Programme

PGP

Term

VI

Academic Year

2021-22

Course title

Marketing for Startups

Area

Marketing

Credits

0.75

Instructor(s)

Prof. Arun Sreekumar

Course Description & Objectives

Introduction: This course takes a customer-driven approach for understanding new venture creation and launch. Lectures, discussions, and exercises are designed to highlight tools and tactics for entrepreneurs to develop marketing strategy for nascent enterprises. Marketing and sales challenges faced by startups will also be discussed. Research has shown that most new ventures fail, and one of the significant reasons for failure is the lack of a coherent marketing strategy. We will focus on how startups can stand up to this marketing challenge. Topics discussed include developing and testing startup ideas, customer-driven product management, launching a new business in the market, building competitive advantage through branding and sales. Objectives: Students will learn how to do the following, taking the perspective of a new venture: Generate entrepreneurial ideas and identify appropriate markets; Formulate a product management strategy; Test and validate marketing tactics; and, Create competitive advantage for short-term and long-term growth.

Pedagogy

The following pedagogical methods will be used to deliver and deliberate on the course content: (1) case analysis through classroom discussion; (2) engaging with startup founders to analyze their marketing plan; (3) group activity on marketing strategy formulation; (4) reading and reflection on readings through information search and writing tasks; (5) class presentations; (6) classroom debate.