Fintechs Shouldn’t Stop Chanting The Disruption Mantra

Direct-to-Consumer financial technology startups are new age companies that sell bank accounts, loans and other financial products directly to end users. In this post, we’ll use the term “Fintechs” to refer to these D2C firms and “Fintech” to refer to the industry as a whole. Fintechs are different from “Fincumbents”, which is a term I’ve … Read more

Discount Is Not The Only Reason For Shopping Online

At the end of my blog post titled Retail Is Still Barking Up The Wrong Tree Against Ecommerce, I’d made a bold prediction that, within a few months, I’d find a few more non-price related reasons for shopping online. Well, it took me longer than that but I found one recently. This was at the outlet … Read more

Winners Don’t Let Security Screw Up User Experience

Like me, you may have come across people who appear obsessed with security but happily book cabs, send messages, order food, and even make payments without entering a single password / PIN on their smartphones. This is not as contradictory as it seems if you look at the end-to-end customer journey. For the uninitiated, Customer Journey can … Read more

Why Do People Make Payments Without A Password After Obsessing Over Security?

Let’s take the following two statements: Indians are obsessed over security Indians make payments without entering any password. Each of these statements is a fact. But, taken together, they appear contradictory and portray Indian consumers as fickle (or worse). Not true. In this blog post, I’ll use the principles of Customer Journey Mapping to explain why these … Read more

Killing The Six Deadly CX Killers

Over the years I’ve bought a wide range of products and services from banks, insurers, etailers, colleges, publishers, brick-and-mortar stores, hardware and software companies, TELCOs, airlines and travel agencies. My experience as a customer ranges from delight (Ecommerce and Travel) through to exasperation (Higher Education, Media, and Retail) and indifference (BFSI, Technology and Telecom). Poor … Read more

How To Make Your Product 10X Better

This is a slightly edited version of my answer to the following Quora question: Usually, there are many apps in the market, the developer remains blissfully unaware of them, develops a similar app without being cognizant of the other apps, and then wonders what went wrong. Yours is the right question. It’s a pleasure answering … Read more

Dunzo Gets The Job Done

My friend who works in a leading IT multinational corporation tells me that an email sent from the second floor to the third floor of his office building in Bangalore actually goes via the company’s regional mail server in Sydney, Australia. When they hear this, many people gasp “Whaaaat?” But, apart from that momentary reaction, … Read more

AI In UI – Low Hanging Fruit For Slashing SAAS Churn Rate

SAAS users experience frequent UI changes. The sales order button suddenly moves from top left to bottom right of the screen. The funnel report disappears from the splash screen. I could go on and on but the point is, frequent changes in UI drain productivity and escalate training costs. Beyond a certain extent, they might … Read more

Rideshare: Exhibit A For New Age Digital Business

In How Rideshare Startups Flipped A Switch To Create A Billion Dollar Business Overnight, I shared my thoughts on how rideshare startups have gone against common wisdom in many areas and used digital – aka SMAC (Social-Mobile-Analytics-Cloud) –  technologies to create a billion dollar business virtually overnight. But it’s more than just technology. Before I elaborate, let … Read more