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Why Your US Web3 Playbook Fails in India and Korea
A playbook that won in the US fails in India and Korea because it was built on American price points, habits, channels and rules. Each market defines value differently. The fix is to research the market before spending in it, then localise the offer and the message, not only the language.
Why does a strategy that worked in the US fail in India or Korea?
I wrote this in August 2023 and I have not changed my mind.
Different markets have different needs as well as price points. What might seem like value to a particular market, can be norm for another market. Shilika Jain on X, 11 Aug 2023
A US launch plan usually assumes English-language media, a certain disposable income, a familiar set of social platforms and one regulatory backdrop. Move it to another country and each of those assumptions can be wrong at once. A reward that feels generous in one market is ordinary in another. A feature you lead with may be something local users already expect for free.
The same post ended with the blunt version:
If you try applying a strategy that won in the US into an Indian/Korean market, it probably won't give you any results! Shilika Jain on X, 11 Aug 2023
Copying the plan is tempting because it is fast and it already has a results slide. But those results belonged to the market, not to the tactics.
How do you research a new market before you spend on it?
In that post I listed what to study: SWOTs, TAM, customer preferences, financial awareness and habits. Turned into working questions, it looks like this.
| Research area | What to find out | What it changes |
|---|---|---|
| SWOT | Where you are strong or exposed against local players | Positioning and which claims you lead with |
| TAM | How many people can realistically use the product there | Budget, and whether to enter at all |
| Customer preferences | Which products, formats and voices people already trust | Channels, partners and creative |
| Financial awareness | How familiar people are with crypto and with investing generally | How much education your content needs |
| Habits | Where people spend time, how they pay, what language they use | Onboarding, community platform, support |
| Price points | What counts as cheap, fair or premium locally | Fees, incentives and campaign rewards |
| Rules | Tax, payment rails and what you may legally promote | Timing, messaging and what you avoid |
Rules deserve their own line because they can reshape a market overnight. In April 2022 I posted that both investing and trading were now taxed at 30% in India, and two weeks later that the routes for buying crypto through UPI had closed. A campaign planned a month earlier would have been built for a different country. Check the current position before you plan, and check it again before you launch.
Desk research only gets you so far. Talk to local users, founders and journalists, and spend time on the ground. My APAC PR playbook goes through the region market by market.
What is different about India?
India has scale and builder energy. After ETHIndia in 2022 I wrote that the Web3 scene there was wild, and that the event was a hackathon, not a conference. That detail tells you something useful: much of the Indian audience is developers and students who want to build, so a sponsor booth and a party will not reach them the way a bounty or a workshop will.
It also has a pattern outsiders should understand before they budget.
There's no shortage of builder energy, yet the moment one chain begins giving capital, the entire ecosystem seems to rush in that direction. Shilika Jain on X, 4 Nov 2025
Grants will buy you attention, and attention moves on when the next programme opens. The durable opportunity is somewhere else.
The opportunity in India is huge, it's depends on how the ecosystems capture it. Most look at having noise but the real moat lies in bringing substantial value on-chain, bringing in real audience and real users. Shilika Jain on X, 25 Nov 2025
In the same post I called the current ecosystem a circle, with the mass audience still outside it. Reaching that audience means meeting ordinary consumer motivations. One I noted back in 2022:
Products that help in building status symbol will do good in Indian markets! Shilika Jain on X, 3 Sep 2022
It also means hiding the plumbing. When I spoke at the Binary Holdings Summit in Bangkok in 2025 about bringing Web2 users into Web3, the line Myosin pulled from my talk was not to let them realise they are using Web3. That applies strongly to a mass consumer market like India. More on how I work there is on my India page.
What is different about Korea?
I have fewer notes on Korea, so I will keep this short. The clearest one came out of Korea Blockchain Week in September 2025.
Projects don't know how to GTM market in Korea, huge problem but also huge opportunity! Korea is the market for retail traction, specifically for the ones that have TGE on the radar. Shilika Jain on X, 30 Sep 2025
Two points follow. First, Korea matters most when you need retail users, which is why teams heading into a token launch look at it. Second, most teams arrive with a translated global plan and expect it to work. Korean users, communities and media operate largely in Korean, on their own channels, with their own trusted voices. A plan that treats the market as an extra language setting will be ignored.
If a TGE is on your calendar, start the Korea work months ahead, not in launch week. My Korea page and the crypto PR in Korea playbook cover the specifics.
How do you localise without spending millions?
Localisation is usually cheaper than the campaigns teams run to make up for skipping it.
If web3 companies started working on the localization strategies + SEO, then they wouldn't have to spend millions of dollars on marketing! Shilika Jain on X, 3 Nov 2022
Practical steps, roughly in order:
- Pick one market and commit to it for at least two quarters
- Rewrite the value proposition for that market's needs and price points
- Produce native-language content written by a local, not a translated blog
- Build local search presence, so people who look you up in their language find you
- Work with local media, creators and community leads who already have trust
- Adjust incentives and pricing to what counts as valuable there
- Put someone on the ground, or hire a partner who is
A phrase I use for this: build local, promote global. Win a real user base in one place, then use that proof everywhere else. If you want help running this across the region, see my APAC PR service.
## Posts this piece is built on - 11 Aug 2023: one of the biggest mistakes marketers make - 30 Sep 2025: biggest ick from my finds at KBW - 25 Nov 2025: the opportunity in India is huge - 3 Nov 2022: if web3 companies started working on the localization strategies - 3 Sep 2022: Products that help in building status symbol - 4 Nov 2025: The Indian startup ecosystem is quite fascinating - 6 Dec 2022: Web3 funda, BUIDL local, promote global - 15 May 2025: always my biggest cheerleaders - 1 Apr 2022: Two ways you could make money in crypto - 14 Apr 2022: Tough time for India - 24 Nov 2022: @ETHIndiaco is not a conference, it's a hackathon
Entering India, Korea or another APAC market? Tell me which market and your launch date, and I will map the research and localisation plan with you.