Official Blog of GTM360 Marketing Solutions
I concluded my blog post entitled ROI For Customer ≠ ROI For Investor with a promise to write a follow-on post on startup investments that are not made in cash. This is that follow on post. Noncash investments have been practice du jour in many industries for decades. During the dotcom era, it was customary for startups to pay for marketing, … Read more
I bought a paid plan of a SAAS software, with the fixed monthly subscription fees payable with credit card. This is a canonical example of a recurring payment subject to RBI Emandate that came into effect on 1 October 2021. According to Reg Emandate: Every credit card and debit card based mandate for recurring payment … Read more
(This post is a slightly edited version of my answer to the above Quora question.) Question: Has UPI Disrupted Credit Card? Short Answer: No. UPI has boosted credit card. Long Answer: According to the theory of Disruptive Innovation by Late Professor Clayton M. Christensen of Harvard Business School, many giant incumbents face The Innovator’s Dilemma and … Read more
I got my first credit card in 1988. I’ve been using credit card as my go-to method of payment since then. I also headed up the retail payments line of business at an old company. Safe to say that I’ve been tracking the credit card industry for close to four decades. I’m fascinated by the … Read more
In a recent article in the mainstream media, Mitesh Agarwal, director, customer engineering at Google Cloud, declared: Unlike other countries, India is a voice first market. I found his observation a bit strange. Because it’s exactly the opposite of my observations on multiple occasions: People make heavy use of voicemail in USA, Germany, and UK. … Read more
I recently covered the primary issues related to the ban of UPI by small merchants: Do small merchants make so much money? Why refuse UPI? Why avoid GST? Are small merchants evading GST? What about Income Tax? In this blog post, I’ll explore some secondary issues. For the sake of completeness, I’ll continue with the … Read more
When you touch a hot plate, you’ll reflexively withdraw your hand and douse it in a bucket of ice to escape the hot burn. However, if you dunk your hand in ice without having touched a hot plate, you can get a frostbite. Likewise, a guy who bought a stock based on tips from a … Read more
Facing mounting GST notices, many small merchants in Bangalore and elsewhere in the state of Karnataka are declining UPI and other digital payments, and insisting on cash from their customers. They include streetfood vendors, pushcart sellers, and khirana stores (India’s version of mom-and-pop stores selling grocery). This is causing major inconvenience to consumers who have … Read more
In Rising Friction In Banking – Part 1, we saw four friction hotspots in customer journeys and applications in banking. In this Part 2, we’ll see four more. 5. Account Opening Audit I received a letter from the bank where I hold my Public Provident Fund account. For the uninitiated, in India, PPF is the … Read more
At its inception two years ago, Pune Metro supported the following ticketing options: Human-operated ticket counter Self-service kiosk WhatsApp e-ticket Contactless prepaid card. Since I’ve a great experience with contactless prepaid cards on rapid transport networks in several cities in the world (e.g. London Oyster Card), I jumped at the last option. My first attempt … Read more