Appealing To Millennials – The Challenge For PayZapp Mobile Wallet

Since I wrote HDFC Bank’s PayZapp Ends My Bill Payment Woes, I’ve made a few more bill payments using the mobile wallet. All of them went through successfully (knock on wood!). I’m even more convinced that PayZapp is the best way of paying bills for people who’ve tried out other alternatives. That said, PayZapp faces … Read more

Launching Conversion Rate Optimization For BFSI

In a recent interview with McKinsey, Citigroup CEO Michael L. Corbat alluded to shopping cart abandonment when he mentioned that today’s digital customers “just stop filling out the application” for financial products when they’re asked for “things that weren’t necessary”. Long a bugbear of ecommerce, this problem has started hampering the BFSI industry’s efforts to … Read more

Retargeted Ads Or Retarded Ads?

Retargeted Ad is one of those things on which my take as a consumer is diametrically opposed to that as a marketer. As a consumer, I hate them. As a marketer, I love them. For the uninitiated – or, in this case, the unchased – retargeted ads are the banner ads that follow you around … Read more

Five Ways To Sweeten A Deal – Apart From Discount

Traditional retailers aka kirana stores sell almost everything at MRP* whereas modern retail aka supermarkets sell almost everything below MRP (for the unintiated, this and other India-specific terms are explained at end of the post). Since Indians are price-sensitive, modern retail should totally corner the Indian retail market, right? Wrong! Modern retail accounts for barely … Read more

Millennial Obsession Will Bankrupt Neobanks

Personally, I don’t find too many serious shortcomings in the digital banking offerings from my banks. On the contrary, virtually every neobank / fintech I’ve come across is little more than a leadgen tool. But that’s outside the purview of this blog post, the purpose of which is to do a reality check on the … Read more

Winning A Customer For Life – The Mast Kalandar Way

Ever since I pointed out the yawning gaps in its disloyalty – er loyalty – program in Mast Kalandar Shows How Not To Run A Loyalty Program, Mast Kalandar has thoroughly revamped the way in which the program operates. Diners no longer need to struggle with their plastic cards in front of flaky card readers … Read more

Retail Is Still Barking Up The Wrong Tree Against Ecommerce

In Retail Is Barking Up The Wrong Tree Against Ecommerce, I’d listed three reasons why I’ve increasingly turned to ecommerce for my shopping needs. As you might recall, none of them was related to price. In the recent past, there were two more reasons why I went online. Money Back Guarantee I recently bought a car charger … Read more

PLG: How To Build Marketing Into Your SAAS Product

Separating product from marketing is never a great idea for any type of software but, for Software-as-a-Service, it can be a recipe for disaster. That’s because SaaS functionality is a double-edged sword: Get it right and it can aid your marketing; but copy it blindly from your onpremise version – or otherwise get it wrong … Read more