by Monique Powell, Founder of QuickCart
The Caribbean is often overlooked and undervalued by tech startup founders and the investors who back them. And when I talk about the Caribbean here, I don’t mean LAC; I am talking about the current Caribbean region.
Take the food and grocery delivery market for example. There are 46.4 million people living in the Caribbean, and with a conservatively estimated SAM (service addressable market) of 4.9 million people, we are looking at an opportunity of $820 million per year.
This means that it is entirely possible for a strong player to achieve unicorn status just by focusing on the Caribbean. And of course, having achieved success in the Caribbean, they don’t have to stop there.
Years ago I read an article about Irish entrepreneur Denis O’Brien and his decision about where Digicel should operate. She stuck with me. They first thought about getting a mobile operator license in the US, then realized that even with the fairly large amount of capital they had access to, trying to compete against the established US telecommunications giants, who would be still able to outspend them. maybe not the best decision.
However, he realized that the Caribbean, when viewed as a whole rather than as small individual markets, presented a massive opportunity that they could build a large company on – and they did. Their recent struggles aside, what they managed to build was remarkable, and the decision to focus on the then-underserved Caribbean was an important part of that success.
All too often, pearls of opportunity exist within underserved and overlooked markets, but only those who are forward-thinking and brave enough to take the risk reap the rewards.
