How Do You Sue Software?

Like many countries, India has a withholding tax regime. Called “Tax Deducted At Source”, the withholding tax is applicable on salaries paid to employees, commissions paid to agents, rents paid to landlords, professional fees paid to service providers, and many other types of B2B and B2C payments. In this blog post, I’ll dive deeply into … Read more

PayZapp’s Loss Is PayTM’s Gain – And Lesson For PSPs

Many people complain that cashiers decline Apple Pay even though their stores have advertised support for Apple’s payment service. I’ve come across the same experience with HDFC Bank’s PayZapp mobile wallet. The cashier at a restaurant in my neighborhood told me they hadn’t started accepting PayZapp although there was a “PayZapp Accepted” sticker on his … 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

Using The Loss Aversion Principle To Forge Partnerships In New Markets

When an offshore IT services provider enters a new market, it’s (relatively) unknown in that geography. Many companies in this situation eschew end users and try to drive their go to market strategy by partnering with local IT companies. Ideal partner candidates are boutique shops and systems integrators that are well known in the target … Read more

Six Best Practices To Convert Freemium To Premium – Part 2

In Part 1 of this blog post, we’d seen three best practices for converting Freemium to Premium viz. Ask For Money, Create Pinch Points, and Drive Enhanced Usage. In this second part, I’ll cover three more best practices for SAAS vendors to upgrade their freemium users to paying customers. #4. INTRODUCE VALUE ADDED FEATURES You … Read more

Six Best Practices To Convert Freemium To Premium – Part 1

To generate rapid traction for their products, many SAAS providers offer a Freemium plan, which is free access to a truncated version of their full blown software. By doing so, they expect users to sign up for their software without any risk, play around with it for a month or two, and upgrade to the … 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

Three Ways To Boost The Appeal Of Targeted Offers

Targeted offers have become famous. That’s not to say they’ve become popular – brand managers report low conversion rates of offers made to offers redeemed. There are many reasons for this problem such as the ones I covered in Walking The Tightrope Between Driving Repeat Purchase And Rewarding Loyalty and How To Fulfill Targeted Offers To … Read more

Technology Platform – Go Wide Or Go Deep?

We come across the “Go Wide or Go Deep?” question regularly in our outsourced product management engagements. (Should the term “outsourced product management” intrigue you, see Who The Heck Outsources Product Management?). Let’s take a typical scenario: An IT company has developed a technology platform without reference to any specific segment. The going in position of … Read more

Pixie Dust Sampling – Or How To Commit Harakiri By Lying With Big Data

I recently saw the following post on LinkedIn: “95% of banks in the study have created innovation labs.” This figure seemed extremely high to me. I did a quick-and-dirty survey of three banks in my circle. Not one of them has an innovation lab. Nevertheless, I didn’t conclude that the author of the post was … Read more