According to VentureBurn, African startups can learn a lot from the emerging markets expansion of US fast food company Domino’s Pizza, which has made huge strides expanding in new markets such as India and South Africa.

With proper knowledge and understanding of its target market, Domino’s has managed to grow into the largest foreign food chain, twice as big as its closest rival McDonald’s, with 806 stores spread across 170 cities in India and 11 stores in South Africa, where is is estimated it has a total annual sales of more than $2 billion.

VentureBurn attribute this success to four main things:

• Proper planning and execution in every market Domino’s enter has helped it maintain a brand, while keeping prices low. The food firm hires skilled managers with a good knowledge of the locality in which they operate and who can execute the company’s plan to the dot.
• Studying local neighborhoods, streets and traffic patterns to come up with the best delivery times, which enabled the company to deliver on its promise of 30-minutes-or-less delivery times. This is only possible with expert project managers.
• Domino’s also make sure they understand the people they are going to sell their pizza’s to. What ingredients they like, their flavors and appeals and what amount of budget they can allocate to the company’s product, are all taken into account before setting up an outlet. In simple, they take their time to understand their customers and are able to develop products and services that address their unique needs.
• Understanding their customer’s culture and languages also helps the company to track changes in trends and tastes among its customers. for example in India they researched their target audience well enough to know that a mix of hip Western culture and familiar Indian values in its marketing messages would resonate with Indian consumers and bear most fruit. Also using natives in Key level of the company chain of command keep the flow of communication between the company and its customers alive.