecom operator was unpromising, although we already tried to move in this direction and even managed to create our own fiber-optic network by 2005. We decided that we would try something new - what about telecommunication services via the Internet?
The future has defined the case. Reflecting on which of the directions could help compensate for the losses caused by the fall of the card telephony market, our CEO drew attention to one of our additional services - in fact, a prototype of a virtual number. The service was not the main one, it was not the most demanded and brought a relatively small income. However, it seemed to Dmitry that our virtual number has much greater potential for business than just providing one subscriber with another. Signaller by profession, Dmitry was thinking about creating a full-fledged PBX, only on the Internet. This is how a completely new service for Russia appeared.
Since the new product was created for the business, it had to help cope with the typical business problems. Dmitry remembered the story of how the funeral home owner invented the first PBX, because all orders were received by a competitor whose wife worked as a telephone operator on the city switchboard. Our CEO himself has often seen sales managers, who have good relations with secretaries, receive many calls. Those who did not maintain such a relationship remained “aground”, and companies suffered losses due to the fact that strong sellers did not receive calls. Dmitry was well aware of how to solve the problem: set up an automatic call distribution or voice menu. At the same time, he knew that the users could not do it on their own: setting up the “iron” PBX is too complicated for an ordinary person. So we made the second step: PBX on the Internet has become so easy to set up so that it can be controlled by any user.
Here it should be noted that the two most important factors favored us. Firstly, we already had a technological base. Secondly, there were problems with connecting phone numbers in the country (they were not always available, and they were connected for a long time), that is, the service was in demand by the market.
Dmitry and several developers began to make a new product, without particularly advertising a new direction, even within the company. A few weeks before the release, Dmitry doubted whether the product would fully comply with the characteristics of the "iron" PBX. After deliberation, the release was postponed and the modified product was released for sale only after a couple of months.
At first there was no sales. At all. For the first month, no one VATS was connected. Dmitry decided not to give up and found the reason - a meeting with sellers showed that people who successfully sold virtual numbers did not even understand what the Internet was.
After learning, sales went little by little. Virtual PBX has become a fresh idea for the market. It began to connect online stores, manufacturing enterprises, firms engaged in wholesale and retail trade. There were other VATs, and now who only does not offer its solutions in this market - even mobile operators and Internet companies.
So it turned out that we created a new services market in Russia. In 2009, we sold our fiber-optic infrastructure, having finally decided on the direction of development, and by 2010 we became the market leader in virtual PBX. Now almost 40000 companies in Russia use our VATS, we have entered the market of Western Europe, and we think that this is just the beginning.
A great path has been made in terms of technology development: a cloud PBX has evolved from a virtual number prototype into a platform that, like a snowball, acquires new add-ons and add-ons, integrates with other systems, mobile communications, allows receiving analytical data in various sections, and becomes the central element of a unified communications system for business.
And our CEO says that the creation of the first virtual PBX in Russia is not a special merit: if the owner of the funeral home invented the PBX, then there is nothing heroic for the signalman. Now, if the signalman invented, for example, a milking machine - then another thing.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/300748/
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