Research
Intermediate
17 min
Market research in India — where the data is thin and what to do about it
The problem
You need to know the size of the organic snacks market in Maharashtra. You find three figures online ranging from ₹400 crore to ₹2,100 crore, none with a stated methodology. You pick one, put it in a board pack, and it is wrong — and worse, it was never the number that mattered.
The workflow
1State what you need to know
2Check if reliable data exists
3Build bottom-up
4Name your proxies
5Do twenty conversations
6Triangulate
7State confidence
★Record the method
What you need
Size: the addressable market for a ₹99/150g organic namkeen in modern trade in Maharashtra. Why: deciding on a ₹40 lakh launch.
The tool
MoSPI, Census, GST portal, DGFT, APEDA and state portals
The prompt
Subscribers. The full prompt is part of the SMEMinds AI Playbook. See plans.
What comes back
1. BOTTOM-UP STRUCTURE Modern trade outlets in Maharashtra × share stocking premium/organic namkeen × average number of SKUs in that price band per store × average units sold per SKU per month × ₹99 2.
Verify before you use it
Human review required. Check every line below before this leaves your screen.
- Do the twenty-store visit. It is the element the whole estimate rests on and it costs two days.
- Concentrate effort on throughput per SKU. The sensitivity analysis says everything else matters less.
- If you use the marketplace proxy, state its limitation in the same sentence. An unlabelled proxy is a fabrication.
- Present a range with the method attached, not a single number. It is more credible, not less.