The conventional wisdom in technology investing says: pick a niche, go deep, dominate it. For most markets, that advice is sound. But in emerging markets — particularly across South Asia, the Middle East, and Africa — the dynamics are fundamentally different.
Markets in these regions are characterised by significant infrastructure gaps, fragmented supply chains, and underdeveloped financial systems. The opportunity is not to pick one problem to solve — it's to recognise that solving one problem often creates the natural leverage to solve the adjacent ones.
When we built ViberNet to deliver high-speed internet to Srinagar, we did not set out to build a telecommunications company. We set out to give local businesses the infrastructure they needed to operate digitally. But once we were in the connectivity business, the adjacency to cloud infrastructure, web hosting, and managed services became obvious — and so ViberCloud, StarterHost, and HostMeOnline followed.
This is the logic of the diversified conglomerate in emerging markets: not the scattergun approach of an unfocused acquirer, but the principled recognition that value chains are long, infrastructure is absent, and the business that builds across the chain creates structural advantages that are very difficult to replicate.