The 6 Rules of Expanding Where No One Is Looking

In 2025, Latin America was expected to become the world’s fastest-growing ecommerce market, with online retail sales set to rise by 12.2% to $191.25 billion. Mexico was catching up with the United States in ecommerce penetration, and Saudi Arabia’s ecommerce market was forecast to reach $32.3 billion.

Yet lots of startups still see international expansion as launching in the US or Western Europe — the markets with the toughest competition and the highest costs of winning new customers. Udora chose a different direction: by focusing on regions that many businesses overlook, we achieved 123% year-on-year order growth. 

Here are six rules for expanding where few others are looking, and the mistakes that stop many companies from seeing opportunities in plain sight.

Southeast Asia, Africa and Latin America are growing much faster than fully developed markets. Recent figures put annual growth at around 20% a year, compared with 13% in developed economies. North America and Europe averaged just 5.6% in 2024.

Crowded markets usually mean expensive customer acquisition and slower growth, in comparison to fewer competitors, lower costs and more breathing room in emerging regions. Before choosing a new market, consider three factors: growth in your category, smartphone adoption and the age of the population (in MENA, the median age is 22; in Western Europe, it’s 44). Once identified, the window of opportunity may stay open for another 18-24 months before competition catches up. 

inDrive expanded into Latin America and Africa while Uber and Bolt focused on established markets. The company entered regions with lower acquisition costs and a young, smartphone-friendly audience. Its model, which lets passengers suggest their own fare, resonated with price-conscious users. By 2025, inDrive had grown to $6.4 billion in gross bookings, and its revenue rose 31% to $601.6 million. 

For direct-to-consumer brands, recovering customer acquisition costs within three months is considered highly efficient, while three to six months is common during a growth phase. Beyond a year, growth often relies on external funding. Meanwhile, average customer acquisition cost in developed retail markets reached $226 in 2024 and continues to rise.

Low acquisition costs alone don’t guarantee success: what matters is how quickly customers pay it back. In emerging markets, this cycle is often shorter, allowing businesses to grow using their own cash flow. During the first 90 days in a new market, track repeat purchases as closely as acquisition costs. If customers pay back within six months, it’s time to scale. If they don’t, something needs fixing — whether that’s the product, the price or the channel. 

Nubank applied this approach in Brazil, using a no-fee credit card to attract customers before introducing lending, insurance and investment products. The goal wasn’t immediate revenue, but a faster payback through additional services over time. By the second quarter of 2025, Nubank’s revenue had reached $3.7 billion and net income stood at $637 million, with return on equity at 28%. The company now serves 127 million customers, generating more than $13 in monthly revenue per active user.

CSA Research found that 76% of consumers prefer to shop in their native language, and around 40% won’t buy from a website that isn’t translated. That’s why many companies focus on translating their website first. But translation alone rarely makes people buy.

People notice everything that happens after they’ve added something to their cart. Can they pay the way they’re used to? Will the delivery options feel familiar? Do prices make sense? Those details shape trust far more than perfectly translated copy.

Vinted Go in Spain and Portugal is a great example. The company launched a delivery network designed around habits people already had: pickup points, flexible shipping and sending parcels between one another. Customers didn’t need to change how they bought and sold second-hand clothes. Vinted just fitted the service around them, as a result – in 2025, they reported €10.8 billion in GMV and €1.1 billion in revenue.

According to Phoenix Strategy Group, more than more than a half of companies begin global expansion with a local partner because it’s quicker and far less expensive than setting everything up themselves.

A good partner gives you a head start. They know how locals think, who matters in the market and which mistakes are easy to make. That means you can spend your first few months learning whether the opportunity is real instead of building a local operation before you’ve proved there’s demand.

When expanding across Europe and the Middle East, Glossier partnered with Sephora and gained immediate access to an established retail network and more than 30 million loyalty members. The partnership helped the brand grow much faster and contributed to double-digit wholesale sales growth in 2024.

It’s easy to dismiss markets that come with complicated rules. McKinsey found that more than 60% of companies see regulation as one of the biggest reasons not to expand into emerging economies. That also means fewer businesses are willing to enter them.

The important thing is to think about local rules before you launch, not after. They affect everything from pricing to operations and delivery. It’s much easier to build the business around those requirements than to change everything once customers have already arrived.

Getir successfully entered highly regulated markets including the UK, Germany, France and the US. In the end, regulation wasn’t what held it back. High labour costs, expensive urban logistics and weak unit economics proved much harder to overcome. In 2024, Getir exited several international markets and focused again on Turkey, where the business economics were much stronger.

Harvard Business Review data shows that first movers in a new market retain a 74% higher market share on average compared to those who show up three or more years later. In emerging markets, that gap is even bigger because consumer habits form really fast. Being first often means more than being perfect. 

Instead of focusing on picture-perfect results, the goal should be getting a working version that fixes the customer’s problem. Once you’ve launched, there goes improving things, adding new features, sprucing up, based on how people actually use it. You want the product to grow with the market, not ahead of it.

Look at Conduit, a US fintech that expanded from Latin America into Africa. This region was still early in their digital shift, with fragmented currencies and slow, expensive traditional bank transfers. Conduit launched quickly, plugged right into the emerging B2B payment landscape, and solved that immediate friction. Because their timing was right, they scaled incredibly fast, hitting over $10 billion in annualized payment volume, growing their transaction volume 16 times over in a single year, and expanding across 9 countries with more than 20 partner banks.

Global expansion does not live by the already crowded Western market alone. Real growth comes from having the patience to try with overlooked regions, moving quickly with a functional product, and adapting quietly to how locals actually live and buy.

In 2025, Latin America was expected to become the world’s fastest-growing ecommerce market, with online retail sales set to rise by 12.2% to $191.25 billion. Mexico was catching up with the United States in ecommerce penetration, and Saudi Arabia’s ecommerce market was forecast to reach $32.3 billion.

Yet lots of startups still see international expansion as launching in the US or Western Europe — the markets with the toughest competition and the highest costs of winning new customers. Udora chose a different direction: by focusing on regions that many businesses overlook, we achieved 123% year-on-year order growth. 

Here are six rules for expanding where few others are looking, and the mistakes that stop many companies from seeing opportunities in plain sight.