Day 11: Local First Moat
Operating a business in Kashmir taught me something Silicon Valley won't tell you.
The tech narrative is: build global from day one. Think big. Scale fast.
But here's what the last two years in Kashmir taught me:
Local markets with real operational challenges are underserved. And if you serve them well, you become very hard to replace.
ViberNet doesn't compete with Jio or Airtel on price. We can't, and we don't try.
We compete on presence.
- Knowing which area needs fiber next.
- Trying to fix issues as fast as we can.
- Building real relationships in a place where that matters most.
We're building this every single day.
And here's the part most people miss:
This is scalable.
Not because you expand blindly,
but because you build deep, strong systems in one market… and then repeat them.
Kashmir has 15 million people. It's growing fast. Internet usage is rising.
More people are working online than ever before.
And there are very few local companies that truly understand how things work here, on the ground.
We're working to become one of them.
That's the opportunity.
It requires being here, consistently, which is exactly why most people don't do it.
The companies that win in markets like this won't be the ones that show up with money and a copied playbook.
They'll be the ones who stay, build, learn, and earn trust.
That's what we're doing.
The foundation is being built. Systems are coming together. People are starting to know us.
What comes next is scale, built on systems, not shortcuts.
Day 11 of my 30-day build-in-public series; sharing what I'm building at ViberNet and OpenLoop every day.
It's “we're actually here, doing the work.”
Presence, when combined with systems, becomes a moat, and a growth engine.
If you're building in a place others ignore, talk about it. That's your advantage.