Building a Culture of Growth: MongoDB's Massive Opportunity in APAC

MongoDB’s go-to-market organization in APAC has grown rapidly, nearly tripling in size over the past three years. In this article, learn more about MongoDB’s opportunity in APAC and how we build a culture of growth and accountability.

MongoDB's opportunity in Asia-Pacific

Five of the world’s top 13 economies by GDP are located in APAC: China, Japan, Australia, India, and South Korea. The ASEAN countries alone represent more than 650 million people.

This regional scale, combined with the size of the worldwide database market, creates a significant opportunity. IDC estimates that the database market will grow to $137 billion in 2027, while MongoDB has reached $1 billion in annual recurring revenue. This provides a sense of the opportunity available to MongoDB globally and across APAC.

Almost every company is becoming a technology company—and, as a result, every company is becoming a data company. MongoDB is well positioned to support that transformation as an intelligent data platform.

MongoDB has already captured thousands of customers around the world, but the shift to cloud computing and modern application development is still in its early stages. Unlike many software categories, the database is mission-critical for organizations. As digital transformation continues, MongoDB has an opportunity to help customers use software and data to innovate, create, and disrupt industries.

One example is Cathay Pacific, Hong Kong’s home airline carrier. Its digital team used MongoDB to build Flight Folder, an application that consolidates dozens of information sources into one place and supports a paperless flight deck. Since its launch, Cathay Pacific has completed more than 340,000 flights with full digital integration in the flight deck.

Building a team across regions and cultures

Our APAC team is unique because of the different markets and cultures within the region. We go to market differently in India than we do in Australia, and differently in Singapore than we do in South Korea. Each market is different, but each presents a significant opportunity.

In APAC, we have established business leaders who run regionalized teams in India, ASEAN, and ANZ, with all functions reporting to them. These teams operate as their own businesses and implement local best practices into their strategies.

That does not mean they operate in silos. At the leadership level, there is significant collaboration and sharing of experiences to identify what is working and what is not across each region. We also have a global sales organization that provides extensive training and best practices to help local teams support customers and grow the business.

Culture

The most important thing is culture.

We have a high standard for everything we do and how we interact with one another. We do not entertain politics. While new skills can be taught and people can be coached to succeed in new roles, alignment with our culture is essential. That is why culture is the most important aspect of the hiring process.

When the culture is right, everything else starts to fall into place. At MongoDB, our culture is shaped by six core values. One of the values that is particularly important to our APAC team is “Embrace the Power of Differences.”

APAC includes a wide range of cultural identities and nuances. These differences can influence values, beliefs, and go-to-market strategies. It is important that everyone on the team respects the cultures of the regions where we operate.

Across APAC and our global teams, leadership has taken people on a journey to understand and embrace cultural differences. The role of our leaders is to develop our teams from the bottom all the way up. That includes MongoDB’s BDR to CRO career development initiative, which is designed to help develop the next generation of leaders.

For APAC, development means coaching every team member on the cultural nuances needed to lead people and go to market across the region, regardless of where they are from.

It is also important that every team member contributes to a culture of psychological safety. Working at a high-growth technology company requires taking risks and making mistakes. We hold one another accountable and maintain high standards, but never at the expense of creating an environment where people are afraid to fail.

When someone experiences a setback, we encourage them to share it so that we can learn collectively. Through mutual support, we build a stronger team that is capable of delivering exceptional results.

The future of MongoDB in Asia-Pacific

For any organization to be successful, the entire ecosystem needs to act as one. At MongoDB, our country ecosystems are aligned around a shared set of goals rather than operating in different directions.

Teams are willing to support one another and do what is needed to build a great business. In APAC, we are one team.

That means sales, marketing, customer success, solutions consulting, and professional services working together to focus on three things: making customers successful, building technical champions, and driving new workloads.

As we continue to grow MongoDB’s team and footprint in the region, these three priorities will drive our success.

There is a huge opportunity for MongoDB in APAC. While hiring has slowed or stopped at many organizations, MongoDB continues to invest in the region. Our APAC go-to-market team has nearly tripled in size over the past three years, and we have open roles across functions and regions.