Gauging the Market and Non-Market Forces in Indian Aquaculture Industry for a Strategic Position in Fish Vaccines Market

Indian aquaculture segment has become a growth engine for the agriculture sector and is postulated to be one of the key sources of food-protein supporting the growing Indian population. Significant potential for new fish vaccine business was demonstrated previously using market and sales potential assessments; however, in addition to the overall market attractiveness, estimating the market and non-market forces in an industry is vital to ensure profitability in a new business. Therefore, this research directed attention to gauging the forces using Porter’s five market forces (2008) and Prasad’s (2011) non-market forces (national culture and history) framework together with measuring the benefits of complementors. Each of the forces was measured and key drivers within each force were identified. A base case revenue scenario was built on forecasts and the impact of the major forces was tied to the income statement to determine sensitivity of the revenue forecasts. The results suggest that the buyer power and the substitute power are the major competitive forces. The power of complementor products was also found significant and an entrant could counter the predicted losses in profitability due to influences of these market and non-market forces by providing product-product bundles thus reaping considerable improvements in net present value (NPV) and internal rate of returns (IRR) on investments. The NPV from this analysis thus yielded a range between $0.97 and $7.5 million with an IRR ranging between 29.9% and 35.8% depending on the variables considered in the sensitivity analysis. Therefore, to realize profit potential and many other advantages, the entrant may choose a strategy of reaching the customer with a solution package either by producing complementors internally or by joining hands with strategic partners in the industry.