From India to Global: How Sciencey Expanded Across Three Major Markets

From India to Global: How Sciencey Expanded Across Three Major Markets

Most startup playbooks emphasize careful market selection and systematic expansion. Sciencey took a different approach: following large deals wherever they led.

In a recent episode of Category Visionaries, founder Ankit Ratan revealed their unconventional path to global expansion, challenging traditional wisdom about international growth.

The Three-Market Strategy

Today, Sciencey operates in three key geographies. As Ankit explained, “We primarily operate in three geographies, which is US, MENA, which is Middle East, and India.”

But their expansion wasn’t driven by careful market analysis or rigid strategic planning. Instead, they followed opportunities as they arose, particularly in the Middle East. “Unlike, I think, b2c, in b2b, I always like to say that everything is not some cool strategy. Sometimes you’ll get this large deal with some large bank and you’ll end up in that region,” Ankit shared.

The Language Advantage

One factor that made their expansion easier was language. India and the US proved to be relatively straightforward markets to serve because of their English-speaking populations. As Ankit noted, “India and US are two homogeneous countries. Large homogeneous countries. And probably while they both are different and regulation is different, but it is an easier problem.”

This contrasts with markets like Europe, which present additional challenges. “Europe actually, on the contrary, I think is far more complicated because every country would have some regulation which is slightly different, especially the financial services. And then there’s of course, language, which is also a barrier in some ways.”

Deal Sizes Across Markets

The company has seen significant variation in deal sizes across regions. “At least today for us, India and US is not very different because we have the largest four banks India’s customers and large part of their businesses have adopted us,” Ankit explained.

However, he expects this to change as they expand their US presence. “I think in US we still don’t have that kind of adoption in top five. So right now it’s not. But if I was to guess from my previous experiences, I think there would be a five x difference. US would be five times more than India.”

Current Scale and Growth

Their multi-market approach has driven significant growth. The company now processes “15 to 20 million journeys a month” on their platform, translating to roughly $15 million in ARR. More importantly, they’re maintaining 100% year-over-year growth.

The Opportunistic Framework

For B2B founders considering international expansion, Sciencey’s experience suggests an alternative to rigid market selection frameworks:

1. Follow large deals rather than predetermined expansion plans
2. Leverage language advantages in initial market selection
3. Be opportunistic about expansion while remaining focused on core markets
4. Expect and plan for significant variation in deal sizes across regions

Their success challenges conventional wisdom about international expansion. Sometimes the best strategy is to be opportunistic rather than strategic, especially when large enterprise deals can suddenly open up new markets.

This approach has helped Sciencey grow to process millions of customer journeys monthly across three major markets, proving that in B2B, sometimes the best expansion strategy is to have no rigid strategy at all.