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Time to decode the ‘Social’ in ‘Social Commerce’

“If I had to guess, Social Commerce is the next area to really blow up” – Mark Zuckerberg

‘Social Commerce’ or more simply ‘Social Payments’ has been a relatively new concept to come up in the last few years. And in most cases, it remained like the early days of big data – easier to toss around but not presenting a clear picture. I believe the vagueness gets accentuated by the fact of the word ‘Social’ being a part of it. This is what leads a whole set of audience out there, to think that just latching on to or simply appending a ‘pay’ option inside a social network makes up for the concept. Nothing could be further from the truth. The true meaning of the word ‘Social’ in ‘Social Commerce’ is actually the full context of your real life use cases where any social activity is involved. For example – a dinner with your friends, an act of planning and sharing cost for a gift, so on & so forth.

don't keep calmIn fact, if you actually ponder, you would perceive that the real driver of this phenomenon has been something else entirely. It is the proliferation of ‘shared economy’ lifestyle that makes these social use cases so prominent and common for us.  Also your payment instances and touch points intersect across the whole matrix of these use cases. Traditionally, the process has been pretty fragmented with the social & fun experience never coming across in those payments you made with your friends. Until now!

And the reasons are plentiful. Let’s start from why social commerce has not worked with the incumbents (your digital wallets) –

  • The pain of uploading money first from your bank account (because come on, you don’t keep large amounts of money in your mobile wallet)
  • The limits of sending money to another wallet (You can’t send more than Rs. 10k at one time as a normal user!)
  • The charges and time delays on withdrawing my wallet balance into my bank account (They are charging you for transferring your money back to yourself!)

And I am sure you must have realized that the arrival of our own stack – UPI is the one of the key turn arounds (the ‘Paypal moment’) for Indian ecosystem, especially in terms of enabling ‘Social Payments’ as a category to exist independently in a big manner. UPI has brought about 10X the simplicity and 10X the speed which is a core pre-requisite for situations where you need to share money with your friends without any awkwardness. Now imagine adding all your social use cases on top of this beautiful and secure base of UPI. As you may have realized by now, that not only does it create a completely new paradigm but also increases the value by an order of magnitude (because of the network effects). 

Once the wheels of motion start on any evolutionary path, it becomes almost impossible to stop them. The natural extension is that this category is bound to grow in India as well both in numbers and value (give the fact that it has already reached to 10s of billions of dollars in the west (US) with Venmo and the east (China) with WePay). The key thing to remember here is that in any new economy, it requires a fresh approach and outlook since the positioning is different from traditional P2P players and hence the product delivery and experience also needs to be different for the user. There have been numerous examples around the world with large social networks trying to add a basic P2P payments functionality and hoping it to take off in a big way. But it has not worked that well numerous examples like Snapcash (P2P payments via Snapchat in US).

sharing moneyThis brings us full circle to the two golden philosophies that have stood the test of time again and again –

  1. The products that work on the premise of ‘this thing/activity can be done here too’ never make the cut. For example – ‘You can send money on Paypal too!’ is NOT what a Venmo user is thinking.
  2. Once a consumer associates a product with a certain repeat and high frequency use case, it becomes nearly impossible to change his habit and perception for that product. For example – Messenger has traditionally been a place for sending messages and that is what a user thinks of when he recalls that app (and not for sending money).

This is where the formidable advantage of having a clean slate comes in –

  • Tailoring the product design around your real world habits when it comes to splitting, collecting, managing and tracking all your payments with your close contacts
  • Ensuring that the experience is insanely fun so that it takes away all the awkwardness that traditionally accompanies any monetary transaction with your friends
  • Ensuring that the product caters to all your use cases to such a minute detail that even you get surprised when it comes to the features!

Needless to say that I am more than excited about how the Indian market is evolving in the fin-tech domain (especially with the Indian government supporting it at an awesome level). Look forward to continued awesomeness and magic along the way.

Cheers, Rohit Taneja, Mypoolin

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The specifics – How we grew 100% organically every quarter 

We had earlier written about the fundamentals that helped us in growing over past one year but recently we looked back to dig further and list down few specifics that we believe helped our growth. These come from our own experience as a consumer company and might not be applicable to every startup but we hope that something applicable and actionable is derived from the points below.

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What we did:

1) We operated below scale in a very patient manner (Do things that don’t scale — Paul Graham)

Early on, we saved contacts of all our top 300 active users in a company phone and spent a great deal of time in assisting them, reaching out to them. We called them all at least once a month, interacted over WhatsApp and staying tuned to their feedback helped us iterate our product at a faster pace. These users were also the ones whose feedback we gave primary weightage to. The idea was that it’s better to have few hundred very satisfied users than few thousand dissatisfied users.

This further helped us in a subjective product validation as we monitored NPS (Net Promoter Score) and gauged how disappointed they will be, if we took the product away from market.

2) Almost everyone in our team did customer support early on.

Over a period of time, many customers thought that we had a big team of customer support staff while the reality was that anyone would pick up the phone kept on the table in the early days. Reason for this was that, we wanted to listen to every piece of feedback ourselves and understand the issues users faced. The same set of issues and appropriate actions to be taken differed in many instances when viewed from different perspectives of development team, marketing team and product team.

The idea was that we need to have high capacity of attentiveness. We would respond to every tweet, call, email and resolve any issue within 10 minutes. This further reflected in our play store reviews where a vast number of them praise our customer support.

This non-scalable approach is an advantage of being a first mover in the market, the tacit knowledge acquired is invaluable and sets up time compression diseconomies (an MBA jargon for first mover economic advantage) that just can’t be overcome overnight by a clone.

3) We sold like a non-tech company!

Remember those users whom we had on our WhatsApp, we cross-sell and up-sell a lot of different use cases to them by just picking up the phone, so much so that they started recognising us by our voice over phone. We did a user specific profiling of their spend and the use cases they spent on and carried out over quarters weekly and monthly comparative analysis to predict growth trajectory and fine tune our throttle accordingly.

We were obviously not selling penny stocks but genuinely helping them out!These users further spread the word about product among their peers and we started mapping behaviour of incoming cohorts of users.

4) We iterated very fast for a focussed outcome

We have very short product release cycles to experiment and test our hypotheses and improve funnels conversion and KPIs. As a small startup, we realised that at any point of time, there are maximum of 2 metrics that we can focus on.

This ensured that we learnt and acquired knowledge of our social payments domain on a regular weekly basis and this growth is the kind that doesn’t reflect in vanity metrics like app downloads.

5) We maintained sanity when it came to data

We tracked but never over — analysed data. We largely relied on user observation and subjective feedback in early days and later ensured that the assumptions we test are based on decent sized cohorts which are statistically significant. For user observation and feedback, 10–15 users at a time is usually a good number to uncover majority of issues or problems a user would encounter.

6) We started with a clean slate with no prior bias.

We believe that there is nothing ‘standard’ about standards or best practices which is why we put out the disclaimer upfront that our learnings might not be relevant and applicable to all. For a unique product play and especially if you are not copying a product from the West, one requires patience and has to test everything about the product.

We iterated our product with constant user feedback and observation improving the conversions within the product and engagement.

We also got some validation for our approach towards very unique challenges we faced. One such example was partitioning our app in two parts — ‘Split n Settle — Post Transaction money settlement among friends’ and ‘Plan n Pay — Pre Transaction collection among friends’ and the approaches we took were also seen in products whose UX we admire like ClearTrip, Tinder and Google Play.

We have just begun and are learning something new everyday. It is this process of never ending learning from consumers while serving them, that excites and keeps us going on every day.

Guest Post by Ankit, MyPoolin

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Freedom from fragmentation! Welcome to the ecosystem

The emotions of independence and freedom are flowing around in our hearts; hence it is befitting to discuss the same in a domain where most people haven’t pictured these yet. Let us talk about the product that is eating the whole world – yes, we are talking about the world of ‘Software’ after all. Even the people who are new to this part will notice the sheer amount of change that has come around in the world economy, labour markets, currency valuations and more, solely by the influence and discretion of software prowess. However, what becomes hard to notice for many people is that there is a silent revolution underway in this whole domain. What we are talking about is the shift from a fragmented approach to an integrated one.

Before you start thinking about the questions (like what is the need? Why is a change required?), let us consider a very simple real life example. Take the following phrases and see what comes to mind while thinking about them – ‘Discover what is happening around me’, ‘Chat with my group of friends’, ‘Discuss and plan for a group activity’ & ‘Split and share money with a friend’. If you look closely, these 4 action aspects pretty much sum up your daily social lifestyle, especially considering the complicated lives that we lead nowadays.

 

However, interestingly the legacy platforms and systems that are prevalent have been mostly confined to 1 vertical in each of these cases. For example, you have ~2 apps in your phone for checking out the movies and events running in town, then there would be ~3 different apps for checking the best restaurants to go to and the deals to avail, and furthermore, a plethora of apps to chat with your group of friends. Now, each of these apps perform specific functions suited to their use case, however, in a dynamic and real time social scenario, you will find yourself juggling between multiple apps / web pages, taking screenshots / copying text and then performing the desired intended series of actions. Isn’t it?

Now, think is this really a smart way to go about it? Do we REALLY need so many apps? Keeping the subjective part aside, let us take a look at some hard numbers. Consider this fantastic report compiled by TheNextWeb on the fragmented Android market or this detailed analysis by ContractIQ on the vendors and variety of software suites out there. Well, things get clear, don’t they?

Fragmentation

Welcome the ecosystem approach

In light of the above, ask yourself, why should we remain limited to the old approach and use up more time in juggling between different apps and systems? Why not go for a more advanced ecosystem style approach (something like what Facebook messenger is bringing around now in terms of allowing you to book an Uber and more directly from the chat window). This is the approach that precisely a lot of new age products advocate (including ours) in terms of the complete flow. Not only does this approach help you save time (that we all value so highly) but also maintain just one point of contact in terms of the interacting system (Comp. Science geeks and service guys will understand the enormous value of this).

SweetspotGetting back to the phrases we discussed earlier, let us combine the vertical sections of the app market into 1 and perceive the awesomeness that we get –

  • Discovery of events, activities, restaurants, deals and more
    • Exploring the best movies, events, deals, restaurants and outings around you
    • Also checking out the details required under one neat and seamless flow without jumping between multiple apps
  • Discussing, planning and chatting
    • Choosing whatever activity you want to go for, after checking what’s trending, what is recommended, what do your friends like & much more, all at one place
    • Inviting your group of friends to add them to the group to discuss and plan together. Chatting together to see who is in and who is out
  • Splitting and sharing money from any account
    • Splitting the costs for your activities (whether before or after) and everyone can put in their own share directly using any means linked to their bank account.
    • Avoiding the hassles of making excel sheets / notes and even setting reminders. Letting the single solution handle everything is the ultimate nirvana mode.
    • Not only that, wouldn’t it be wonderful if the app didn’t even require you to share any account details (like account number, IFSC code etc.) with anyone!

I am sure you will find that the old fragmented apps scenario pales in comparison to this integrated solution when it comes to seamlessly navigating your social lifestyle. For those who have not explored yet, come and check out the magic that happens when all these touchpoints come in one trajectory under one roof at Mypoolin – https://mypoolin.com/mobile-app.php

Time to say ‘ahoy’ to freedom and welcome this silent revolution towards an integrated future!

Guest Post by Rohit Taneja, Co-Founder at MyPoolin

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UPI – The Revolution in Payment Industry

Japan introduced ‘Zengin’, a real-time money transfer mechanism in 1973. Thirty Seven years later, NPCI (National Payments Corporation of India) introduced IMPS (Immediate Payment Service) in 2010 as the first real-time 24*7 money transfer mechanism in the country.

In-between PayPal launched money transfer by just knowing a person’s email ID in 1999 and now in 2016, India is about to make UPI (Unified Payment Interface) live in few weeks. It will enable real-time transfer of money 24*7 just by knowing a person’s virtual address.

These two comparisons above need to be looked at with different lenses, one from the laying of groundwork and the other ease of usage. It took some time but NPCI setup IMPS which has performed very well with IMPS transactions growing at a staggering pace, over 100% every year. In May 2016 alone, USD 3.4 Billion were transferred on it.

However, these transactions have not really been very easy to carry out for Indian consumers. Whether with account numbers and IFSC codes or with MMID, the friction has curtailed the full potential of this behemoth on rise. This is where UPI comes in, abstracting the payments on top of existing robust IMPS to the degree that Indian consumers can now carry out transactions in few taps with just a virtual address. It is India’s PayPal moment for consumer payments bringing it to that parity in terms of end user convenience that will only lead to further digitisation of cash in the country.

This moment is also an inflexion point for us. Bill Gates recently said that “India will lead the world in digital financial inclusion”.

Few key things have led to this point.

The Indian consumer has adopted smartphones and internet very well. In 2015, the internet user-base in India recorded an impressive 40% growth over the past year and the smartphone shipments in India is estimated to grow by 29% in 2016. Stepping few years back, it has been a remarkable journey starting with paying for a train ticket on IRCTC website to small mobile recharges to e-commerce payments, Indian consumer got a taste of online payments and got comfortable with it and now slowly like it panned out in West, the demarcation of high touch and low touch products is diminishing with users now purchasing anything online.

Consumer trends aside, policy-making and the work of bodies such as RBI, NPCI, iSPIRT (Indian Software Product Industry Round Table), IAMAI and many more has helped in information collection, dissemination and laying of frameworks to provide a solid ground to build up Indian mobile payments story.

Apart from peer to peer payments, IMPS can now carry out PULL based transactions as well so that a user can now make merchant payments seamlessly with just an MPIN in a ‘Single Touch, 2 Factor Authentication’ method where a user’s device ID is being treated as the first factor of authentication.

Like any new system, it will take some time to set up and grow. The merchants will have to come on-board quickly to accept payments with UPI and users will need to be educated. For merchants, it will have a low TDR (Transaction Discount Rate), comparable to low Debit Card rates and higher conversion in transactions as multiple intermediaries and hops for an online payment to take place successfully will get out of the way. For the paying customer, it will allow payments in one tap and money will get debited directly from their bank account.

In past, we have seen many financial systems and methods take years before going mainstream but we believe that UPI will get adopted at a faster pace than what we have seen in the past. A lot of macro-trends and unique Indian payments landscape in which masses skipped credit cards altogether and many had a mobile smartphone as their first internet device indicates that things will play out differently here.

That brings us to the question that amidst all of these changes in the ecosystem with all of the above playing their crucial part, what role do we, the startups have? Answer is that as young entrepreneurs, it is our obligation to take this story forward.

Just like Uber used GPS, Google Maps and different facets of established or emerging pieces of technology, we have to use UPI to provide Indian consumers with great experience and delightful products.

In doing so, we will have to educate Indian consumers about what UPI is – what a virtual address is, how safe and secure it is, how they can have a virtual address issued by a bank when they don’t even have a bank account with the bank application (Payment Service Provider) issuing that virtual address and more.

The experience of on-boarding them onto UPI will have to be very simple and delightful.

The old ‘Goldilocks effect’ will have to be brought in where a user should not get too wary of the new yet understand that the whole payments paradigm has changed for good.

We at Mypoolin have spent a great amount of time acquiring tacit knowledge in how consumer payments are made and users behave in various social contexts and settings when it comes to payments. We are of the strong view that UPI brings the great convenience required for payments to be made smoothly and we will build great value on top of it for Indian consumers. We have begun playing our role by education our existing users and more with a UPI specific website and other channels about UPI which has helped us gauge market response to it and get valuable feedback that we can share with the ecosystem at large for the benefit of the market.

The applications of UPI are in many different use-cases and it is upon us startups to recognise it and take it to market.

We can’t blame it on anyone – the system or the current economic downturn to not do our job – UPI is one of the many enablers to follow that will help us build great technology products to make India a ‘Product Nation’

The true mettle of Indian founders to build great products will be tested and it will change the mindset as well to build India specific New from the scratch and set a trend the country needs for future entrepreneurs to follow.

This is our pivotal moment and we must not let it slip away.

Guest post By Ankit Singh, Co-Founder, Mypoolin

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The fundamentals that help us grow more than 100% every quarter

At Mypoolin, we have a consistent and strong belief that a very significant aspect of building a business is keeping the fundamentals strong. The fundamentals are not just the core pillars for making the company stand as an entity, but also serve as defining the form as the firm emerges from its initial amorphous self. When we started the venture last year, we had some basics and an initial direction in mind, but we could not define those at that time.

For the first timers, we are the social payments product company of the country. We enable seamless peer to peer transactions and group transactions for all use cases, varying from movies to events to parties to outings to rent and more. Over the past 12 months, the product has grown both qualitatively and quantitatively. Starting from transactions just worth a few thousands per month to achieving a high growth rate currently, we are intent on making this product an integral part of your social lifestyle.

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Let us dive into the fundamentals that continue to shape us –

Tackling a big problem

The reasons big problems are so important to be solved, is that once you solve them, half of the battle (or even more) is won. Not only does it ensure that the product can deliver, it also incentivizes the user by default to explore and use the same. Once you hit a raw nerve and resolve a crucial pain point, you ensure that the barriers to adoption are now as low as they can be, from the point of view of motivation of the user. And at the same time, when the vision is big, everyone in the team is driven as well to execute on it and be a part of it.

MyPoolin2

Simplifying a challenging solution

Well, it is one thing to say and another thing to build on it. After defining the problem and realizing the challenge in front, we started iterating on the product and building it piece by piece. All along some factors and pointers helped us in defining the direction of the product –

  • What exactly does the consumer desire? (Putting ourselves in their shoes)
  • Does our solution present itself in its simplest form? (Analyzing)
  • Are users really feeling empowered by using it? (Observing and tracking)

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The above pointers will answer that whether the customers have the necessary ability to utilize our solution or not. And at the same time, since we are combining two domains of the internet viz – social network and payments into one; the product tends to become intricate in terms of its engineering. This in turn makes sure that the ability of the team is tested as well to its full potential for making the product really polished.

Discipline, Focus and Fun

Another key fundamental in running a growing company, especially in the complex and sensitive infrastructure of payments, is the presence of discipline and focus. This applies to both the phases-

  • Developing the product as well as
  • Tracking the analytics and output

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At the same time, fun is always a part of the equation and the hidden gem at times for everyone to appreciate the mission as a team. In fact, the point of fun trickles everywhere, including our product as well which portrays the statement of ‘Payments made fun’. Traditionally, payments have been a painful and mundane part of our lives, but not anymore. Time to make them cool….

Wish to join one of the fastest growing ventures in the intricate, growing and powerful domain of fin-tech? Ping us directly at [email protected]

Cheers

Team Mypoolin, Rohit Taneja. 

 

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What it truly means to be a full stack company

There are several different types of organizations out there, and the ones that are the leanest in terms of size are mostly product companies. Within the product companies as well, there is a lot of variety in the approach that they take for delivering the desired consumer experience. Some opt for just 1 tool and focus on that (Desktop downloadable products— like early days of Norton antivirus), while others go for emphasis on the consumer touch point rather on the device choice.

We @Mypoolin perceive our product company as a growing tree which can deliver the desired fruits (experiences and outputs) to the customer through its numerous branches. Some of the branches appear to be similar in nature while other vary wildly in size and distribution. The things that bind them in common are the huge trunk as well as the root at the bottom level. The trunk of which we talk about actually refers to the main base (or the core of the application from software standpoint) and the root refers to the stack on which everything gets built from ground up (Sorry, we don’t believe in outsourcing :)). These two unifying factors are what make sure that the multiple touch points are aligned by a common sense of purpose

In line with the approach, it is important to highlight the reasons why we perceive and develop the company in this manner. Every consumer has its own preferred of looking at the product from the outside. And at the same time, the customers fall across various age groups, not to forget, they have even different choices and preferences among the same age group as well. Let us take a look at the end points of the branches, shall we?

1. Native Mobile Apps

I think it is a plain enough truth that nothing beats mobile as a device in today’s age both in terms of the time spent as well as the utility value. The type of person who goes for this device as a major investment of his time can be described in general as — curious, young (at least in his state of mind), likes to follow at least some topics around the world, and likes to be in the midst of the society.

As is evident, this covers a lot of the people out there and hence, the rate of increase of mobile adoption has surpassed all tech inventions to date. And mobile apps are making sure that this will continue to happen at least for the next couple of decades (typical growth cycle of any new technology in the ongoing century). Don’t forget there are players like Samsung and others who are trying to make headway for their own operating systems as well. That will make the play even more interesting.

2. Websites and Micro-sites

Even though the majority of the generation has adopted mobile as their go to devices, yet there are a LOT of people out there who simply can’t or won’t adopt it. In some cases, they do come on board but perform rudimentary tasks like calling and texting, while in some cases, they are simply not too excited as they don’t see value in investing time on a new device! I am sure we all know a few in our own circle and once you add up the numbers, you can see how large it becomes on its own.

Our policy goes in line with Apple’s in this regard, which is to never fear cannibalization. Of course, there might be some people who would keep transacting on the web initially, however we need to ensure that the product being used for that particular use case is ours. The idea needs to be to drive the users gradually to the native app (obviously for a more omni-present and better experience) rather than completely obliterating the web presence.

Since the overall goal is to serve the customer at the right place and the right time, hence micro-sites and embedded plugins (in our case, split payment options present on multiple partners like MakeMyTrip and more) become quite an important factor. As a customer who is in the process of transacting anywhere needs to see his intent transform into action in the most simple and direct way possible.

3. Bots, Watches, Glasses and more!

While the above two end points are absolute necessities (the way we believe), this one falls in the more fantastic range of product delivery as of now. Notably, while still nascent in the present stage, these technologies end points will achieve their full blown growth cycle towards the end of this decade.

This is the precise reason why we are launching two of our bots on Messenger and telegram platforms respectively. These bots will of course be quite naive to begin with, but will be learning along the way, ensuring that our goal of making ‘Payments’ fun and social reaches its pinnacle. For those of you who are keen to explore how peer to peer payments and group payments can happen simply with a text command, welcome to the future!

Remember, this is just the beginning in this category and we will continue to ensure that these end points converge in the purest and simplest form into our goal of making ‘Payments’ fun and social.

Wish to work with some of the best hackers, programmers and designers in the country? Wish to join one of the fastest growing ventures in the intricate, growing and powerful domain of fin-tech? Look no further. Ping us directly at [email protected]. Guest blog post by Rohit Taneja

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Leading the fintech revolution | The humane approach

Let’s start first with the elucidation of a buzzword that is floating around a lot –‘fintech’. In very simple terms, it refers to new technology that aims to change the existing models (and/or processes) of the financial industry. Considering that financial industry by itself is huge and everybody is a part of it directly or indirectly, it is quite logical that the tech and business community is extremely interested in being a part of it.

The good part is that this domain is complicated and definitely tough to crack. Now some of you might be wondering that how exactly is this good?! And the answer for that is as per my opinion, the harder a problem is to solve, the better the solutions (and even more original) are, that come forward for it for the long term. This is enforced even more when I look across other sectors – viz Rocket technologies, Transportation, Artificial Intelligence and so on. Remember we are talking about products & services that aim for the bigger picture and not just stay for a short while.

The second aspect that gets everyone excited is the potential impact that this has on the complete economy, be it in a funnel up fashion or the typical trickle down manner. Being deeply linked with the pockets and spending behavior (in general) of the people, the growth levels in fintech sector tend to have a very deep correlation with the elusive economic development at a global level. So far so good, but is the current pace really radical and path-breaking or is it simply incremental? The answer varies but involves a very important element…

As part of our product development and iterations here @MyPoolin, we have come to appreciate something that many of the fin-tech players intuitively know (but don’t directly implement) – ‘the humane touch‘. We don’t really mean touch in the physical sense (as most of the solutions that we refer to are mostly software level to the tune of 95% or more) but in the sense of user experience for the end consumer. The primary aspect that makes this so significant is because in the past, the banking solutions have seemed too complicated and aloof to majority of the people. That is the main reason people still spend hours in their respective bank branches per week!

PictureforblogHence, our principle is simple – “Let people come in for the utility. Present it in the simplest manner. And let them discover the power of a humane touch”. 

Cheers to making amazing things happen in the financial world that actually seem a natural part of our daily lives, making them all the more beautiful ….

P.S. MyPoolin is a mobile peer to peer and social payments network. It is changing the way we all plan and share money with friends and colleagues.

Guest Post by Rohit Taneja, MyPoolin