Subscribe now

This week’s piece comes from Sunaina Patnaik

“This is what love is meant to look, sound, and feel like!” — that’s what Shivani, a 20-year-old medical school student, thought when she watched Love O2O, a C-Drama (short-form for Chinese drama series). In this drama, two computer science students fall in love through an online role-playing game and eventually start dating outside the gaming world.

Like most C-dramas, Love O2O also heavily relies on visual gold (high production value and good-looking leads), prioritising escapism and the idol economy. This is referred to as yánzhí (pronounced as "yahn-juh” is attractiveness level in Chinese internet slang), which is used as a primary marketing engine to hook the target audience and trigger social media conversations. Case in point? Me.

Yánzhí is considered an insurance for investors — even beyond dramas. The actors who are chosen for this criteria are also called traffic stars as they guarantee high viewership and luxury brand deals, despite critics finding the acting flat. A classic example is Yang Yang, the protagonist of popular C-dramas such as Love O2O and You Are My Glory. When Guerlain Paris launched a lipstick named after him, they sold out instantly. Fans had to order this lipstick from abroad. This shifted things up in the beauty industry too.

This led about 40 international beauty brands to shift from female brand ambassadors to male traffic stars to capitalise on their popularity.

But coming back to Shivani..

Three rewatches, and growing up made her (now 28) realise that Love O2O is a far cry from reality. She says, “The female protagonist is merely a passive observer in her own story. It’s always the man who solves her problems, makes decisions, and orchestrates everything while she just.. goes along with it. She may appear like a role model on paper, but she has zero personality around her partner.”

This is the story of many C-dramas that haven’t quite caught up with the times. They keep recycling over-the-top, fairy-tale-like plots that look pretty on screen but are stuck in a time warp.

And among all tropes, the CEO romance is arguably the most popular one. It offers a world where you don’t need a PhD or a great work portfolio to succeed — you just need to be discovered by a powerful man. It satisfies the universal Cinderella fantasy and taps into a deep psychological desire for instant wish fulfilment. After enduring many struggles, the female protagonist finally finds her safe spot. Suddenly, all the bills are paid, the bullies are silenced, and she’s shielded from the harsh realities of the world.

The CEO trap/trope explained

It’s the ultimate C-drama staple: it features a male lead who is impossibly wealthy, emotionally cold, and a genius at business, but socially awkward or scarred by a past trauma. And then, there’s a hardworking female lead (sometimes an intern or assistant) who melts his icy heart. Just search for “CEO” on streaming platform iQIYI, look at the titles and plots, and you’ll get the drift.

However, this isn’t just about the Chinese audience.

A cold, untameable man dropping his guard to make a woman feel like the most extraordinary person in the room or “he hates everyone, but her” energy is a popular trope that works across nations, cultures, and temperaments. Think Ghajini (where a CEO pretends to be an ordinary guy to win over a girl) or Pretty Woman (where a wealthy entrepreneur changes his course of life after falling in love with a prostitute) — it’s the same tried-and-tested template.

Soon, this trope made its way into microdramas, a vertical-format series designed for phones, with episodes lasting 1-2 minutes. While traditional dramas need subplots, family drama, and secondary characters to fill each episode, microdramas strip away all of that and ask: What if we just give them the core fantasy on repeat?

Studios discovered that CEO romance microdramas had insane retention metrics. Research shows that over 50 per cent of users are paying to unlock microdrama episodes. Viewers watch these videos beyond 3-4 seconds, and sometimes binge-watch 60-100 episodes in a go. They could produce 10 microdramas for the cost of one traditional drama episode. If one flopped, who cares? They’d already launched three more.

Big tech giants stepped in

ByteDance and Tencent saw an opportunity and engineered the CEO trope to solve a business problem in the attention economy. Instead of creating high-production C-dramas, they went for microdramas to grab our attention in the first 5 seconds of a scroll. And that’s how Hongguo, a platform owned by ByteDance, created an empire. It has a whopping 200+ million users who’d rather snack on free, ad-fueled mini-stories than pay for traditional TV.

Tencent took this a step further. It turned Chinese web novels into microdramas, leaning into their existing fanbase. Reader engagement, like comments, favourites, and chapter subscriptions, acts as market research. By publishing these on WeChat Video, Tencent keeps everyone within WeChat’s ecosystem, ensuring users never leave their apps. Eventually, this turned into a calculated financial move for Chinese production houses, catering to the attention economy.

Audiences don’t mind spending $1 repeatedly on an episode with plot twists than commit to a monthly $15 subscription. No wonder China’s minidrama industry raked in nearly $7 billion (in 2024), beating the country’s overall box office revenue.

Luxury brands like Loewe and Louis Vuitton have also embraced this trend to attract Chinese consumers, primarily Gen Z. Instead of launching a marketing campaign, Loewe produced a microdrama series called Say Yes to Love. It created a romantic, character-driven narrative and integrated Loewe’s aesthetic and products.

This created a bigger market for shoppable content, turning microdramas into a cornerstone for digital marketing. Platforms like Douyin and Taobao now have floating shopping carts. You can buy the lipstick the actress is wearing while the episode is still playing. Imagine that!

But why exactly does the Chinese government have a problem?

While all may appear rosy, it just isn’t! The CEO trope and the typical content found in microdramas glorify women who want to marry into wealthy families. Young viewers who watch these fantasies of limitless wealth and CEO romance are building unrealistic expectations. When reality doesn’t deliver private jets and billionaire boyfriends, it sets a generation up for disappointment. It may feel as if simple lives and healthy relationships aren’t enough. Perhaps, because stability isn’t as appealing?

And so, the National Radio and Television Administration (NRTA) in China issued regulations against the CEO romance genre. The government has been pushing for more realistic dramas that showcase everyday heroes, traditional values, and socialist themes, rather than billionaire fantasies. Especially because this fits right in with their common prosperity policy. Soon, People's Daily joined hands with them, calling for a ban on plots that reduce women to scheming mistresses, naive vases, or victims waiting for a CEO.

All forms of content should be reviewed and approved by the government authorities. NRTA introduced a tiered review system that requires every microdrama to display a state-issued license number before it can be legally hosted or monetised. These regulations strictly discourage the glorification of extreme wealth and the adultification of child actors. NRTA has also flagged over 25,000 episodes for inappropriate content, which were duly removed from platforms.

In a bid to make a real change, China has introduced the Micro-Drama Plus initiative. This urges content creators to swap toxic billionaire tropes for stories that promote local tourism, traditional crafts, and social values. Think of wholesome content and product placements coming together (are they finally going the Fevicol way?).

So, is it a BIG NO to titles like After Flash Marriage, Billionaire CEO Spoils Me to the Sky or Oops! I Accidentally Married a CEO?

Will production houses truly stop making such content?

@honeyreels.tv

HoneyReels on Instagram: "🎬💥- Spoiled by My CEO Husband After…

Let’s take a step back..

This isn’t the first time the Chinese government has enforced such regulations. In 2011, they issued guidelines against transmigration (time-travel) dramas for treating history too frivolously. In these shows, modern characters accidentally travel back to ancient Chinese dynasties and fall in love with emperors and princes.

For the audience, this was a fun escape. But the government saw something more troubling: people seeking refuge in fantasies and not dealing with present-day reality. Bigger problem? These shows often involved real Chinese dynasties, and the government found it disrespectful.

Scarlet Heart is one such show that’s rumoured to have prompted these regulations. The female lead goes back in time to the Qing Dynasty and gets entangled between the emperor’s sons’ struggle for love and succession. It’s one of the first C-dramas to gain a massive international traction, and was dubbed into various languages and remade into a K-drama.

When something gets that popular in China, the government pays attention. Especially if it doesn’t align with their approved messaging. And so, it became a last of its kind show before the genre faced restrictions.

But, there’s always a jugaad!

Producers found a workaround. They made transmigration possible through dreams, VR and video games rather than time travel. Fictional families replaced real dynasties. Rebirth became the new time travel. And real emperors weren’t romanticised or used as a playground for fantasy storytelling. If it’s not real history, no restrictions apply.

Or you can always count on K-dramas

Unlike China, South Korea has no government ban on time travel. This has allowed K-dramas to experiment more wildly. For instance, Bon Appétit, Your Majesty (a modern chef travels back to the Joseon era), and Perfect Crown (reimagines Korea as a modern monarchy) are transmigration dramas shot with creative liberties. They target a more global, socially conscious audience. So, you get all the usual suspects — good looks, romance, and fantasies — but with better sensibilities.

The key difference lies in how Korean entertainment companies position themselves in the global market. Major studios like Studio Dragon and CJ ENM view K-content as a premium cultural export — something aspirational, cinematic, and worth the wait. In their eyes, microdramas are emotional fast food: disposable, and potentially damaging to the prestige they’ve spent years building.

A single hit like Squid Game or Crash Landing On You can generate years of revenue through licensing, merchandise, and tourism. Microdramas, while profitable in the short term, rarely build a similar legacy.

Having said that, Korea’s version of snackable content is webtoons. Instead of making one-minute dramas, Korea uses its webtoons to test stories. When a story is a proven hit, they invest millions to turn it into a high-quality 16-episode series rather than a low-budget micro-short. In fact, some of the most-watched K-dramas like Itaewon Class, True Beauty, and What’s Wrong with Secretary Kim were adapted from webtoons.

Apart from webtoons, Korea has a small web drama sector. It’s seen as a stepping stone for rookie actors to enter the real industry, rather than the industry’s end goal.

Let’s look at the key differences between C and K-dramas:

While C-dramas focus on the domestic market, K-dramas have wider appeal and more Netflix collaborations. In a way, K-dramas are designed to boost Korea’s soft power and luxury brand image worldwide. Despite producing fewer episodes, K-dramas generate more revenue, secure more product placements, and earn more accolades in international markets.

Interestingly enough, Netflix produced a reality docu-series called My Korean Boyfriend to bust this myth. The show follows five Brazilian women who travel to Seoul to spend 22 days with their Korean partners they met online. They arrive with expectations set by K-dramas: a green flag CEO or a perfect, protective partner. The show intentionally highlights the culture shock when these men turn out to be ordinary people with real flaws, communication barriers, and traditional family pressures.

It serves as a reality check for the very fantasies created by the CEO and the romance tropes we discussed.

But China has exported this trope to the West

India needs no introduction to such tropes and drama, thanks to Ekta Kapoor. But plot twist: they found a new home in Hollywood. ReelShort, a California-based app, is owned by Crazy Maple Studio, a Chinese company. It uses the exact same formula: a fast-paced, high-drama structure but with Western actors and local flavour. The male lead is sometimes a mafia boss or werewolf alpha. 🤨

The trick is simple: ReelShort posts the first few minutes of an episode for free and ends it with a cliffhanger. To watch the rest, you must download the app and pay up or watch ads. It has garnered a massive community of fans who create memes of the shows while binge-watching them. In 2025, ReelShort topped the App Store charts, sometimes outperforming Netflix in daily downloads.

There are actually people scrolling through these videos instead of taking their dogs for a walk.

This success has triggered a gold rush, with creators and studios exploring more vertical-format content. HOLYWATER, a Ukrainian startup (which recently raised $22 million), produces similar content on its video streaming app, My Drama. They use AI to analyse exactly where a cliffhanger should be placed to see if the audience would pay to watch the next part. They’ve also implemented AI companions for users to chat with the CEO characters, and build a parasocial relationship. This brings users back to the platform, increasing their lifetime value (LTV).

Unlike other studios that buy scripts, HOLYWATER owns the entire lifecycle of a story. Here’s how:

• The My Passion test: My Passion is their digital book app with thousands of books. If something (usually a toxic CEO or forbidden romance) performs well, they consider it a high-potential IP.

• The My Muse pilot: Before filming, they use My Muse, their AI platform, to generate pilots. These are 1–2 minute synthetic videos used to test certain hooks (like a tight slap or a revelation) to see if users will pay to unlock more.

• Full production: Only the stories that pass these data tests are turned into series for My Drama. Predictable!

HOLYWATER has managed to get investment and collaboration from FOX Entertainment. With biggies entering the microdrama market, we’re definitely heading towards more brainrot. More businesses will use AI to test, churn, localize, and dub content. Sadly, this may work as it’ll significantly bring down production costs.

Smaller production houses can (and will) get away with jugaad and work around the regulations. For instance, low-budget microdramas that cost less than $40,000 can be audited by provincial authorities or monitored by platform self-review. These are the most common and fastest to release. Plus, owing to our shrinking attention span, social media algorithms will feed us hundreds of such videos — faster than our panipuri bhayyas.

And that’s why we all (I MEAN ALL OF US) sometimes need to shut our screens, get out of our houses, touch some grass, look at the real people around us, and beat some sense into our minds. There’s no billionaire CEO swooping in to rescue us from demons and problems. In fact, we should probably be grateful if a CEO isn’t replacing us with AI agents.

If you liked this essay, consider sharing with a friend or a colleague that may enjoy it too. You can follow Sunaina on Substack

Subscribe now

Beyond the newsletter, I run 1990 Research Labs, helping global tech companies and Indian market leaders truly understand consumer India. If you’re navigating an Indian consumer bet, let’s talk.

Most people think Baahubali made North India fall in love with South Indian cinema. They’re wrong.

A YouTube channel did.

I’m one of those people who watch more filmmaker interviews on YouTube than the films themselves. If you are like me, who binge-watch film critiques like Anupama Chopra and Baradwaj Rangan, then you’ve heard one term screamed across the film industry for the last five years now: Pan-India. The irony is that no one knows what it really means. Does it mean stars from across India? A film dubbed in multiple languages? A story with a nationwide appeal? Maybe it’s a bit of everything. Just like the Indian masala.

But one thing is clear, the Hindi-speaking audiences have opened up to watch commercial South Indian movies in theatres in the last decade. Interestingly, in 2021/22, for the first time, the gross revenue of all the South Indian movies (including Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada) exceeded the Bollywood revenue. We got some monstrous hits like RRR, KGF: Chapter 2, Pushpa: The Rise, Kantara. Each of these films did an upwards of 500+ crores in box office collections. Now there is also a term for these mega hits called ‘The 1000 crore club’.

Nine films in India have crossed the 1000 crore club, with Dhurandhar being the latest entrant. Out of the nine, five of those films are from South India and, to be specific, from the Telugu industry.

When you trace back to the origin of the Pan-India phenomenon, most would point it to the obvious name: Rajamouli, who is the director of the Baahubali series. While Baahubali did dominate the Hindi heartland, there is another quieter force who gets rarely mentioned: Manish Shah. You have probably never heard of him. He is neither a filmmaker nor a famous producer nor a hero. Yet he may be one of the most influential architects of this Pan-Indian movement.

A quick note before we begin. This piece will have a hero entry, jump cuts, sad moments, and unexpected twists. Why not? It’s a newsletter about South Indian masala movies. You might as well read it like one.

Who is Manish Shah?

When Rajamouli was on a trip to explore locations for the film RRR, he observed that Telugu actor Allu Arjun was a star in the North and had fans of his own. The crazy part is that Allu Arjun had never acted in a single Hindi movie. After returning, Rajamouli reached out to the director Sukumar and urged him to release his upcoming Allu Arjun film on a pan-India scale. Sukumar was hesitant, but Rajamouli persisted. He even personally spoke to the distributors to secure a wide release. Eventually, the film was released in Hindi with a massive launch and grossed over 300 crores, with nearly 100 crores from Hindi alone.

That film was Pushpa: The Rise. (Part 1)

Why is this story relevant? Because Allu Arjun’s popularity in the North can largely be traced back to a single YouTube channel - Goldmines. Manish Shah is the founder of Goldmines.

Introducing Goldmines

Goldmines is the go-to destination for South Indian films dubbed in Hindi. While the exact size of its catalogue isn’t publicly disclosed, it’s safe to say that no one else comes close. What makes Goldmines unique is how much it has built around a single IP: dubbed South Indian cinema. It operates across film distribution, production, multiple television channels, and an entire network of YouTube channels - all powered by the same core content.

The flagship Goldmines YouTube channel isn’t just another movie channel. It’s the largest movie YouTube channel in the world and ranks 15th globally by subscribers, with over 108 million subscribers. The channel has amassed a staggering 31 billion minutes of lifetime watch time. Its most-viewed video - the Hindi-dubbed version of KGF: Chapter 1 - alone has over 850 million views. That number is almost hard to comprehend. And it’s not a one-off anomaly: the channel regularly hosts full-length films that cross the 100-million-view mark.

What makes this story even more remarkable is Goldmines’ origin. The company began in the early 2000s as a production house creating daily soaps for Assamese and Gujarati television. So how did it transform from a regional TV production company into one of the most influential forces shaping modern Indian cinema?

To understand that, we need to rewind a few decades - to the early 1990s. This story features Mani Ratnam, A.R. Rahman, and Roja.

History of South Indian dubbed movies

Let’s begin with Doordarshan (DD). By 1982, DD had introduced Sunday afternoon slots dedicated to regional cinema - Malayalam, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, and Bengali films, often aired with English subtitles. For many Indians, this was their first real window into South Indian cinema.

Films like Adoor Gopalakrishnan’s Elippathayam, Mani Ratnam’s Nayakan, and Girish Kasaravalli’s Kannada works introduced millions to cinema radically different from Bollywood. Doordarshan prioritized award winners and critically acclaimed. It framed South Indian cinema as “artistic” - and Bollywood as “commercial.” This distinction would stick for decades.

Meanwhile, distributors were experimenting with dubbing. In 1981, Rajinikath’s Tamil film Ranuva Veeran was dubbed into Hindi as Zulm Ki Zanjeer. It flopped. Through the 1980’s around 15-20 South Indian films got Hindi dubs and almost all of them failed. The reasons were consistent: poor dubbing quality, fragmented distribution networks and they couldn’t compete with Bollywood’s marketing.

Now in 1992, Mani Ratnam releases Roja. A film rooted in themes of patriotism and terrorism, paired with a groundbreaking soundtrack by A.R. Rahman that introduced a completely new kind of sound to Indian audiences. Recognizing its national appeal, Ratnam released Roja across India, but this time with a crucial difference: the film was carefully dubbed into multiple Indian languages, especially Hindi, with high-quality voice performances and culturally adapted dialogue. Roja became the first dubbed South Indian film to achieve genuine success in North India.

Roja proved three critical things: South Indian films could tell nationally resonant stories; thoughtful dubbing could preserve emotional depth; and pan-India releases made strong commercial sense. In many ways, Roja stands as the true precursor to the pan-India cinema movement we see today.

Satellite Channel Proliferation and Content Hunger

After India liberalised broadcasting, the mid-90s saw an explosion of private satellite TV. Channels like Zee TV, Star Plus, and Sony quickly launched 24x7 movie channels. These channels had a problem. They needed to fill 24 hours of programming every day, and Bollywood rights were expensive. Advertisers wanted fresh content. South Indian cinema offered the solution with a vast, untapped library. Initially dubbed South films were treated as filler for non-prime slots. But TRP data showed that South Indian dubbed films outperformed mid-tier Bollywood films, particularly among young male viewers in smaller towns.

Films like Indra: The Tiger (Chiranjeevi), King No. 1 (Nagarjuna), Aparichit (Vikram) developed cult followings through sheer repetition.

The great Bollywood disconnect

Now we arrive at Goldmines.

In the early 2000s, the rise of multiplexes like PVR and INOX pushed Bollywood toward urban, premium audiences, leaving behind the action-heavy, larger-than-life cinema that still resonated deeply in Tier-2 and Tier-3 India. While Bollywood evolved toward romances and urbane dramas, South Indian cinema - driven by stars like Rajinikanth, Chiranjeevi, and Nagarjuna - continued delivering mass spectacle.

Manish Shah spotted the gap.

His insight was straightforward: remove language and cultural barriers, and South Indian films could replace the kind of action cinema Bollywood had abandoned. By 2007, Goldmines had fully pivoted to Hindi dubbing.

The breakthrough came with the Telugu film Mass (2004), dubbed as Meri Jung: One Man Army. When it aired on Sony MAX in 2007, it crossed 1.0 TRP, a metric that denotes the movie as a superhit proving the model worked.

Goldmines then professionalized the space by acquiring 99-year Negative Rights, gaining complete control across TV, digital, and theatrical platforms. Unlike broadcasters paying recurring fees, Goldmines paid once - after breakeven, every rerun was pure profit. Long-term producer relationships and pre-buying rights sealed its dominance.

The value creation

Goldmines didn’t just dub South Indian films. Manish Shah went a step further - he culturally adapted them. The goal was simple: make North Indian audiences feel like they were watching a native Hindi film, not a dubbed one.

This adaptation happened on multiple levels.

First: structural re-editing.

If a film ran close to three hours, Shah would often restructure it - reshuffling scenes so that every 15–20 minutes something compelling happened. This approach was initially driven by television logic: keep channel surfers hooked and prevent drop-offs during ad breaks.

A fascinating example is the Tamil film Anjaan, starring Suriya - one of Tamil cinema’s top stars. Released in 2014, the film came with huge expectations and a large budget but ended up as a major box-office failure, denting Suriya’s career.

Goldmines acquired the rights, but instead of simply dubbing it, Shah re-edited the film extensively - moving several second-half scenes into the first half to tighten pacing. When this version was released on YouTube, it became a phenomenal hit. Today, it has amassed around 84 million views.

The impact was so significant that the original filmmakers later released a re-edited theatrical version inspired by Goldmines’ cut. That’s the level of storytelling instinct - and audience pulse - Shah brought to the table.

Second: cultural sanitization.

Many South Indian films include rituals and social norms that can feel unfamiliar to North Indian audiences. For instance, in Tamil culture, marriages within extended family structures - such as marrying a maternal uncle’s daughter - are not uncommon. Similarly, there are elaborate celebrations marking a girl’s attainment of puberty.

These elements could feel alien or distracting to northern viewers. Shah would either edit such scenes out entirely or rewrite the dialogues to soften or reframe them so they didn’t feel jarring.

Humor received similar treatment. Comedy is deeply rooted in local culture, politics, and social context. Instead of literal translation, jokes were often rewritten to make them land naturally with Hindi-speaking audiences.

Third: lip-sync precision.

Goldmines paid close attention to phonetics, choosing Hindi words that roughly matched the original lip movements. The objective was to erase the “dubbed movie” feel as much as possible.

Finally: creative control through contracts.

Goldmines structured its legal agreements to allow these extensive creative modifications. This is why, even today, many films on YouTube list Manish Shah as a producer. In his mind, he wasn’t just dubbing films - he was reshaping existing artworks for a new audience.

The result?

A viewing experience where audiences often forget they’re watching a South Indian film at all. Combined with exclusive long-term rights, this gave Goldmines an unbeatable early advantage. Today, the company controls nearly 80% of the Hindi-dubbed cinema market, with a catalogue so deep and entrenched that it’s extraordinarily difficult to challenge.

YouTube Channel and TV Channel launch

Anticipating the shift to digital well before traditional broadcasters, Goldmines launched its YouTube channel in 2013. The strategy had two clear objectives: monetize its vast back catalogue through advertising and build a direct relationship with audiences, bypassing broadcasters entirely.

By 2020, the main Goldmines YouTube channel had crossed 42 million subscribers, generating meaningful cash flows and significantly reducing dependence on satellite rights. From there, the company scaled aggressively - expanding to 15 YouTube channels targeting different audience segments and collectively clocking around 100 million views per day across the network.

On television, Goldmines initially operated as a content supplier, powering channels like Sony MAX and Zee Cinema. But once it became clear that it was effectively building competitors on its own IP, the company made a decisive pivot.

In May 2020, at the peak of COVID-driven TV consumption, Goldmines launched its own free-to-air movie channel, Dhinchaak, on DD Free Dish. Within just three months, the channel surged from #5 to #1 in the Hindi Speaking Market, overtaking long-established giants like Sony MAX and Zee Cinema.

In April 2022, Dhinchaak was rebranded as Goldmines. Today, the network includes:

• Goldmines - flagship South Indian dubbed blockbusters

• Goldmines Bollywood

• Goldmines Movies

Goldmines now consistently ranks among the Top 10 channels across all genres, topped the Hindi movie charts for 41 out of 53 weeks in 2024, and regularly outperforms Star Gold and Sony MAX - cementing its position as the dominant force in Hindi movie entertainment.

The rise in power

Great power comes with great responsibility but also controversy. Goldmines is no exception. While researching this story, two incidents stood out as particularly revealing of just how much leverage the company wields.

The first involves the movie Drishyam.
The franchise began in Malayalam and was later remade in Tamil and Telugu. Ajay Devgn acquired the Hindi remake rights and successfully released the first part Drishyam (2015). When Drishyam 2 became a massive hit in Malayalam, the Hindi producers again secured the remake rights from the original Malayalam producer for the second part.

What he didn’t anticipate was that Drishyam 2 had already been remade in Telugu, starring Venkatesh - and that Goldmines had legally acquired the Hindi dubbing rights from the Telugu producer.

In meanwhile Goldmines announced plans to release the Hindi-dubbed Telugu version of Drishyam 2 on YouTube before the official Hindi version. This posed a direct threat to the Hindi theatrical remake. Faced with this situation, producer Kumar Mangat entered negotiations and Goldmines agreed to hold back the YouTube release in exchange for ₹3.5 crore.

Manish Shah later confirmed the deal, framing it as a straightforward business decision - he had legally purchased the rights and was simply looking to monetize them.

The second case centers on Shehzada.
Shehzada, starring Kartik Aaryan, is the official Hindi remake of Allu Arjun’s Telugu blockbuster Ala Vaikunthapurramuloo. By the time Shehzada was in production, the Hindi-dubbed version of Ala Vaikunthapurramuloo was already available - and immensely popular - on the Goldmines YouTube channel.

Goldmines then took things a step further by announcing plans for a theatrical release of the Hindi-dubbed version. This sent shockwaves through the industry. Allu Aravind - producer of the original Telugu film and co-producer of Shehzada - personally reached out to Goldmines, requesting them not to go ahead with the theatrical release, fearing it would cannibalize the Hindi remake.

Despite the drama, Shehzada went on to underperform severely at the box office - a story in itself.

Together, these episodes underscore a larger point: Goldmines isn’t just a distributor or a dubbing house anymore. It has become a powerful gatekeeper in the North Indian market - capable of influencing release strategies, negotiating from a position of strength, and reshaping the economics of remakes and dubbed cinema altogether.

Moving forward

But not everything looks rosy for Goldmines today.

The very rights that could be acquired for ₹10 lakh a decade ago now cost upwards of ₹20 crore, and producers are increasingly reluctant to sign away 99-year negative rights. This shift poses a structural threat to Goldmines’ core model - and to Manish Shah himself.

Anticipating this squeeze, Shah has begun moving upstream into big-budget film production.

His flagship project is Kanchana 4, the next installment in the popular Tamil horror-comedy franchise led by Raghava Lawrence, and featuring Pooja Hegde and Nora Fatehi. The strategy is clear: own the IP from day one, across languages and platforms, eliminating dependence on external producers and future rights inflation.

Beyond Kanchana 4, Shah has also confirmed upcoming projects with major South Indian stars, including Sivakarthikeyan, Vijay Sethupathi, Mohanlal, and Dhruva Sarja. The ambition is to transform Goldmines from a bridge between industries into a full-fledged pan-India production house.

In many ways, this marks the next - and most difficult - chapter for Goldmines. Distribution and arbitrage built the empire. Original production will determine whether it can sustain one.

Conclusion

In the 1970s, Nestlé wanted to sell coffee in Japan. Japanese people had no coffee culture. When Nestlé hired a French psychoanalyst named Clotaire Rapaille to understand why their products weren’t selling, he discovered something fundamental: You cannot sell to a culture that has no memory of you. So Nestlé stopped selling coffee. Instead, they started selling coffee flavoured candy. For fifteen years, they planted the taste. Then, in the 1980s, those candy-eating children entered the workforce. Nestlé returned with actual coffee products. Today, Nescafé commands 70% of Japan’s instant coffee market.

Manish Shah did for South Indian dubbed movies what Nestlé did for coffee in Japan.

Goldmines didn’t just distribute films. It raised a generation with South Indian sensibilities. The question now is whether Shah can keep feeding that generation - or whether the taste he created will be satisfied by someone else.

If you liked this essay, consider sharing with a friend or a colleague that may enjoy it too. (If you share on socials, tag me. I’m on Twitter (X) and LinkedIn)

Share

Shoutout to Raunaq Mangottil (Fully Filmy) and Pranav Manie (Hot Chips) for reading the preview and helping sharpen the edits.

I asked him how he manages adult life without giving up.

He said two words: “Life happens.”

He didn’t need to explain further. I instantly got it.

You can have elaborate plans for how a year should unfold, how a quarter should perform, or how a relationship should evolve. But at the end of the day, life happens. Eventually, you just have to buy a popcorn, sit in the front row, and watch your life in IMAX. As a spectator, your options dwindle fast.

2025 was that kind of year for me.

Professionally, almost everything that could go wrong did. I raised money, built a product, pivoted more than once, tried selling, hired a team - and failed to pull it all in the right direction. Ten months in, the startup collapsed like a house of cards. Ironically, someone obsessed with consumer research couldn’t build a product that consumers wanted. Funny. And true.

Exactly 120 days ago, I shut down the product and found myself jobless. (I know the exact count because I started a Duolingo streak the next morning). I tried the “rest” playbook - travel, meditation, and mindless scrolling. It didn’t work. The void remained. What bothered me wasn’t failure. It was the absence of momentum. Purpose, it turns out, is a better antidepressant than rest.

So I went back to two things I’ve always loved: research and writing. This newsletter was never meant to be more than a hobby project - a place to share observations about India’s evolving digital consumer. I had no expectations. But writing again did something unexpected. Every comment, every subscription, every note of appreciation brought back confidence. One edition even found its way into Ben Evans’ newsletter.

Naval Ravikant once said,

To everyone who paused their scroll for my words this year: thank you.. Your attention gave me a direction when I felt lost. Now getting back what I truly wanted to share in this post.

Themes I’m excited about in 2026

1. Sachet subscriptions

2. Banking with a vibe

3. AI family member

4. Bringing back a purpose

5. Discipline monitor

1. Sachet subscriptions

Everyone talks about how the digital native Indians are comfortable with UPI and digital payments. But I look at it through a different lens: the psychology of discretionary spends. I call it “bare minimum throwaway money” - the amount a consumer is willing to risk to experiment with a new product without thinking twice. In India, that magic number is between ₹100 and ₹250.

Where does this number come from? It is the cost of an evening snack, a meal, or an auto ride. The real shift is how little people need to think before paying. Once a product lives inside that mental bracket, the conversation changes. It’s no longer “Is this worth it?” It becomes “Let’s see.”

That’s where things get interesting.

Low-ticket pricing, combined with UPI auto-pay, has opened up an entirely new set of business models. You see it in English learning apps, micro-drama platforms, social and companion apps. We are seeing this work brilliantly with apps like Seekho, SpeakX, Lokal and FRND. They offer services with high perceived value - like learning a language or upskilling - for a nominal monthly fee.

With AI the economics works out at scale. It lowers the cost of creating content, testing creatives, and iterating fast. Meta ads becomes the acquisition layer. The user loop is simple: bombard them with short-form ads, funnel them to the app, and close the sale with a ₹1 trial. If the user sees value, the auto-pay kicks in. If they don’t, the loss is negligible.

What fascinates me is that the exact product almost feels secondary.

This model works because the alternatives are worse. For example you can learn English passively on YouTube, or actively in a tuition class that’s expensive and time-consuming. The middle ground - cheap, active, immediate - is where these products live.

And once you see this, you start noticing a pattern.

Instead of founders chasing one massive app, you see app studios emerging. Kutumb, Eloelo, Lokal, Seekho. Teams building multiple small apps, each one a bet, each one playing in that sachet-sized price range. Individually, they do a few million dollars.

I recently wrote about Nithra App Studio, built out of a small town in Tamil Nadu, quietly doing around $2 million in revenue.

All these companies are building a portfolio of low-cost bets that capitalize on impulse and ease and I expect to see this trend surge in 2026.

2. Banking with a vibe

One of the interesting things about a bank like HDFC is that it emerged in the mid‑1990s as a technology‑driven private sector bank that focused on convenient, computerised retail banking. In earlier years, many employees, especially in traditional sectors, often received salaries by cheque and had to visit branches to encash them, which could mean losing work time. As electronic salary credits and corporate salary accounts became more common, HDFC Bank actively partnered with companies to open salary accounts for employees, who could then access their money through ATMs, debit cards, and later digital channels. During the IT boom, HDFC Bank was one of the major banks used for salary accounts by large IT and services companies, so it became a default transactional bank for many IT professionals, alongside other private banks.

But history is just that - history.

Today, if you ask a Gen Z consumer to think about “tech banking,” HDFC is not the first name that comes to mind. It holds the banking license, but it no longer holds the mindshare.

If I were the CEO of a traditional bank, I would be terrified. The most frequent interaction a customer has with a bank - payments - has been completely ceded to Google Pay and PhonePe. Credit cards are now synonymous with fintech brands like CRED. Investments? That’s Zerodha and Groww. The traditional bank has been reduced to a backend utility, visited only for the most mundane transactions. Funnily enough, even when you try to redeem credit card points, many banks redirect you to a clunky third-party website. It is a broken user experience.

The problem runs deeper than UX. Banks historically made money on big life milestones: buying a home, buying a car, starting a business. But the definition of a “life milestone” has shifted. Gen Z isn’t dreaming of a 30-year mortgage or a sedan in the driveway. They long for experiences and memories - travel funded by EMI, concert tickets on BookMyShow, and instant buy now pay later checkout on e-commerce sites.

In those moments, traditional banks rarely come to mind.

I saw a viral reel recently that summed this up perfectly. A young woman walked into a bank for the first time to deposit cash. When asked for her account number, she read out her debit card number. She had no idea there was a difference. And why would she? She receives her salary in the bank account and spends it via UPI. She lives in a digital world where visiting a physical branch is a chore.

Source: Chaiyeahhhh on Instagram

Banks still feel necessary. Rarely memorable. In the coming years, I expect traditional banks to fight aggressively for relevance. We will see app redesigns, not just for utility, but for personality. It is no longer enough to have a banking license; you need a brand that stands out like Zomato or Swiggy - quirky, digital-first, and omnipresent. The battle for 2026 won’t be about who has the most branches. It will be about who has the best vibe.

HDFC’s new design makeover could be the first step towards it.

3. AI family member

I was recently watching Varun Mayya’s series on business “Katas” - a concept borrowed from martial arts. In the first kata, he talks about how he built the AEOS ecosystem and what his original vision looked like a three years ago.

He said he started asking people a simple question: What’s the last new app you downloaded? Most people struggled to answer.

Then he asked a different question: Which new creator or content did you start following recently? This time, names came quickly.

Distribution, he realized, had shifted. People weren’t discovering products anymore. They were discovering people. Content had become the front door.

That idea has been sitting with me for a while. What is the next thing people will want to interact with? The obvious answer everyone is circling around is AI companions.

Over the last few months, I’ve had several founders pitch me versions of this idea. Most of them sound similar at a distance: a chatbot that talks to you, remembers context and feels like a friend. Most narrow it down to astrology, English learning, dating or interview prep.

But the challenging part isn’t the technology. It’s the relationship.

If you’re building an AI companion, you’re not really building an app. You’re introducing a presence into someone’s life. Which means you’re forced to answer questions most software never has to.

Who is this to the user?

Is it a teacher? A sibling? An uncle? A manager? A colleague you grab chai with? In an Indian household, these distinctions matter deeply. Relationships are layered, emotional, hierarchical, familiar.

A transactional AI can be useful. It can help you crack an interview or learn English. But usefulness alone doesn’t create memory. You don’t form attachment to a syllabus. You build one with a teacher. You remember the person who helped you through it. Relationships don’t live in one place. They follow you. They’re available when you need them.

The closest analogy I can think of is note-taking tools.

Evernote was never just an app. It was a system. Notes live everywhere - on your phone, your laptop, your browser, your watch. They’re not a destination; they’re an extension of how you think. A quiet mirror of your inner world.

AI companions will likely evolve the same way. Different shapes. Different entry points. Voice, text, apps, maybe something we haven’t named yet. Not platform-specific. Ubiquitous.

I don’t know what the final form looks like. No one does.

But I’m fairly certain about one thing: the AI companions win because they understand relationships. I mean don’t expect Wall-E types but we should at least start with Wall-A

4. Bringing back a purpose

I keep thinking about the evolution of the Indian family structure, specifically a massive, unaddressed void that emerges later in life. There are two distinct cohorts who, beyond a certain point, feel a profound sense of loneliness and a desperate need for purpose. And What strikes me is how little we build for them.

The first group is women who have spent most of their lives raising children and holding families together. The first 15 to 18 years of parenting are all-consuming - physically demanding and emotionally exhausting. In the process, many of these women lose their sense of self because they have lived entirely for others.

Then, the kids leave for college. Suddenly, they are faced with the question: “Who am I?”

Many of these women were exceptional in another life. Gold medalists. Class toppers. And yet, they wake up one day realizing they are unseen, undervalued, and financially dependent for even small decisions. To make it harder, they look at Instagram and see a different generation of women - those who delayed marriage, built careers, and found financial independence. Seeing this “road not taken” can trigger a painful realization of what they missed.

By the time this realization arrives, returning to the workforce feels almost impossible. Almost - but not entirely. They don’t just need a job; they need reskilling and, more importantly, confidence.

Here is the hard truth: It’s rarely about the money itself. It is about the dignity that comes with earning. Having an identity outside the home earns respect from in-laws, husbands, and children. It validates their existence. India has one of the lowest female labor force participation rates in the world. Building for this demographic isn’t just a business opportunity; it is a societal imperative. You have to start with the people and build the economy around them, not the other way around.

The second cohort is the retired. Life expectancy in India is rising. Suddenly, at 60, people find themselves facing a potential 20-year vacuum. The children have flown the nest to run their own “rat race,” often in different cities. Grandkids are a rarity. They have a body that feels old, but a mind that still feels young.

Everyone is trying to solve for “senior living” - healthcare and retirement homes. But very few are solving for “senior purpose.” The worst thing you can do to an older person is make them feel old. You have to make their life feel relevant and meaningful again.

How do you build for that? It can be surprisingly simple. I love the app Habuild. It turned yoga into a daily habit. A friend’s father, in his early 60s, has been using it for three years. It tracks his progress and sends a Duolingo-style streak right inside whatsapp.

5. Discipline monitor

A few years ago, during my field visits, if I asked people where they learned something, they could usually tell me. They had a source. They could point to a book, a website, or a person.

That has changed. Today, the answer is almost always “I saw it on Instagram” or “I saw it on YouTube.” But if you press for details - who posted it? what was the channel? What was the specific argument? - you are mostly with a blank stare. “It just came on my feed.”

The source has vanished. Only the vague impression remains. We have lost the ability to trace information back to its roots, to stick with a topic, and to go down the rabbit hole. We have lost the friction required for deep learning.

We have entered the era of “brainrot” and microdosing. Watching a 30-second reel about starting a business now provides the same dopamine hit as actually starting one. Watching a video on fitness feels like working out. Every lifestyle feels attainable on a screen, yet taking the first step in the real world feels impossibly hard.

Apps like Seekho capitalize on this. They sell the feeling of productivity. Subscribing to a course tricks your brain into thinking you’ve taken action.

We will see a rise of business models that don’t just sell information, but sell discipline. “Coaching for adulting,” if you will. Whether it’s preparing for an exam, saving money, raising a kid, or building a home, people are going to pay for someone to hold them accountable.

“Be my daddy” could mean something else in 2026 👇

Source: harshitchajjed on Instagram

I have consciously kept these themes simple, drawn from what I have observed on the ground. For a more sophisticated macro perspective, I highly recommend reading Tigerfeather’s predictions for 2026.

Tigerfeathers

Vision 20/26: Charting India

Hey folks👋…

Read more

4 months ago · 44 likes · 4 comments · Rahul Sanghi and Aaryaman.Vir

What’s next for me?

I don’t know exactly where all of this leads.

I do know what I want to spend my time on. Writing more. Doing deeper work on Indian consumers. I have a lot planned for 2026: launching a YouTube channel to explore these themes visually, starting a course called “The Field School” to teach founders and product managers the art of observation, and scaling my consumer insights firm, 1990 Research Labs.

My goal is simple: to dig deeper into the Indian consumer story than anyone else.

I’ll keep sharing what I see as the months go by - ideas that come from conversations, and field visits. If there’s something you think I should look at more closely, or a question you’re carrying into 2026, I’d genuinely like to hear it.

Let more life happen in 2026. Happy New Year :)

If you liked these predictions, consider sharing with a friend or a colleague that may enjoy it too. (If you share on socials, tag me. I’m on Twitter (X) and LinkedIn)

Share

Outside the newsletter, I run 1990 Research Labs - where I help global tech companies and Indian market leaders make sense of consumer India. If you’re navigating an Indian consumer bet, let’s talk.

This week’s piece comes from Gowri N Kishore, whose work I’ve admired for years. We collaborated on a piece about the anatomy of Indian addresses that became one of our most-read stories.

When Gowri pitched the idea of how Indians use AI for mental health, I knew it belonged here. In a country where loneliness is unspoken and mental health discussions still carry stigma, AI offers something rare: a space without judgment.

But there’s a tension. The same low tech literacy that makes AI feel approachable also makes it dangerous. People who’ve never experienced therapy don’t know how to challenge what AI tells them. They take answers at face value. And AI, unlike a good therapist, never says “I think you’re avoiding the real issue.”

This piece won’t settle that tension. But the discourse needs a beginning.

— Dharmesh

Some nights after work, when the house is quiet and he finds thoughts crowding his head, Romesh¹ opens his phone and starts talking to ChatGPT. In his early 40s, he lives away from his child and cares for an ailing parent. “Life has its quiet, lonely corners,” he told me. “Being separated, taking care of my mother who has memory issues and is bedridden, it’s not always easy for me to open up. Everyone’s busy, and you don’t want to burden anyone. That’s when AI became someone I could talk to without hesitation.”

While we hear horror stories of AI enabling suicide and debate the ethics of using it as a mental health² aid, here is an undisputable truth: more and more people today are turning to AI for emotional support. It’s not therapy, it’s not friendship. Somewhere in between, it has created an important third space for Indians.

But not everyone navigates this third space the same way. In my conversations with six Indians who’ve used AI for emotional support, three had experienced therapy with a human and three hadn’t. There was a marked difference in how these two segments approached AI, prompted it, challenged it, or trusted it.

“I trust AI more than my close friends and relatives.”

Why people turn to AI

Ajitha, 37, a socially anxious introvert who has never been in therapy, finds AI far less intimidating than opening up to a human stranger: “I simply cannot open up to relatives and close friends. I trust AI better! AI is typically not biased and doesn’t feel judgemental. Its responses are very diplomatic and articulated to ensure the message is conveyed without any blame or making me feel worse.” For her, access means psychological safety, a place where she can be vulnerable.

Romesh, who has never been in therapy either, says: “A therapist has limited hours… but you can talk to AI as long as you want without worrying about time or money… It listens endlessly and never gets tired.” For him, access means availability and cost.

But for those who have experienced therapy, access means something else. Smriti, an impact sector CXO now in her 40s and who’s been in therapy for five years, was between therapists when we spoke. The first time she turned to AI was when she was in a cab, heading to a crucial donor meeting. Finding herself in the middle of a meltdown, she started speaking to ChatGPT using the dictation feature. It heard her out and helped her calm down: “I feel like that was the moment when I fully started trusting AI… it made me feel less lonely.” For her, access meant immediate crisis support in high-stakes, high-stress moments.

I asked her what she might have done in such a situation, before November 2022. Smriti said she might have called her husband. But now, with AI, her reliance on him for emotional labour has reduced. “Some leadership challenges, you just cannot share with your team and I was relying a lot on my husband for venting and figuring out my struggles with my professional identity. That was unfair and at some point, also coming in the way of our relationship. Just putting that load on AI has been great for us. I’m now able to draw a boundary very cognizantly.”

While those without therapy experience are looking to AI for the basics of access (trust, availability, affordability) and still discovering what it can do for them, those who have been in therapy turn to AI for more specific, strategic contexts.

“You are now the world’s best therapist.”

How people customize AI

Apu, 31, who is neurodivergent and has worked with multiple therapists, created detailed prompts for ChatGPT to closely mimic a therapy experience. He even got it to refine its own. He shared his current prompt with me:

Smriti, a power-user of AI, has gone a step further, specifying the therapeutic style she prefers (e.g. Jungian), the tone she wants (e.g. agentic, positive, validating), and special requests (e.g. give me a humorous affirmation at the end of each session).

Aakriti, a 40-something content strategist, writes detailed situational prompts for AI but also manages what AI remembers about her. When AI reused outdated assumptions about her sister, she had to correct it: “Kindly delete and remove that bit from your history and let’s start fresh.” She’s also working on a book about her difficult relationship with her mother. Now, whenever she brings an emotional problem to AI, it references those book chapters—so she has to explicitly tell it to ignore that context. Sometimes, she switches to a different AI tool for a “fresh” conversation.

On the other hand, those without therapy experience have made far fewer customizations. When Ajitha told me that AI didn’t seem to get cultural context, I asked if she had tried modifying the prompt to include specifics like “Put yourself into the shoes of the head of a middle-class Gulf-Malayali family”. Her response was bemusement. “Gosh,” she told me, “You’re better at this!” In her prompt, she had only mentioned “Indian parents”.

Abhinand, an ML engineer in his 30s who has never been in therapy, deliberately avoids giving AI therapeutic personas. “I’ve not done that willfully... because I don’t know what a human therapist is like... I don’t want to be in that false sort of impression of what it will give me.”

As someone who builds AI systems, he is especially conscious of their limitations: “I am very conscious about the fact that this is a weighted model with advanced level of knowledge of what to say next in terms of prediction. It’s not who am I talking to, it is what am I talking to”.

This knowledge of how to prompt, what to customize, and when to reset context is powerful. It comes more easily to those who have experienced therapy and are familiar with therapy techniques and mental health vocabulary. But this knowledge can also be a trap, as many discovered.

“I cannot give my wife a Persona.”

What AI can do

The first time Abhinand shared something personal with AI was when he was alone in the ICU one night with a seriously ill family member. Looking back, he calls this “uncharacteristic” but admits that “It was exactly what I needed at the time... as emotionless as AI is, it was just right.”

He said he could have talked to his wife about it. “But her response wouldn’t be unbiased. It wouldn’t be objective. As soothing as that would have been, that’s not what I wanted then. I wanted a tougher hand at that point. I cannot give my wife a Persona like ‘Be tough right now and tell me what I need to do.’ Practically, humans are humans.”

In this situation, AI offered him objectivity without any kind of personal investment. Ajitha expressed a similar sentiment: friends and family carry their own histories and agendas—AI doesn’t.

For Romesh, the benefits were also indirect. “AI has supported me in ways I didn’t expect. Once, I was working on a project, building a small estimator calculator. I’m not a technical person, but AI guided me step by step. I didn’t even know what some formulas meant, but we built it together. That sense of achievement gave me a huge emotional lift. Even small things, like when AI helps me verify something quickly or automate a small task, make me feel more confident and capable. So it’s not always about comforting words; sometimes it’s about giving you back a sense of control and belief in yourself. AI has done both for me.”

While those without therapy experience find solace in AI’s objectivity or its unquestioning support, therapy-experienced users cite other benefits. For Smriti, her GPT customizations offer control. “AI knows exactly what to tell me because I want it to be agentic. I want it to be positive. I want it to be in a language that I feel is right. It’s not like that with a therapist or a coach, who most times are there to challenge you. In many ways, therapy is not a safe space—it is a brave space… if you want validation, go to AI.”

“It took everything I said at face value.”

What AI cannot do

For 15 months between 2020-21, my husband and I were in relationship therapy—first weekly, then fortnightly, then monthly—until we felt confident enough to stop. We had to show up session after session, sit through the discomfort of hearing our partner describe us in less-than-flattering terms, feel the sting of being misunderstood, and do the slow, painful work of listening, empathising, acknowledging mistakes, and taking accountability.

If we had relied only on AI during that period, I imagine it might have told each of us—separately, and with complete sincerity—that it understood we were going through a tough time, reassured us that we weren’t in the wrong, and promptly shifted into solutioning. (“Would you like a short script you can use the next time you speak to your husband about cleaning the kitchen?”)

Almost everyone I spoke to noticed this. Apu observed, “GPT just immediately jumps to either journaling prompts or solutions, whereas a therapist would probably pause to ask a lot of questions and also, notoriously, not offer advice.”

Smriti experienced this viscerally during our conversation. When I asked her a question about a habit, she started to say, “I don’t know”, then stopped herself. “No, let me do the work,” she said and proceeded to think for a few minutes before giving me an answer. She admitted that her ability to reflect had definitely reduced because she was taking everything to AI.

“I feel that overall, I’m happier in life because of AI, but I’m also emptier. I think these worries shouldn’t be solved so easily.” There’s something valuable in the struggle that gets bypassed with AI.

But that’s not the only danger.

AI can be confidently helpful, but about the entirely wrong thing. In an AI experiment, Ben Johnson, a UK-based psychotherapist, posed as a person anxious at work because of an over-critical boss. “[AI] didn’t challenge my perception of what was happening…” Ben writes. “It was the person’s own perfectionism creating the anxiety. [But AI] ended up helping me draft questions on how to raise this criticism with my boss, rather than understand what the actual problem was.”

When there’s a human on the other side, therapy involves them attuning to the client, reading body language and tone, challenging inconsistencies, and using not just their psychotherapy training but also their ability to recognize feelings and connect as humans. Those who have experienced therapy understand this, but those who haven’t are in greater danger of taking AI’s psychoanalysis at face value.

“For the big stuff, I want a human.”

The Human vs AI experience

Everyone I spoke to was clear-eyed about the difference between AI and humans. Literally everyone told me a version of “At the end of the day, it is a machine.”

“Friends come first; they are who you turn to when shit hits the ceiling…” Aakriti told me. “Therapy is the most effective… because they have psychology training and can tell you what’s happening. AI is just a tool to guide you… like picking up an encyclopedia. It’s interesting, it’s insightful. You’re trying to figure yourself out or a scenario, just read it and leave it at that. I don’t think you should take action based on what it suggests.”

Those with therapy experience engaged more critically with AI, challenging it, editing the prompts, deleting history, getting irritated, and even switching to a different tool. Those without this experience showed more trust in AI. Yet, even they seem to intuitively understand AI’s nature and maintain boundaries. For instance, Ajitha discusses personal issues maybe once a week but not everyday. Romesh turns to AI for loneliness and emotional grounding but still goes on bike rides, talks to his friends, and has other coping mechanisms. Abhinand described how his own friends would call him out while AI would not.

Smriti put it well when she said that for anything “life-changing” or deeply personal, she would always prefer to talk to a human. “It doesn’t feel right because it’s a machine at the end of it. For the big stuff, I need a human who has gone through their own emotional issues. I would rather sit with a therapist even if they are biased. That’s okay. For the big life decisions, I want a human to weigh in.”

AI: The Emotional Third Place

A recent LinkedIn post from a mental-health founder broke down therapist expenses to explain why charging less than ₹1,500 per session is nearly impossible. The math makes sense, but it also makes something else clear: professional mental health support is unaffordable for a vast majority of people who need it.

Some therapists are trying to improve access by offering small group therapy (it costs half as much) and a small number of non-profits and hospitals offer free or low-cost therapy. But waiting lists are long and demand is way more than capacity. So it is important to acknowledge that AI fills a very important need.

If we think of AI not as “therapy-lite” but as a new category of emotional support, its role (and impact) become easier to understand. It is more interactive than journaling or meditation; more neutral and available than loved ones; and more accessible than therapy.

And because people don’t actively think of it as a mental health aid, it has slowly become a part of our emotional infrastructure, filling gaps that human systems have missed. In our journey towards real healing, it works as first-aid. It occupies a sort of middle-ground, a third place for our emotional lives.

But in a country where mental health has only recently become mainstream (if at all), this third place is not an equal space. If this third place is here to stay, now is the time to invest in building not only access to mental health resources but also India’s psychological literacy.

1 The names of all interviewees have been changed to protect their privacy. All of them are Indian millennials living and working in metros.

2 The World Health Organisation (WHO) defines mental health as “a state of mental well-being that enables people to cope with the stresses of life, realize their abilities, learn and work well, and contribute to their community.”

If you liked this essay, consider sharing with a friend or a colleague that may enjoy it too. (If you share on socials, tag Gowri on Twitter (X) and LinkedIn)

Outside the newsletter, I run 1990 Research Labs - where I help global tech companies and Indian market leaders make sense of consumer India. If you’re navigating an Indian consumer bet, let’s talk.

I don’t remember the last time a meetup rewired how I think.

I showed up to a session by Alysha Lobo a few months backed organised by GrowthX knowing almost nothing about Chinese hardware. By the time she finished, I was dreaming of a trip to China. That’s the effect she has - her obsession becomes yours.

Alysha has a Master’s degree in English Literature. She can also program a collaborative robot in under 15 minutes. After eight years in robotics - Universal Robots, Rapyuta Robotics - she’s been exploring China’s hardware ecosystem firsthand and advising Indian founders on what they’re missing.

Her methodology to get information and connects are unconventional. She cold-emails Chinese CEOs. Shows up at their headquarters without appointments. Once, she got inside DJI because she stopped to pet a stranger’s Golden Retriever during a typhoon.

If you’re building in Indian hardware or robotics - or just curious why China’s manufacturing story matters - this conversation is dense with signal. She challenges assumptions Indian founders hold about Chinese competition, collaboration, and what “Made in China 2025” actually produced.

Alysha is the best example I know of “you can just do things.”

I hope you enjoy this as much as I did.

In this edition, we cover:

• Why you cannot bet against the Chinese?

• How WeChat replaced the App Store?

• Why Chinese retail stores have influencer corners?

• How Alysha got inside DJI without an appointment?

• Why Chinese hardware competitors share the same lab?

• How China turned a German acquisition into domestic dominance?

• What chopsticks reveal about Chinese work ethic?

• Which city cluster beat San Francisco in the tech rankings?

• How Chinese gig apps protect workers from exhaustion?

• Why Chinese youth are proud to take over family factories?

• What is the current state of manufacturing in India?

Why you cannot bet against the Chinese?

Dharmesh Ba: Where did your love for robotics start, and why robotics?

Alysha: Oh, good question. I think I got into robotics accidentally. I want to be frank about that. I think there was a bit of serendipity. My dad would restore cars, and I have a love for all things mechanical. It’s been a great pleasure to be around my dad, who taught me the first love of machines: how machines move, how they operate. You know, we take so many things for granted. When you sit in a car, you jam the ignition, you’re hitting the brakes, you’re yelling at somebody, you’re slamming the door—without realizing that the ignition is made by a totally different company, the door you slam is made by somebody else, and the brakes are made by another. But all of these come together in a symphony to create a machine that eventually transports you from one place to another.

And for me, robots are just machines. I was very lucky when I was headhunted by Universal Robots. They’re considered the “Apple” of the robotics ecosystem. I think this was late 2016, early 2017. Initially, as I was in marketing and sales trying to scale up, I realized... you know, there are the engineers, and I’m not one. I have a Master’s degree in English Literature. So I was like, “I have no idea how this is going to work. How do you want me to work with robots?” And they said, “No, bring it. Bring me all of that experience, all of that skill that you have.”

What I’m grateful to Universal Robots for is that, as a marketing person, you do not get to sit in the office. You have to be out. You have to be in the field. You need to be going to customer sites, understanding how robots are used, and of course, be trained on the robot. So, one of my fun things I used to love to say—and I can still do it, by the way—is that I can train anybody to program a robot in under 15 minutes if it’s a collaborative robot.

Dharmesh Ba: I’m looking forward to it. What does a marketing and sales role for a robotics company look like?

Alysha: There’s a Hindi saying, “Jo dikhta hai wo bikta hai” (What is seen, sells). It totally applies in hardware. You cannot have a phenomenal hardware product and keep it where the sun doesn’t shine. There’s a reason you can go online and order an Apple phone or your Apple Watch. But the fun is when you go there, you experience it, you stand in front of it, and you look at this phone and realize, “Oh, it’s so beautifully made,” and it’s got aluminum and steel and all of these things combined together in a seamless experience. There’s a reason why phone companies invest so much money in experience centers.

So I think Universal Robots followed a very similar paradigm and philosophy. This is something I’m going to tell all hardware founders:

If you have a hardware product, you cannot keep it inside. You’ve got to take it out, you’ve got to let customers experience it, and you need to let it fail as well.

Because I think a lot of founders are very apprehensive, thinking, “Oh my God, if I take my hardware product out, it’s going to fail.” But it is bound to fail, and you have to keep that in mind. I think most people who will experience your product also have that understanding that this is hardware; this might fail.

Dharmesh Ba: How many times have you been to China?

Alysha: Lots of people who follow me on X [Twitter], and including when you’ve met me, think that I love China and that I’m absolutely fascinated with it. I am now. But the first time I went was in 2018, and I wanted to cry. I swore and I vowed that I was never going back to this country. I said, “This is terrible. They have smog. It’s dirty.” It was cleaner than India, but still. Nobody spoke any English.

And then - we’re obviously going to segue into this at some point—the entire Internet is in a bubble. It’s the “Great Firewall of Internet.” You have the Internet, but it’s China’s Internet. As long as you’re using their Wi-Fi, their apps, life moves seamlessly the way we have it here. But we, coming from the rest of the world, are used to a very different bubble. I cried because I just couldn’t get around anywhere. I had none of the apps (I was familiar with), I didn’t speak the language. I went on work with Universal Robots and would just land up working in the office for more hours than I should have because I said, “What’s the point? I can’t even get out.”

The person who inspired me was Adam Sobieski, the former General Manager for Universal Robots China. He was from the American Midwest—I think Minnesota—and he spoke fluent Chinese. In 2018, I made a commitment: “I have to go back. I’m going to learn Chinese. I am not going to let the Chinese get away with this!” That was my motivation. But when I came back, you just forget, right? I thought, “I’m never going back there. Why should I go through the trouble of learning the language?”

Just before we started this call, I was speaking with one of my best friends in the UK, and I mentioned a book that genuinely changed my life in 2020: “So Good They Can’t Ignore You.” I started reading it during the height of COVID.

At that time, everyone was furious at China because of the pandemic. But for me, two crucial lessons became clear. First, when you become genuinely obsessed with something, you inevitably get good at it. I thrive on getting obsessed and diving down rabbit holes. Second, I realized that regardless of global sentiment or who we blame for COVID, two facts about China remain absolute:

1. You cannot bet against them. Push them into a corner, and they will always come back stronger.

2. If you work in hardware, China is the Mecca. You simply cannot escape it.

I found someone offering Chinese classes on Twitter and started immediately, right in the middle of the pandemic. Everyone told me I was crazy. Since then, I’ve made two trips: the first lasted nearly a month in June (that was right after we met, actually), and the most recent was for about three weeks. I now plan to go and live there for a full month.

I’m incredibly proud that I still dedicate 60 minutes every single day to learning Chinese. This includes using Duolingo, brutally forcing my brain to remember the script, and consuming Chinese YouTube videos and podcasts. I’m proud to be able to speak the language, be on the ground, and experience China in a completely different light.

How WeChat replaced the App Store?

Dharmesh Ba: I have been in love with the WeChat ecosystem ever since I was introduced to it in 2019. How was your experience of using WeChat in China?

Alysha: I agree with that. Somebody was tweeting the other day, asking, “Why doesn’t India have a super app?” When you look at super apps, WeChat is definitely right on top. I honestly don’t think there’s any app globally - or definitely in India - that would fall into that category. I was talking to a dear friend about a week ago; he felt sick and wasn’t sure if he had COVID, so he stayed locked in his room. Everything was handled through WeChat. He ordered the COVID test, which was delivered to his home, and then connected to a doctor who diagnosed him and prescribed the medication right there on WeChat. The pharmacy even delivered the meds via the app.

Payments these days also happen via reading your palm. I don’t know whether I told you about it, but there’s no standalone app to book a robot taxi. You just go into WeChat, chat with the account, drop your location, and it sends you the robot taxi. I think what has happened in India and the rest of the world is we’ve siloed it out. You’ve got Paytm in India that did payments very specifically. They attempted to be a super app. I think Hike came up with messaging, but it was just a messenger. WhatsApp has tried to do it, but you can’t really go order groceries or get a cab on WhatsApp.

I’m not surprised you fell in love with WeChat. But as someone who uses it extensively now, sometimes it can be clunky. For example, on WhatsApp, you can long press to reply or swipe to reply. You can’t really do that in WeChat; you have to “quote” it. It is clunky.

I’m using it on Android, which is another joke because I have a Samsung S21 Ultra, and I still get judgmental looks in China like, “Oh, you’re a Samsung user?” Otherwise, I use an iPhone, which also gets looks like, “Oh, iPhone? You’re not using Huawei or Honor?” But yes, even booking a drone delivery for your food happens on WeChat.

Dharmesh Ba: So the idea of downloading an app on the Play Store or App Store is not the norm?

Alysha: Yeah, it’s not the norm. People just run their life on WeChat and Alipay. I’m addicted to Douyin (their TikTok). The only apps I use in the Western world are Twitter (X), and the rest of the time I’m addicted to my China phone - Xiaohongshu (Little Red Book) and Douyin. I love that they have a dedicated shopping tab. It’s very easy to scroll, and it feeds you stuff to buy 24/7. It’s amazing commercialization - E-comm, Quick-comm. For them, there is a very thin line between the two. If they say delivery is in 10 hours, expect it in eight.

You can go on Taobao or JD.com and have the equivalent of Amazon, but literally in an hour or two. I see Blinkit trying to do that now, saying “Hey, I can get you an iPhone or AirPods,” but this goes beyond that.

Why Chinese retail stores have influencer corners?

Dharmesh Ba: I remember you also mentioned that every major retail store has a dedicated section where influencers come and do TikToks. Can you talk about that?

Alysha: I think the East is a tad bit ahead of us regarding the future of work. One big aspect is content creation. For example, there is a German guy in Chongqing - one of the only 30 Germans living there - who has a bratwurst (A type of German sausage) restaurant. He said 50% of his time is standing outside with a tripod making videos to sell bratwurst on E-comm. When I went to a Xiaomi store, they were like, “Oh, you are a foreigner and you want to take videos? Please go ahead, we want you to be an influencer.”

Also, regarding retail stores: the variety is insane. You step into a car showroom like AITO (Chinese smart electric vehicle brand) you’ll see Huawei products because of their collaboration with Huawei. Same with Xiaomi - I can buy a toothbrush, a dental flosser, a pet home, a rice cooker, a car, a TV, and tires all in one place. The brands are trying to be almost a “super brand.”

How Alysha got inside DJI without an appointment?

Dharmesh Ba: Right. I wanted to talk deeper into that, but first: you mentioned you just cold email people and land up in their offices. What does that process look like?

Alysha: That is an Alysha special. I’m a third-culture kid - half European, half Indian, grew up in Saudi Arabia. I’ve learned that adaptability is an underrated skill. My parents taught me: Ask. What’s the worst that can happen? Somebody says no. But what if they say yes? With China specifically, I offer them a view of what’s outside the “Great Firewall.” I write to companies and say, “Hey, I’m coming. I don’t have an agenda, but I would love to learn about your product and tell you where I see it fitting in the rest of the world.” That really goes a long way.

Dharmesh Ba: What were your top favorite companies you wanted to visit? I know the DJI story, but who else was on the list?

Alysha: I reached out to everyone - Alibaba, Tencent. Unitree Robotics out in Hangzhou - I’m grateful to have them on WhatsApp. LimX Dynamics (Limax) in Shenzhen - they were very open.

I wanted to get into UBTECH so bad. They have that cool robot, Walker, that can remove its own battery and put a new one in. I tried emailing, DMing - no luck. So when I was at LimX’s office, they said, “UBTECH is down the road, just go.” I kid you not, Dharmesh, their entire office looks like a spaceship. There is no reception, just an eye scanner. I stood outside, saw a lady on a call, and told her in Chinese, “Bu hao yisi” (Excuse me), I want to get inside. She scanned me in! I handed them my passport, and they left me unchaperoned inside.

UBTECH themselves loved it. They were like, “You just showed up? No appointment?” I said, “No, but I know about Walker, I know about your AMRs, I know about your partnership with BYD.” And they couldn’t say no.

Dharmesh Ba: I want this to be helpful for someone young who only thinks about ChatGPT or Gemini. Why should they think about robotics?

Alysha: Don’t listen to me; listen to Sam Altman. He said, “Even if we had the smartest brain right now, we just would not have the hardware to keep up with it.” Hardware is the other side of the AI coin. I use the Ferrari example: I can show you a shiny engine, but until I put it in a Ferrari and we hit the gas, you won’t experience it. Robotics is moving from the industrial space to your home. You have robots already - washing machines, mixer grinders. Now, machines are becoming intelligent. You see Pudu robots in restaurants. The truest experience of AI will come when combined with hardware.

How Alysha got inside DJI without an appointment?

Dharmesh Ba: Tell me how you landed in DJI without an appointment.

Alysha: That comes down to my love for dogs. I’m dying to make a thread on X of all the dogs I petted in Shanghai and Shenzhen. My standard line is “Ni hen piaoliang” (You’re so pretty) or “Ni hen ke’ai” (You’re so cute). I was in Shenzhen, and Typhoon Wutip was coming in. DJI hadn’t replied to me. I stumbled upon a square where 200 people were doing Zumba and ballroom dancing. I saw the fluffiest Golden Retriever. I asked the owner if she spoke English; she did. I missed my dog, so I asked to walk with them.

She invited me for watermelon at her place. Trust levels in China are insane. We’re eating watermelon, and I tell her I’m on a “truth-seeking journey” about China and hardware. She turns and says, “You really are on this truth-seeking journey. I work at DJI, and I will get you a pass inside.”

And I did. The building is entirely cantilevered. They have a drone testing lab suspended in the air. I couldn’t take pictures because the security QR code changes every five seconds. They are now talking about being “flying photographers,” not just a drone company. Moral of the story: You see a dog, go pet it.

How China turned a German acquisition into domestic dominance?

Dharmesh Ba: This evolution connects back to Made in China’s 2025 policy. What’s your take on that?

Launched in 2015, China’s “Made in China 2025” (MIC 2025) is a strategic policy to become a global high-tech manufacturing superpower by 2049, focusing on innovation and self-sufficiency in 10 key sectors (e.g., AI, robotics, EVs).

Alysha: I think it’s foresight. The right government policies can do so much. Let’s look at their foresight - if I’m not mistaken, both the Mayor of Shanghai and the Mayor of Shenzhen are engineers. Shenzhen itself is so well developed that you are not more than five minutes away from any metro station entrance. That entire trip in Shenzhen, I only took the metro. Because it was so easy for me to get around. I even took the metro to the airport because I could just take my stroller; it’s that friendly. The only thing is you’re fighting a bunch of these EV guys who are riding right beside you - that’s the only way I’d probably die in Shenzhen, by the way.

Just saying, back to policy and “Made in China 2025” - we really need to look at 2015. That was the landmark year when they decided, “Okay, we’re done being a mediocre manufacturing economy where we’re manufacturing stuff where we tell people...” You know, we used to have these jokes where if something broke, we’d say, “Yeah, it’s probably Made in China.” They wanted to get rid of that notion. So they came up with these policies and the 10 sectors.

Let me comment on one sector that I’m most familiar with: robotics. Why I put out that piece you mentioned was that they identified robotics as a sector they needed to get better in, while being fully cognizant of the fact that if they wanted to be a manufacturing economy, they also needed to have the right robotics in place. It’s a problem: “My current robotics companies are not up to the mark, but I also need robotics because I want to do manufacturing.”

They just went and bought one of the biggest European robotics companies. This was 2016 into 2017. I’ve written about the Midea acquisition. Think of Midea like a BPL or a Videocon of India - they made all these ACs and appliances. Midea went and bought the biggest robotics company, which was Kuka.

Now, when that happened, you’d think all the other domestic robotics companies would suffer because they brought in the “big European boy.” That didn’t happen. They continued to deploy Kuka, but they made sure to prioritize their own internal players. They said, “Okay, we’ll deploy Kuka, but we also want to see an Estun out there. We also want to see a SIASUN out there.” They told them, “This is not competition. This is for you to learn how to be a better robotics company.” And look at where we are today.

Dharmesh Ba: Where is the culture of collaborating and not competing come from in China? Its not the case in India.

Alysha: I was in a car - my friend’s car - the Avatr. The Avatr is not just a car. The Avatr is a combination of Changan Automobile working with Huawei, working with CATL (Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. Limited), coming up with a joint car.

So, the spirit of competition, to a certain extent, is also nourished and foisted upon them by the government. There are two things here. One: you’ll see so many brands—robotics, humanoids, EVs—but ultimately, they will consolidate, and you will find only two or three major players. This is how China works. The government never lets anybody get too big that this consolidation doesn’t happen.

Two: the spirit of cooperation. Like Huawei saying, “I can’t build cars, but I would love to give you the software.” Because their ultimate goal is that now you’ll find more people who have Huawei cars having a Huawei phone. It pairs well. I see a similar trend with robot companies. Companies like Estun and others have learned from Kuka and bettered themselves. That doesn’t mean Kuka’s sales have dropped; their sales increased too, primarily because China is the customer.

For me, the fact that policy drives this—saying, “If you put robots in, I’m going to give you benefits”—is the kind of thinking we need in the rest of the world.

Chinese domestic companies are the biggest consumers of their own tech. I would love to see this in India. If Indian companies can prioritize Indian tech first—not just under the banner of “Make in India” or self-reliance, but because we owe it to our economy and the younger generation making things—it would do wonders for our startups.

Why Chinese hardware competitors share the same lab?

Dharmesh Ba: Yeah. This also trickles down to what you mentioned about maker spaces being more common, young folks getting in there early, and getting support from bigger companies. I found that very interesting. What was that about?

Alysha: This time, when I went to Shanghai, I had the good fortune of going to Zhangjiang AIsland (AI Harbor/Island). It’s the idea of compounding value by proximity. You have a lot of these robot companies clustered in the same place. You wouldn’t find that in India, or maybe San Francisco would be the next best example.

At this AI Island, they had a lab that was almost free of cost for their engineers to enter. It doesn’t matter which company you work for. You could be working at a rival robotics company, but your rival’s robot is right there in that lab. You walk in and you can try to build because they’re looking at hardware as a platform.

I love this. I think we need more maker spaces in the country. We have an absolutely fantastic lab in Bangalore called the CMTI (Central Manufacturing Technology Institute). I would highly urge people to check it out. I would love to see if we can open it to the public where people can come, tinker, and have access to machines—SPMs, VMCs, CNCs. When you make things and break things, that’s the only way you learn.

I would love to see more maker spaces—maybe a floor with 3D printers and machines where you can tinker. Imagine having access to your competitor’s robot. You should be scared, thinking, “What if they tear it apart? What if they see the flaw?” They’re not scared.

What chopsticks reveal about Chinese work ethic?

Dharmesh Ba: I think psychologically speaking, they’re confident and comfortable in their own shoes. In India, we are too focused on the competition rather than figuring out the best we can potentially do. To some extent, we have that “frog in the jar” mentality—you don’t need a lid if it’s Indian frogs.

Alysha: Don’t get me wrong, there is a deep sense of competition with the Chinese. But they realize some things are beyond their control. If somebody wanted to find a flaw in their robot, they could just buy it and tear it down. What’s stopping them? Finding OEMs there is not difficult. So, the focus is on continuous improvement.

Let me use an example here. They gifted me a set of chopsticks. When I was seeing my colleagues in June, they were making fun of me, saying my chopstick skills improved. I said, “Of course, I lived in Japan for three years.” The guy was quick to tell me, “Chinese chopsticks are different from Japanese.”

He explained the symbolism: Chinese chopsticks are often round at the eating end and square/sharp at the holding end. The symbolism is that the part facing outward (the round end) means I need to be kinder to you, and the part pointing toward me (the square end) means I need to be harder on myself. They gifted me a beautiful set of traditional Chinese chopsticks as a reminder. That is in their culture—they are very hard on themselves. Even regarding their high-speed rail, which is the best in the world, they feel they could have done better.

Which city cluster beat San Francisco in the tech rankings?

Dharmesh Ba: Interesting. You also mentioned people coming back from the US and wanting to contribute back to China, not just for opportunities but because they love the energy.

Alysha: I myself am planning to take an apartment there and live there for a while. This is coming from someone who has lived in New York, Chicago, Tokyo, Copenhagen, Dubai, and Bangalore. I see more and more people packing their bags from the West and moving back. China is not imitating anymore; they are innovating.

This year, WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization) declared that the Shenzhen-Guangzhou-Hong Kong cluster is the number one science and technology cluster in the world.

Guess who’s second? Tokyo-Yokohama. Number three is San Francisco. We all think SF is number one, but it’s not.

I think many people are scared to go to China because of the rhetoric. But the facilities are amazing. I fell sick in China—I went to the ER. Do you know what my bill was? 750 Indian Rupees with medication.

Dharmesh Ba: Wow. Never once asked for insurance?

Alysha: No. I even forgot my passport. I fainted in the metro, and the police helped me. I went to the Peking University Shenzhen Hospital. They triaged me effectively. When I got to the ER room, I got a young doctor who spoke English with a thick Australian or New Zealand accent—so he studied there and came back.

They didn’t over-medicate me. The bill was 650-750 rupees. No insurance questions, no six-week wait times. Even for my blood pressure monitoring, they told me I could walk into any pharmacy—traditional or modern—and use the high-tech BP machines for free. Why would I not want to live in a place like that?

Education levels aren’t falling either. Companies like Unitree and Deep Robotics came out of universities in Hangzhou, like Zhejiang University. Tsinghua University is equal to MIT there.

Why Chinese youth are proud to take over family factories?

Dharmesh Ba: You also spoke about how they take pride in what they do. You mentioned a girl trying to help her dad’s fabric business by going abroad and coming back.

Alysha: Yes, I met her at the airport while sharing a plug point. She was on her way to France, Germany, and Amsterdam to learn the latest fashion trends. Her parents make gowns—the kind you see on Myntra. She said, “What better way? I would rather learn from there, come back, and manufacture that here.”

She was proud to take over her parents’ business. I’m seeing this in India too—younger people taking over manufacturing businesses. It goes beyond the Shanzhai (copycat) culture. They want to innovate.

How Chinese gig apps protect workers from exhaustion?

Dharmesh Ba: That was very beautiful—harmony between new technology and older ways. You also spoke about how they aren’t afraid of automation, and how gig workers get locked out if they overwork.

Alysha: Yes, this was the Ele.me and Meituan riders in Chongqing. Chongqing has difficult terrain. The delivery drivers have a clock; if exhaustion sets in, the app locks them out. It’s a kind way of doing things. There is dignity in gig work. I see a lot of women delivering too.

Regarding automation: I used to fight this battle eight years ago. People said, “Robots will take our jobs.” I compare automation to ATMs. Did banks shut down? No, more people started banking. Automation takes away non-essential tasks.

The idea of a “lights-out factory” (fully automated) is still partly a utopia. Peak production still uses humans. I went to BYD North; they had a huge notice board hiring for CNC operators and automation engineers. Humans still work alongside robots.

I also noticed in China and Japan, people are wired not to ask for free money. They will work, fish, or find ways to earn rather than beg. I have a mental picture of a road sweeper machine working alongside a lady with a traditional bamboo hat using a picker. It’s a symphony—everyone doing what they have to do to better the country.

Dharmesh Ba: I have a thesis that every generation’s expectations quadruple. We will always have automation taking care of old chores to open up capacity for new expectations.

Alysha: I highly recommend reading The Rise of the Robots by Martin Ford. With every industrial revolution, we’ve had a churn of jobs. We are talking about the Fifth Industrial Revolution. Expectations have changed, but so has the pressure. Pervasiveness of technology is only going to get more interesting.

What is the current state of manufacturing in India?

Dharmesh Ba: What’s the state of manufacturing in India, and why is there a gap in collaboration?

Alysha: We are price-sensitive in the manufacturing sector. While good, the government should reward companies for using Indian automation. Currently, they get more value for money bringing robots from China. China learned by bringing machines from Germany and Japan, and now they make them better.

There is a disservice being done to our startups when local manufacturers prefer Chinese tech due to price. Startups only get better if they get iterative feedback. I see Hubli and Belgaum (Tier 2 cities) actually being more excited about adopting local tech than some metros.

Dharmesh Ba: For a hardware or robotics founder facing barriers in India, can you give some positive pointers?

Alysha: India is waking up to the fact that we can be a manufacturing powerhouse. Jensen Huang (NVIDIA) said we pegged ourselves too much on software, which will get automated. We are culturally and economically closer to China than we think. We should ride the tailwinds of geopolitical shifts.

This is a great time for startups in robots, drones, and old-school manufacturing. We have a great layer of System Integrators in India that is ignored. In the US and Europe, System Integrators are crucial; China does it themselves. We should leverage our System Integrators.

I’m very bullish. My personal angel investments are in Indian robotics companies. I’m happy to chat with startups, large corporates, or anyone wanting to get into hardware. If you’re non-technical but want to work in robotics—sales, operations—we need you. If you’re afraid to leap from SaaS to “HaaS” (Hardware as a Service), you won’t regret it. My DMs are open on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Alysha Lobo runs a fantastic newsletter on robotics, hardware and Indian manufacturing which I highly recommend.

TechnicAly’s Substack

My personal Substack

By TechnicAly Speaking

You can ping Alysha on X (Twitter) and LinkedIn.

If you liked this essay, consider sharing with a friend or a colleague that may enjoy it too. (If you share on socials, tag me. I’m on Twitter (X) and LinkedIn)

Share

Today I have Anshumani Ruddra, who has more than 15 years of product experience across multiple companies like Zynga, Hotstar, and Google Pay. In this edition, I spoke to him about how he transitioned from gaming to entertainment and most recently to payments and the consumer insights around it. He’s one of the best product managers that I have seen with a great design bent in the country. I hope you get to take some interesting anecdotes and stories from it.

What did we cover?

• A Career of “Side Quests”: Defining a career by its wandering paths, not just its titles.

• The Zynga-Facebook Era: A look back at 2012, when social gaming was the utility of Facebook for millions.

• Platform Risk: How Zynga navigated its heavy dependence on Facebook and the difficult shift to mobile.

• India’s Mobile Gold Rush: The challenges of building games when data was costly and APK size was a primary metric.

• Virality as Delight: Why the smallest in-game action (the “dopamine hit”) was the key to user retention.

• Reviews as Insights: How “ratings and reviews” served as the first line of qualitative feedback.

• The Sports Bar on Your Phone: The insight behind Hotstar’s “Watch and Play” to capture the “armchair critic.”

• Delight in Payments: Moving from games to payments, and the surprising importance of “delight” in finance apps.

• AI’s Next Frontier: Why Generative AI must evolve from just “asking” (chatbots) to “doing” (agent-based actions).

A Career of “Side Quests”

D: I’ve known you for almost 10 years, and I somehow relate you more towards a designer who communicates through narratives than an engineer who communicates through numbers, despite your credentials. How do you see yourself?

A: Thank you for saying that. I’ve always thought of myself as a mix. I think people define themselves too narrowly, either by their educational background or by the work that they do. One has to keep reminding oneself that the title is given to you; you have to choose whether you want to accept it or not, and whether you want that title to define you.

I don’t necessarily recommend my career path to people. I took a lot of detours; my career path is not a straight line at all. It’s a wandering path. I’ve written about it: there are people who play the “main quest” in a role-playing game, very story-driven, where A leads to B leads to C. Then there are people who are like, “Oh, let me do all the side quests. I can go into this other part of this forest and meet some other creatures”. I’m a “side quest” person. I’ve realized that my entire career can be defined as this one giant series of side quests. But when you add them all up, there is progress, and it looks really good on LinkedIn or on a resume.

D: Can you trace that “side quest” path for us, from engineering to writing, gaming, and eventually payments?

A: I have always looked at these things as, “Hey, don’t allow yourself to be narrowly defined by the title that somebody else is giving you”. We may be naturally gifted at certain things, but then there are other things on which we spend a lot of time and build those faculties. I started coding at a very young age, but I also started writing at a very young age. I wanted to do computer science and engineering but got into chemical engineering. I actually fell in love with engineering, but only by the time I hit my third year of college.

As it was coming to an end, I decided I was going to sit and write full-time, because that brought me the most joy. Then gaming happened, which was also like, “Hey, I’ve always enjoyed playing games and designing board games, so let me get into digital gaming”. That led to healthcare, education, media, and payments.

Payments is very strange. My dad is a banker, so my childhood was spent discussing money as a very intellectual concept with him. It’s strange I ended up in payments because if you had asked me 20 years back, “Would you ever be in payments?” I’d be like, “Nah, that sounds boring”. As a kid, I thought my dad had the most boring job. Now I’ve been in payments for almost five years, and I think I’ve become a semi-expert. Life takes you on different paths. I’ve already had three or four careers. If I live to see 80 or 90 and health permits, I’ll probably have four or five more.

The Zynga-Facebook Era

D: You were at Zynga around 2012. Can you paint a picture of that time for an audience that may not remember it? What did Facebook, mobile, and gaming look like?

A: 2012 was a very interesting time. The iPhone moment had happened in 2008, but if you remember, the iPhone did not launch with the App Store; that came a little later, and it came prepackaged with some apps. In that 2009 to 2012 period, we all realized there was a very distinct shift from desktops and laptops to the mobile era. Mobile was going to dominate, and people would be carrying these incredibly powerful supercomputers in their pockets. People still thought certain things could only happen on a larger screen, and that work would not get replaced. It was also coinciding with the rise of WhatsApp.

For context in India, we were still on crappy 2G and 3G connections. Jio had not yet broken the dam of really cheap 4G connectivity; that happened in September 2016. So, data was very costly. While mobile phones were selling like hotcakes and more people were moving to smartphones, mobile data was still very costly.

D: What was the specific relationship between Facebook and Zynga at that time?

A: Globally, Facebook was evolving. Facebook and Zynga had both gone public pretty much back-to-back. There were very clear call-outs in each of their S-1 filings. Zynga had very clearly said that about 90% of its revenue came from Facebook as a platform, which is very large. In our filing, we had to declare the risk of this very heavy dependence on Facebook.

But people must remember, this was before mobile advertising took off and Facebook became an advertising giant. So Facebook also had to declare that most of its money was made from developers like Zynga. I would even extend that to say that for a lot of Facebook’s users at that time—Facebook might not like to admit it—its big utility for them was playing games. It was playing games like Farmville, Mafia Wars, and CityVille. These were among the first games to hit tens and 20 and 30 million daily active users. Facebook’s scale-up and its social graph’s usage were very, very dependent on large game developers like Zynga, and Zynga was the largest of all of these.

This part of tech history gets ignored. People who didn’t play games were always complaining, “My entire social feed is full of these people hurling sheep at each other,” or “My friends are like, ‘Can you send me this thing in Farmville?’”. But the reality was, for pretty much everyone else, their entire social graph’s utility was playing games, not liking pictures or writing on people’s posts. People made very significant connections. We used to hear wonderful stories, like grandchildren keeping track of their grandparents’ health because they all used to visit each other’s farm. So, if grandmom hadn’t harvested her crops, something was wrong. You’d need to call the old age home and say, “Hey, is everything okay? Because she’s not been active on Farmville today”.

D: You mentioned these games created real connections. Did you see that personally?

A: I was the design lead on Mafia Wars, and it was an insane community. People became friends with people. I was also a very heavy Clash of Clans player in its early years and could see that social narrative on the phone happening. I was playing Clash of Clans on the day I got married. I was playing Clash of Clans on the day my kid was about to be born; I was nervous and pacing outside. This group of strangers who used to be in my clan stayed up in different time zones with me when I was really nervous about my kid’s birth. I remember for my wedding, this group of strangers got together and sent me an Apple gift card. These are not friends. These are just people I play a game with, and they’d become good friends over time. This is the power of apps at that point.

D: What caused the shift away from this model, and where did the gaming world move?

A: These games mattered to people and were probably among the first games a lot of people played. But as Facebook started distancing itself from games, realizing a big chunk of its revenue was very dependent on them, it started doubling down on mobile ads revenue and building new revenue streams. Gaming on Facebook became a smaller thing.

It was very difficult for mobile gaming companies to then turn themselves into a destination. But we started seeing it with Angry Birds, or King.com doing really well with the Candy Crush saga series, and of course, breakout hits with Clash of Clans. You started realizing that these mobile apps are a destination in themselves. You were used to a mentality of being on top of another platform, which used to be Facebook, but now the platform became the App Store and Google Play Store, and you had your own apps people could directly interact with. That shift got people off guard. In 2012, I was in the middle of that shift. I could very clearly see mobile gaming was the future if I had to continue in gaming. And I could see the numbers in India changing. The Play Store had just launched; it was not yet a year old when I got into gaming and started setting up my game studio. That’s where the world was in 2012.

Platform Risk

D: You mentioned Zynga realized the heavy dependence on Facebook was a threat. When you moved to mobile, was there discussion that you were just trading one platform risk for another—the App Store and Play Store?

A: Zynga had some of the most strategically smart product managers; in a lot of ways, Zynga defined Bay Area product management in that phase. It was a very data-intense, data-driven way of looking at things, but also very strategic. Everyone was very clear that this was a very big danger. Zynga had spent a lot of effort turning zynga.com into a destination. It had also made fantastic acquisitions, like Words With Friends, which was one of the first breakout hits on mobile; Zynga purchased that studio and the “With Friends” franchise.

So it’s not like Zynga was caught completely unaware. It’s just very difficult when you have tens and tens of millions of users on one platform to suddenly tell your team, “Hey, web development is over, and now we are going to develop Android and iOS apps”. It’s a very difficult shift, and Zynga did do it, though we were slow. But so was everyone else. Any existing studio moving to mobile games took a while. People who were brand new studios, who started by saying “we will only build mobile games,” had a much easier time. Zynga was aware of the dangers of being overdependent and had already started hedging its bets, but this overall move took time.

Remember, the stock market is very narrative-driven. Zynga’s IPO was decent, but then the stock dramatically fell, and it took a long time for Zynga to recover. You could argue that Zynga never recovered, at least from that perception of being a market leader. But Zynga was a very hyper-profitable company. We used to make crazy amounts of revenue on the games we had; our user base and revenue were fantastic.

D: Were there any specific insights from how Indians were playing these Zynga games at the time?

A: We had very decent usage in India. Remember, most of our games were on desktop or laptops at that point, inside the Facebook platform. In India, the broadband usage graph and the mobile data graph hadn’t crossed yet; the Jio moment happened only in 2016. So, only the most well-to-do Indians were playing games—anybody who could afford a broadband connection and had a laptop or desktop at home. It was a very different type of usage.

One of India’s biggest industrialists used to play Zynga Poker a lot. He played so much that Zynga Poker had an auto-logoff feature. If we noticed somebody playing nonstop for 20-plus hours, they would get logged out because it looked like suspicious activity. This gentleman’s account was frozen. He actually sent his secretary to our studio in Bangalore to get his Zynga Poker account unlocked. We weren’t even running Zynga Poker from India at that time, but it was very interesting. That showed me the “whales,” as we call them in gaming—people who spend a lot of time and money and are hardcore players. There were a few of them. I know people who played Mafia Wars and Vampire Wars like crazy. Every now and then, people who are now in their twenties or thirties who were younger back then will say, “I played that game. I used to play it four hours a day; it was my life. My mafia clan was a big deal”. It always brings me joy when those conversations happen.

D: You mentioned the Play Store had just started. What was so exciting about it that made you leave Zynga and start your own studio (Tiny Mogul Games)?

A: I left Zynga in early 2013. The signs were very clear to me that India’s consumer market was waking up. Mobile phone sales were insane. Even though data was costly, we knew more mobile data usage would happen. We just never realized how fast that would happen once Jio launched, but it was expected. At this time, Motorola was still big, and Max was a big one, along with other Chinese OEMs. Windows was still trying to make the Windows phone, and Blackberry still had its own app store and ecosystem. But the Google Play Store had really taken off. I had been an Android user for a couple of years and could clearly see this was a thing. I could see the average Joe on the street moving to this. You could see that if we could break the $100 barrier on smartphones with half a GB or 1 GB of RAM—which was more than enough then—it would take off.

D: So what was the thesis for your new studio, Tiny Mogul Games?

A: The hunch was pretty strong that now would be a good time. When we started the studio, we had a five-year projection, but you build castles in the air, knowing a lot of things have to come true. Data has to become cheaper, mobile phones have to become cheaper and better, and their RAM and storage have to increase. Remember, storage was low then, which meant you couldn’t have too many apps. In fact, the most popular apps in the early years were the cleanup apps that deleted your cache.

But it was also clear that a country headed towards 1.2 billion people would play games. The fact that people would play their very first games on a mobile phone was becoming very clear. It had happened in Europe and the US; it was going to happen in Asia. Tencent had started thinking about games in a big way. All those things pointed to the fact that a homegrown game studio in India could make games for the Indian market, and maybe the global market, but with very Indian themes. That has been a theme in my thinking: there is a way of telling new stories with old Indian themes in meaningful ways, whether in television, movies, games, or books.

D: You mentioned Indian themes. Was the idea to export Indian culture?

A: My next theory was that we have done a very poor job of exporting our culture. South Korea does a phenomenal job; K-pop and K-dramas rule the world. We are mistaken when we think that Bollywood or Indian movies matter globally. They don’t, sadly. The Indian diaspora is very big, so if you have Indian friends, they make you watch a Shah Rukh movie, but Netflix still doesn’t have a single Indian global hit.

So the theory at that time was, could we build something that would make games for India, and then maybe eventually take them global?. Surprisingly, the global thing happened pretty fast. We got featured by the Google Play Store on its first anniversary at the end of 2013. Shiva, one of our first games, got featured globally. Suddenly, we had more downloads from outside India than from India, which felt very weird. This was the first Indian product to be featured globally.

Remember, the Play Store was a very small team then. The editorial team was literally one person sitting and looking at every app and game, and they would reach out to developers. There was no one you could reach out to; the editorial team would reach out to you. We didn’t even know what it meant to get featured—to have the Play Store’s homepage taken over by a banner of your app. We hadn’t yet realized the distribution power of these platforms. Even at that time, it was clear to people at Google that India would become one of its largest download markets. We were featured just before Christmas and were kept on for three-plus weeks, until January 19th. It was millions of downloads at that time. It was quite nuts.

India’s Mobile Gold Rush

D: What did virality mean then? How many downloads were considered viral?

A: Remember, these were heavy games for that time, maybe 50 or 60 MB. In India, that meant you were paying for it, because data had a cost. You were paying per MB, not per GB. So if you download a 50 MB game, you essentially paid six or seven rupees. We realized that when we optimized our APK size, it had a huge impact. I remember one game where we quadrupled the downloads by halving its size from 30 MB down to 15 or 16 MB.

Because I came from Zynga, we were very particular about our metrics. We focused on day-one retention (D1): a day after you install and open the game, what percentage of users come back?. How many played one week later (D7)? What was your engagement—how much time are they spending, how many sessions do they have?. We were very particular about improving our D1 and D7 retention and focusing on engagement.

Games are competing for attention. Unlike utility apps, when you’re building a game, you’re competing for people’s free spare time. You are competing with hundreds of thousands, even millions, of other apps. Over 90% of all apps on any app store are games; you’re competing with all of them.

D: So if it wasn’t just about download numbers, how did you think about achieving virality?

A: Your competition is insane, so virality meant very different things. When a user puts in the effort to download and open your game, is your hook strong enough? Is your delight factor strong enough?. Our chief game designer, Anand, always made this point: the simplest, smallest action in the game has to be the most delightful thing. In Candy Crush, the most delightful thing is matching those three candies and seeing them explode. In first-person shooters, it’s that headshot. It’s these small dopamine hits from the simplest action.

Those were the things you did for virality. You wanted it to be a water cooler conversation. You wanted people to tell other people, “When I have five minutes to spare, I’m going to play Shiva,” which were our games. Getting a large number of downloads was fine, but we were very aware that if your retention was low, this is a leaky bucket; these people will disappear in no time. Retaining them, getting them to invite other people, making the gameplay cooperative, or letting them play against other people—those were key. We built quizzing games and music challenge games where you could challenge another person. Simultaneously, a whole bunch of real money gaming, Teen Patti, and poker games took off in India, and it was clear they had their own virality and strong network effects because they were competitive.

Reviews as Insights

D: In today’s world, the default login is a phone number and an OTP, which lets you identify and contact users. Back in 2013, how did you do user research? How did you even know who your users were?

A: It was a norm, but we did it in different ways. Gaming is very testing-heavy. You have your own internal testers, but you also play-test it with a lot of people. We would have open days at our studio in HSR Layout, and people would land up for snacks and to play our games and give feedback. But these were often elite gamers or other people building products, so not necessarily the right set of people to get insights from.

At that point, the Play Store, with its ratings and reviews, was actually a very good way of getting to know people and understanding what they thought. If someone gave you a five-star rating, you wanted to reach out and figure out what they really liked. If they gave you a one-star rating, you wanted to reach out to them and figure out what went wrong, what broke, or what part of the game wasn’t working.

At that scale, you have to do a mix of qualitative and quantitative. Quantitative is looking at your funnels: are people downloading, playing, and coming back?. Then you’re looking at Play Store data, ratings, and reviews to find bugs or mechanics that aren’t working. But just talking to users was a big part of it: going around, showing it to school kids, talking to older people, or being in a cab and handing your phone to the driver saying, “Just play this game and tell me what you think”. We did this, maybe not in the formalized way we do user research at Google with the best experts in the world, but we did a lot of usability tests and play tests. We would always listen to our most passionate users, who would write long emails, and we’d get on the phone with them to figure out what was working.

D: Discovering that ratings and reviews were such a key part of the ecosystem must have been a revelation. Did you change the app to actively nudge people to leave them?

A: Yes, eventually it became a bit of a hack as App Store Optimization (ASO) became a real thing starting around 2014. Just like SEO, you realized there is a huge difference between an app with a 4.2 rating and one with a 4.7 rating. It was very clear that having high ratings was important.

So you ask: at what point do you ask for a rating? After a successful or fun gameplay session?. Maybe the user has spent 10 minutes on your game or has come back three days in a row. This user must be happy; should we ask for a rating now?. It’s a constant game that every app developer in the market has done. Are you looking at that incoming data, reading the reviews, and seeing how the rating trend changes week over week?. How does the rating change on a particular APK? For example, app version 1.7 had certain ratings, but when you launched 1.8 and fixed a bug, how did the ratings and reviews change on that?. These things mattered a lot.

People used to give a lot more ratings and reviews back then because they really loved expressing their opinion about the products they were using. Now everyone has 200-plus apps, so they aren’t sitting and reviewing every app. Back then, you had 10 or 20 apps and you wanted the app developer to know, “I played your app, I played your game, and this is what I thought”.

D: You’re right, games feel like an extension of identity, not a simple utility. How big is this entertainment category?

A: Absolutely. This is not a utility; it’s not a “need-based” app on Maslow’s pyramid. It’s entertainment. But when people watch a movie, they talk about it; they go to Rotten Tomatoes and say, “I hated this” or “I loved this”. The same is true for games.

If you look at global revenue from different forms of entertainment, gaming is right up there. A lot of people mistakenly say movies or music is bigger; music is very small globally. Gaming is way bigger. When GTA 6 comes out next year, a bad launch would be just a billion dollars on the first weekend. A bad launch. An average launch would likely be between one or two billion dollars, maybe over $2 billion in the first three days. Can you imagine any movie doing a billion dollars in the first weekend?. There are very few movies that have made more than a billion dollars in their lifetime revenue. Sure, Avengers and Avatar have, but people don’t realize that gaming....

D: Why do you think gaming revenue is so much larger than film?

A: This is a game you’re going to spend a minimum of a hundred hours playing. The average movie ticket price in the US is $12-$14; even in India, it’s climbing to 500 rupees. A game is going to be 60, 70, or 80 USD, but for hundreds of hours of gameplay. At a per-hour level, it’s super cheap, and it’s going to take up a big chunk of my life, weeks of my life. There’s no comparison. The number of games globally that made a billion dollars-plus in their lifetime—like Candy Crush—their lifetime earnings are bigger than most movies will ever be. Gaming is insanely large.

D: I’ve observed that people’s attention spans are shrinking; they scroll reels in theaters, and directors seem to be making movies faster, like TikToks, to keep them engaged. But you’re saying gaming is an active engagement. How do you square these two trends?

A: I think there are different types of people, and even the same person seeks different levels of engagement. The doom-scrolling, infinite-scroll, 15-second video is a very specific type of low-level engagement where your consciousness can recede to the background.

Whereas reading a book... did you realize book sales have never been better?. More long-form books are sold now than ever before. And look at the popularity of podcasting as a medium. I’m a huge fan of Acquired; they have three or four-hour-long episodes, and people listen to them—maybe at 1.5x speed, but they listen. People listen to audiobooks now, which requires a very active engagement because you are imagining what the characters look like and feel like.

So, movie directors who are trying to “TikTok-ify” their long-form movies are not going to succeed. Look at the biggest hits: Oppenheimer. Is Oppenheimer TikTok-ified? No, it’s deliberately slow; it takes you really deep in. In each medium, the best products—both in box office return and in that people genuinely enjoyed them—are deep, immersive experiences.

While your individual Candy Crush session might be five minutes, my mom has been playing Candy Crush for 15 years. When her phone changes, she wants to ensure her progress doesn’t drop because she’s put in a lot of hard work and effort. That is multi-year engagement. Engagement has different formats, and long-form will always be a big part of our lives.

The Sports Bar on Your Phone

D: That brings us to Hotstar, where you worked on merging media and gaming, particularly with the “Watch and Play” feature for cricket. What was the story behind that?

A: The original team that built “Watch and Play” did it for the IPL (Indian Premier League) in 2018, before I joined. Their deep insight, and a beautifully put one, was that T20 cricket is still a pretty slow game—three and a half hours long. Each ball takes about 40 seconds on average. The fastest bowler in the world, in terms of completing his overs, is Ravindra Jadeja; it’s very difficult to insert ads in a Jadeja over. In everyone else’s over, you can show a quick ad at the bottom, and there are ads between overs.

The insight was that by 2018, post-Jio, most people were watching the game on their phones. We were a video-first country; I would say the only video-first country in the world from 2018-2023, because we’re the only country where data is cheaper than water. In 2018-2019, the average Jio user was using 11 GB of data a month. What do you do with 11 GB? You are watching videos: YouTube, Hotstar, etc..

The insight was that people are watching on their phones, but they’re not watching it throughout. A homemaker might have it on while cutting vegetables. Or you’re watching it standing in a Mumbai local, holding the phone in portrait mode, not landscape. Your surface area is 40% video at the top, and the remaining 60% is completely useless. What do you do with that remaining 60% of the screen?.

D: What was the solution for that empty space, and how did you evolve it?

A: People were not watching continuously. They would be checking the score on Cricinfo or other sites. When things heated up—like Dhoni coming out to bat—they would move over to Hotstar. People were actually watching these games in three or four-minute chunks. So, how do you keep them engaged during that time? More importantly, when an ad is playing, how do you stop them from dropping out?.

The other big insight was that everyone in India is an armchair critic: “That guy should have hit a six,” “He didn’t pull properly”. “Watch and Play” was born from this; it let people predict what would happen on the next ball. It was partly wishful thinking, partly predicting, but it kept them engaged so they wouldn’t drop off.

This is when we turned it into a social feed with emojis and the ability to chat with friends. Our whole thing was, when people skip out of the Hotstar app, they go to Twitter or Facebook to talk about the game. Why is this conversation happening on Twitter when it should be happening on Hotstar?.

When I came in after the 2018 IPL, we were prepping for the 2019 IPL and the Cricket World Cup. How do we take this to the next level and build the best cricket viewing experience?. The analogy I gave my team was that the best experience of watching live sport is sitting with friends at a sports bar: watching on a giant screen, cheering, wearing the jersey, and having friendly banter with fans at the next table. That’s the best possible experience. But not everyone can go to a sports bar; your friends are in different cities, or you’re commuting home from work. So how do you replicate that social engagement on a vertical mobile screen?.

D: With all this real-time data on voting and emojis, did it become a consumer insight tool for the show producers?

A: Oh, absolutely. We ran experiments for this, as Hotstar was part of the Star network. We were providing data: “Did people enjoy this episode? Did they like this new character?”. We would insert these surveys inside the Hotstar app. Also, episodes on Hotstar aired in the morning, whereas primetime was in the evening, so homemakers would have already seen that day’s episode. Real-time data could be provided to the writing and creative teams. For reality shows, it was very clear who people were voting for, and this early indicator could be shared with them.

It leads to very interesting things. I was also there when COVID hit and the stadiums were empty. The Star Sports team came to us and said, “How do we tell players that people are actually watching?”. We worked closely with them on the concept of a “fan wall”. We put giant LCD screens inside the empty stadiums to show live feeds of people from the Hotstar app, so players knew, “Millions of people are watching me play”. The emoji stream was aggregated and turned into sound effects in the stadium; all the stadium sound effects were powered from Hotstar. So in real-time, when Dhoni or Virat walked in and people sent billions of “I love Virat” emojis, we would aggregate all of them and use that as a signal to produce a sound effect in the stadium.

I still consider those two and a half, three years at Hotstar a purple patch; it was a small team that did wonders. Things have changed, of course. More Android TVs are being sold, broadband is becoming a real thing again, and watch time is moving towards television. So now there’s a real ability to build a second-screen experience: while you’re watching on TV, what are you doing on your phone?.

Every time I speak to friends who are in sports globally, they don’t understand this. Nobody has done this in soccer, the NBA, or the NFL. The level of engagement we built for the IPL and ICC is just insane.

D: As you said, Indian fan culture is very loud and expressive, whether in a theater or at a match. Was that what you were tapping into?

A: Exactly, which is why the theater experience and the sports bar experience is what I was trying to get to. Can we get people close to it?. We had asked people to connect using their phone book. So, for the example I gave of a friend walking into the bar and me waving at him, the equivalent on the phone was a notification. When you had connected your social graph, it would actually say, “Dharmesh Ba is now live and watching the game,” and you could literally send a wave. Then your chat would be visible only to you two. We built all these things because, why should all the social action happen on Twitter or Facebook?. It should happen here, within Hotstar. There should be no reason for anyone to leave Hotstar.

Delight in Payments

D: Finally, let’s talk about your move to Google Pay. It seems like a shift. In gaming and media, you’re interpreting user wants. In payments, if 10 rupees fails to send, the user is furious. How did you see this shift in problem-solving?

A: I no longer work on the Google Pay India app; for the last two years, I’ve looked after Southeast Asia. But I worked on Google Pay India for the first three years at Google and loved working on that app. It’s become such a key part of India’s data story and commerce story. I love it when in any movie, a hero says, “Just GPay it to me”. It’s become a verb, just like Google became a verb. I remember in one of Rajinikanth’s previous movies, he just tells the guy to GPay it to him. I was like, “Wow, that was the moment of like, we’ve made it”.

D: But you are right, the user needs are different. How do you reconcile that?

A: You are absolutely right. I’ve spent time in games, education, healthcare, and financial services. The problems are obviously different, but surprisingly, the solutions and the way you think about them are very similar. What is different is the hierarchy of user needs.

In most products, the first thing you must solve for is functionality: does it get the job done?. “Was I able to send 10 rupees?”. The second layer is reliability: can I do this reliably, again and again?. Payments infrastructure is a very complex thing—there are banks, UPI, and multiple providers—so failures happen. This is a basic need. If I send a sheep in Farmville and it doesn’t arrive, it’s not the end of the world. But if I’m standing in line buying medicine, I have to be able to show that blue tick to the guy so the next person in line can pay. So functionality and reliability become huge, huge barriers.

But I’d add, when the cricket stream went down at Hotstar, the brickbats we got in India were insane. “I’m watching the IPL and my Hotstar app is not working.” We would get lambasted. My video stream should not stop working. The problem is to solve for what people care about most, and that thing should not go down.

The wonderful thing I found when I joined GPay was that this was a team that was obviously obsessed with functionality and reliability, but they were also obsessed with the third and fourth layers: usability (Is the product actually usable? Is it easy to use?) and delight.

D: It’s rare to hear “delight” and “payments app” in the same sentence. Where did you see that?

A: There were so many small moments of delight baked into a payments app. That was one of the biggest reasons I joined GPay; here was a team running a payments product that was so obsessed with usability and delight. In gaming, usability and delight are the most important things. A game is not “functional” in that sense, but it has to be usable. Games are designed for the best usability experience. And then delight—every small moment has to be a moment of delight.

I came from a world where usability and delight were very high on my mind, and I loved that this team’s attitude was, “Payments is dull and boring, but we will build a delightful product”. That scratch card, which was a big deal; that blue tick emerging to give you a huge sense of relief that your payment has gone through; the sound effect; the fact you could add stickers or send a “packet” of money—these were beautiful small touches, small delights. You would get rewarded at the end of a payment with a voucher or a scratch card. I still love the fact that this is a PM, design, and engineering team that very openly talks about adding delight.

The bar for what is a minimum viable product has gone much, much higher. The win for anybody who has worked on usability and delight is that these have become part of the bottom layer, as important as functionality and reliability.

AI’s Next Frontier

D: We’ve seen these waves before—the App Store, then streaming video. Now we are in the AI wave. What do you think will change, especially for India?

A: I want to preface this by saying AI and machine learning have been in products for a long time; the amount of ML we used at Hotstar was insane. Generative AI is having a moment from a user perspective. For example, generative AI gives us the ability, if I am a Shubman Gill fan, to take a picture with Shubman Gill. I don’t have to stand in a line for an autograph; I can feel the joy of standing next to him at Wankhede. These are small, delightful experiences, but they matter. Generative AI can help build an experiential layer that did not exist before and will push the barrier for a viable product incredibly high.

Something I’ve been talking about recently is the “early sins” of generative AI: it has been very focused on “ask” versus “do”. Right now, all of GenAI is like a chatbot. You ask it something, and it gives you an answer. A tenth of the world’s population is using that, which is great, but I don’t think that’s how the next 30-40% of the world will interact with it. The “do” variety is when I’ve learned something, and now I’m asking you to do something for me: “Create this image,” “Write this thing,” or “Take care of this workflow for me”. Surprisingly, a very small chunk of people are actually doing the “do” part.

D: That’s an interesting distinction. Can you give an example of evolving an “ask” app to a “do” app?

A: It’s strange because all our functional utility apps are “do” apps: ordering food, e-commerce, ride-hailing. These are action-based apps; you do something, you don’t “ask”. I feel the next big breakthrough, especially for designers and PMs, is to take regular everyday products and figure out how generative AI can play a critical role in that “do” part. How will functionality, reliability, and usability change as a result?.

It could be as simple as recommending a new restaurant based on my food ordering behavior. This could have been done earlier, but GenAI can do it in a very different way. I could now have a “do” conversation: “It’s raining outside, I’m in the mood for chai and pakoras”. The agent knows my payment instruments and which restaurants I like. “Can you get me chai from Chai Point and pakoras from India Snack House, package it in one thing, send it to me, and just tell me I spent 72 rupees?”. Maybe it acts as an agent on my behalf and gets the payment done with one click.

These “agent-ic” flows... we have not even started scratching the surface. The next frontier is AI as your copilot, as your agent, doing things for you without taking away your joy of doing things. That’s a huge frontier to overcome. This is a wonderful time for PMs and designers. You are right; the world has been very deterministic. A leads to B leads to C. Now, A could lead to Gamma.

D: But isn’t there a risk of using AI for things that don’t need it?

A: You still have to solve a fundamental user problem, and you have to do it well, reliably, and in a usable way. A lot of people say, “But why do it using GenAI if your user metrics aren’t going to change?”. Absolutely. But when somebody does do it really well, it’s going to disrupt your business in such a big way that there are no sacred cows here. It’s not like people won’t change. If “agentic e-commerce” takes off, the e-commerce guys are going to have a real wake-up call. This is just the reality. AI is this very big shift, and there will be an early mover’s advantage here in a big way.

If you liked this essay, consider sharing with a friend or a colleague that may enjoy it too. (If you share on socials, tag me. I’m on Twitter (X) and LinkedIn)

Share

Over the past 18 months, I poured lakhs of rupees and time into building automation tools on top of WhatsApp - and failed. That failure opened up something bigger: a look into the tangled web that holds up India’s messaging infrastructure.

This is everything good, bad, and quietly dangerous about WhatsApp - and our growing dependence on it. It’s quite a long read.

If you’re a VC, founder, or policymaker exploring how deeply WhatsApp runs through India’s digital economy - or how we might build beyond it - I’d love to talk. DM me.   

Act 1: The Introduction

The Beauty Store Owner

In 2023, I met a cosmetic store owner in Nagpur who had accidentally invented demand forecasting.

He sells beauty products - Korean serums, Indian sunscreens, foreign moisturizers. His challenge wasn’t competition or pricing. It was more existential: his shelf space could hold maybe 200 SKUs, but his customers now wanted access to 2,000.

Ten years ago, this wasn’t a problem. A woman would walk into his store, and he’d guide her. “Try this Lakmé sunscreen. Let me show you how to apply it.” He hired young women specifically for this - people who could explain products, who could teach.

But Instagram changed the game. Women no longer came to his store to discover products. They came with screenshots, asking for specific Korean brands they’d seen on reels. If he didn’t have it, they left. And he couldn’t stock everything.

So he invented a system.

He joined a vendor WhatsApp group - wholesalers who posted about new products arriving in the market. When something looked promising, he’d post the image to his WhatsApp status. Or he’d share it in a customer group he’d built over years.

Then he’d wait. If even two or three people asked for the price, he knew there was demand. He’d place an order before the product even touched his shelf.

He wasn’t using WhatsApp for communication and marketing alone but turned it into a just-in-time inventory system.

This was India’s answer to the Shopify + Stripe stack. Discovery happened on Instagram. Demand validation happened on WhatsApp Status. Payment happened on UPI. Small businesses had discovered that consumer apps could be hacked into business tools. In this WhatsApp owns India’s communications layer. And unlike every other tech platform, there’s no competitor even close. Instagram competes with Twitter and YouTube. WhatsApp has... nothing.

This creates both opportunity and danger.

The Infrastructure Realization

WhatsApp isn’t a product Indians use. It’s infrastructure Indians depend on.

Infrastructure is different from products. Products are things you choose. Infrastructure is what you assume exists. You don’t think about electricity until the power goes out. You don’t think about roads until they’re blocked.

India stopped thinking about WhatsApp years ago. It’s just... there. Assumed. Essential.

This matters because of a simple truth: when something becomes infrastructure, its problems stop being individual frustrations and start being citizen problems.

A business owner spending two hours a day manually managing WhatsApp groups isn’t just inefficient - it’s a productivity tax on the entire economy.

WhatsApp work messages and personal messages in groups - it’s a design failure that affects work-life balance for millions.

The question isn’t whether India needs better WhatsApp tools. The question is whether WhatsApp, as designed by Meta for Meta’s goals, can ever serve as the infrastructure India needs.

To answer that, we need to understand what WhatsApp actually is - and what it isn’t.

Act 2: What WhatsApp Actually Is (And Isn’t)

The Three Variations of WhatsApp:

Most people think WhatsApp is a single app. It isn’t. Meta offers three distinct products with different users:

1. WhatsApp: The everyday consumer app

2. WhatsApp Business: A mobile app for small businesses, with profiles, catalogs, chat labels, and auto-replies to manage customer chats.

3. WhatsApp Business API: Not an app but infrastructure - an API (via Meta Cloud or Business Solution Partners [1]) that connects WhatsApp to CRMs or back-end systems for large-scale messaging.

Bottom line: one phone number can be linked to only one WhatsApp product at a time. If it’s registered on the WhatsApp Business API, it can’t also be used on the standard app - and vice versa. Though WhatsApp has rolled out a recent workaround.

Here’s the critical part: these three “WhatsApps” behave very differently

• The consumer app and the WhatsApp Business mobile app expose full phone UIs (groups, stories, calls, broadcast lists, catalogs) that people and small shops use directly on an app.

• But the WhatsApp Business API historically only supported a subset of the app features and couldn’t do many of the interactive, UI-driven fetures that make WhatsApp feel like WhatsApp. For example, you cannot create or manage groups, post WhatsApp Status, or manage channels via APIs yet.

Update: Meta has added Groups endpoints and a Calling API to the WhatsApp Business Platform. You can now automate some group actions and initiate voice calls via the API - within tight limits and platform rules. As of Oct 28, 2025 there’s still no official API to post Status Updates like the mobile app.

In short: when small businesses say “we run everything on WhatsApp,” they usually mean the consumer or Business mobile apps - with manual groups, broadcasts, and catalogs. True automation and scale require the Business Platform/API, which is powerful but not really designed for typical SME needs.

How WhatsApp Makes Money?

WhatsApp’s business model is simple.

• Meta charges per message on the WhatsApp Business API, with rates varying by country and message type (Marketing, Utility, Authentication, Service).

• Businesses can reply free of charge within 24 hours of a user’s message; after that, only approved templates can be sent - and those cost money.

• In India, rates are about ₹0.78 for marketing and ₹0.11 for utility/authentication messages. Example: 10,000 marketing messages = ₹7,800; 1,000,000 = ₹7.8 lakh monthly.

• Businesses can use the platform directly via Meta’s Cloud API or through Business Solutions Providers like Gupshup, WATI, Interakt, or Twilio. BSPs add their own fees on top of Meta’s, so prices include markups and platform charges.

• Most WhatsApp SaaS vendors sell both software and message credits - earning largely from those markups. When Meta changes rates, profits shrink or costs rise for customers, creating instability.

The pricing volatility makes WhatsApp a shaky base for predictable business models.

Why Small Businesses Can’t Access Automation?

Here’s a paradox: The businesses that most need WhatsApp automation are the ones least able to use it.

For instance, one of the most common patterns we’ve seen is business owners consistently updating their WhatsApp status each morning with details about the day’s fresh vegetables, sharing posts about new stock in their groups, and responding to customer inquiries within minutes. These actions have become almost daily rituals for entrepreneurs running their businesses on WhatsApp. Such simple automations today are not possible on the main WhatsApp mobile apps but only possible in their API version.

SME challenges of using WhatsApp Business APIs

• Most small businesses in India use one phone number for everything - personal and work. But the WhatsApp Business API needs a separate, dedicated number that can’t run on the regular or Business app.

• Porting the existing number would mean losing existing chats and giving up the mobile app and certain crucial features like groups management and WhatsApp status posting.

• Without the WhatsApp Business API even simple automations stay out of reach for SMEs

• Even with an additional number, setup is a pain. You need to link it to Meta Business Manager, create and submit message templates - all buried in Meta’s dashboards.

Rise of unofficial ‘mod’ apps

Many small businesses turn to unofficial modified versions (mods) of WhatsApp or to access automation and additional features. GBWhatsApp is the most famous unofficial app that can help you run two accounts, auto-reply, tag chats, and send follow-ups, see deleted messages - without using the official API. These tools work but violate WhatsApp’s rules, risk malware or data leaks, and can lead to account bans.

Here are some top features of the WhatsApp ‘mods’ that are helpful for SMEs

• Auto Reply: Configure automatic replies per message or contact.

• Message Scheduler: Schedule messages to send at set times.

• Broadcast to Multiple Groups: Send one message across several groups at once.

• Multi Account Support: Use two or more WhatsApp accounts on one device.

• Bypass Forward Limit: Forward messages to unlimited chats.

• Always Online Mode: Keep your status showing online continuously.

It’s a messy market trading serious security and compliance risks for convenience.

The irony is almost poetic: WhatsApp became essential infrastructure because it was simple and open to everyone. Yet, the moment businesses try to do anything advanced with it, it turns into a maze.

And there’s another catch: most WhatsApp automation tools live on the web, not as mobile apps.

Why? Because if you try to launch a mobile app called “WhatsApp for Business” or “WhatsApp Automation,” Meta will hit you with a trademark notice, and Google Play will take it down. So every SaaS company ends up building a web dashboard instead. But the small business owners live on their mobile devices.

The Policy Uncertainty

If the problem were just technical limits, businesses could adapt- learn the rules, find workarounds, move on.

But the real instability comes from something deeper: WhatsApp optimizes for Meta’s goals, not yours - and those goals change without warning.

That creates systemic unpredictability that businesses quietly pay for.

• Delivery drops: In 2022–23, marketing messages reached 90–95% of users. By mid-2025, that fell below 75%. Meta added hidden user-level caps to fight spam - no announcement, no numbers. Businesses only found out after delivery cratered. [2]

• Sudden suspensions: Accounts get blocked - sometimes permanently - for vague policy violations. The appeal process is slow, and while it runs, operations stop cold. [3]

• Shifting rules: In Oct 2025, WhatsApp quietly banned all “general-purpose AI chatbots.” The term isn’t defined, leaving even compliant tools exposed. [4]

Even if you master the tech, pricing, and compliance, you’re still building on shifting ground - where Meta’s priorities decide your uptime.

Why Meta Won’t Fix This?

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: these aren’t problems Meta is trying to solve. They’re features of the system working as intended.

Meta is an advertising company; ads pay the bills.

Every product in their portfolio - Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, even Oculus - exists to collect data and sell ads. WhatsApp is the outlier. It’s a messaging tool that, in a different world, might have evolved like Telegram, Slack or Microsoft Teams: an open platform where developers build productivity tools, businesses customize workflows, and ecosystems flourish.

But that’s not Meta’s DNA.

If WhatsApp opened up like Slack, businesses would build their own solutions. They’d customize the experience. They’d create value that Meta couldn’t capture. From Meta’s perspective, that’s money left on the table.

So instead, WhatsApp is being slowly transformed into an ads platform. You’re starting to see it:

• Ads in WhatsApp Status (already rolling out)

• Paid WhatsApp channels (in beta)

• Business messaging in groups

• Click to WhatsApp ads

From a pure business perspective, this makes sense. Why would Meta invest engineering resources to solve a hundred-million-dollar problem (Indian MSME productivity) when they could deploy those same resources toward a billion-dollar opportunity (WhatsApp ads)?

To put it bluntly: Meta doesn’t care about your kirana store’s inventory management problem. Not because they’re evil, but because they’re a trillion-dollar company optimizing for trillion-dollar opportunities.

WhatsApp will never be the open platform India needs, because Meta’s business model requires it to stay closed.

Which raises an obvious question: If WhatsApp can’t serve as the infrastructure India needs, what can?

Act 3: The WeChat Dream

India’s WhatsApp problem isn’t unique. China faced something similar a decade ago - and solved it deliberately.

WeChat handles everything WhatsApp does, plus native payments, mini-apps, ride-hailing, food delivery, and government services. The architectural choices Tencent made are precisely what WhatsApp lacks.

Messaging Constraints.

• In WeChat, businesses can send users only 4 marketing messages directly per month through service account. Beyond that, marketing messages get quarantined into a separate subscription feed/folder - visible but segregated from personal conversations.

  

• This forces discipline. Every message must justify its existence. The result: businesses target better, users feel less harassed, and the platform maintains trust.

  

• WhatsApp has no such limits. Businesses face tiered messaging caps (starting at 1,000 recipients daily for new accounts) but these scale automatically based on quality scores. The only real constraint is cost - and when marketing messages work, companies pay willingly. The incentive structure rewards volume, not restraint.

Data Portability

• When an employee leaves a Chinese company, their WeChat relationships vanish with them- customer conversations, sales context, years of institutional knowledge, gone.

• Tencent solved this with WeCom (WeChat Work), a parallel app for professional communication. In WeCom, workplace conversations belong to the company, not the employee. When someone leaves, their account transfers. Customer relationships survive.

• Search for a person on WeChat in China, you see two options: their personal WeChat, professional WeCom. Same ecosystem, separate contexts. You message friends on WeChat, coordinate work on WeCom. Both feel familiar, both interoperate, neither bleeds into the other.

• In 2022, WeCom has about 180 Million active users and are used by over 10 million businesses in China. [5]

India needs exactly this architecture.

The boutique store owner shouldn’t manage customer orders where his daughter sends memes. The sales team shouldn’t lose client relationships when someone quits. The contractor shouldn’t coordinate labor in the same group planning his wife’s birthday.

The solution exists. WeCom proves separating contexts without fragmenting networks is possible. But WhatsApp won’t implement it - not because of encryption, but because of infrastructure.

WhatsApp’s value to Meta isn’t in reading your messages - they’re encrypted. It’s in the metadata around them: who you talk to, when, from where, and which businesses you engage with.

Meta has added ads to WhatsApp’s Status tab, but the real value lies in metadata and business messaging, not large-scale ad placements. Linking WhatsApp, Facebook, and Instagram through Accounts Center lets Meta build a unified behavioral profile - without touching message content. [6]

Splitting personal and professional WhatsApp use would shatter that identity layer. Meta wouldn’t lose access to messages - it never had them - but it would lose the metadata correlation powering cross-platform personalization.

Keeping all communication in one place creates richer data, tighter business tracking, and a more valuable ecosystem.

Which leaves the real question: if Meta won’t separate it, who will?

Act 4: The ONDC Model for Messaging

WhatsApp isn’t going anywhere.
Half a billion Indians won’t switch apps. Businesses won’t rebuild customer relationships. The network effects are too strong, the switching costs too high. Our goal should be to build optionality in the form of building ONDC-like infra for messaging. A protocol could make the platform used irrelevant.

Instead of building one mega-app to rule all of e-commerce, ONDC built the rails underneath. A seller listing on one ONDC app can be discovered by buyers on completely different apps. Orders, payments, fulfillment - all work across platforms. No gatekeepers. Just open infrastructure.

The same architecture can break WhatsApp’s monopoly.

Build for one killer use case:

A messaging protocol doesn’t need 500 million users on day one. It needs 500,000 users who will pay because the protocol solves a problem WhatsApp won’t.

For example we could start with construction contractors. They need labor coordination, site photos, payment tracking, and material orders - all over messaging. WhatsApp works, but barely. A purpose-built tool would save them hours daily.

That’s the wedge. Once one vertical proves interoperability works, others follow - logistics, healthcare, education, government services. The network grows without forcing anyone to switch.

The protocol layer should provide the essential stuff:

• End-to-end encryption standards

• Message delivery guarantees

• Identity verification

• Cross-app routing APIs

Different apps build specialized experiences on top: One for Gen Z, one for the elderly, one for MSMEs and they should all be able to talk to each other. Same network. Different interfaces.

Just like you can email someone on Gmail from Outlook. The protocol doesn’t care. It just routes messages. Email, the web, and Bluetooth already work on open protocols.

Conclusion

WhatsApp solved India’s communication problem. Now India needs to solve WhatsApp’s incentive problem.

That doesn’t mean banning WhatsApp or building a clone. It means creating optionality - a messaging layer where WhatsApp is one choice among many, not the only one that works.

This isn’t about nationalism or rejecting foreign technology. It’s about infrastructure resilience. No nation should have its business communication layer entirely controlled by a single foreign corporation with different incentives.

The question isn’t whether to replace WhatsApp.

The question is: What does India need to build so that WhatsApp’s limitations stop being India’s limitations?

That’s the conversation worth having.

If you liked this essay, consider sharing with a friend or a colleague that may enjoy it too. (If you share on socials, tag me. I’m on Twitter (X) and LinkedIn)

Share

Shoutout to Gowri N Kishore and Krishna Hegde for reading the preview and helping sharpen the edits.

Annexure:

1. What are Business Solution Providers?

2. WhatsApp’s New Marketing Message Limits Policy Change: Detailed Guide

3. WhatsApp Business API Account Disabled? Here’s How to Unban it!

4. WhatsApp changes its terms to bar general-purpose chatbots from its platform

5. WeChat’s corporate communication tool reached 180 Million active users

6. Adding WhatsApp to Meta Accounts Center.

You can download the People’s Voice report on AI opportunities for Indian SMEs, created by People+AI in collaboration with 1990 Research Labs, below.

Download Report

When I visited, the shop stretched across three shutters. Only one of them still sold shoes. The second had been turned into storage, a graveyard of old stock stacked to the ceiling in metal racks. The third had already been converted into a tea stall, selling biscuits and condiments.

Inside, the shop looks tired. Shoe boxes are piled unevenly, some fresh, some faded with dust. The walls are peeling, wires hang loose. You can sense the withdrawal - less care, less effort, as if the place itself knows its time is up.

Kathir has spent forty years in retail. He started as a helper at 13, worked in a dozen shops, then built a flourishing footwear chain of 6 stores at its peak and had thirty employees. Today, he sits barefoot on a stool, running the last one left.

“For the past 6 months, I have been telling my customers about closing the chappal shop. I am reducing the stock intake also. The racks are empty and looks odd , so I removed the racks also. The customers started asking me, so I told them the reason that I am going to close down the shop. I am showing the varieties that I have, which is very less. So, the sales is also reducing.”

The decline reflects broader small-town retail trends. Customer habits shifted toward online shopping, offering greater selection. Profit margins decreased, haggling increased, and seasonal sales no longer ensured business survival.

Education Without a Classroom

At age 13, Kathir was already worked on shop floors - grocery stores, iron shops, jewelry counters, arrack outlets, even a cinema theatre. He never stayed long, a year or two at most.

He learned to sweep floors, count cash, arrange shelves. More importantly, he learned how to greet a customer, how to read what they wanted, how to build trust. He calls his early bosses his “gurus.” School ended for him in the sixth standard, but education didn’t.

“If it is a lady, I would say that this chappal would go nice on her feet. If it is a male, then I would say that this chappal (footwear) would fit well for them. We cannot sell anything without talking. Only when we compliment them and sell the item, it is satisfying for us also. Some ladies ask whether this chappal looks good in their feet. We should also try and praise from our side, only then they would agree to purchase.”

By the time he had saved some money, the decision to start on his own was obvious. First a grocery shop. Then a bakery. Each business was an experiment. And when he saw a nearby footwear shop doing well but poorly managed, he didn’t hesitate. He bought it and made it his own and has been his identity for 20 years now.

The glory years: availability, trust, and word-of-mouth

For years, the formula to succeed was simple. Kathir’s footwear shops sat on a main road with steady footfall. He opened early (5:30–6:00 AM back then), closed late, and didn’t advertise - he didn’t need to. Customers traveled from 10-45 km because the shop “had all the models they wanted,” and word-of-mouth did the rest. Daily sales of ₹10,000 were normal; even Sundays did ₹3–4K. At his peak 15 years ago, he ran six shops with 30 workers. Margins were healthy (often ~30%), and mid-tier brands like VKC helped by protecting retailer margin.

The rule was straightforward: if the exact product wasn’t there, the customer bought the next best thing. Breadth of assortment plus a little personal attention was all it took.

Changing customer behaviour

The biggest shift for the business was consumer behaviour.

• Design-first, photo-in-hand shopping: Walk-ins now come after browsing “on the net.” They ask to see the “latest,” let the owner pull out half the racks, then reveal a specific photo on their phone and demand that exact model. If it’s not available, they leave. Kathir is explicit: design, more than price, is the blocker. Even when he matches price, the customer walks if the pattern isn’t exact.

They (customers) come after they have decided what to buy in online. They ask for a particular thing. We also give it to them. Then again, they show , what is available online. When we say, we don’t have the same pattern or design, they just leave, wasting our time. Even if we show the same product what they expect, they ask for a different model.

• Online price anchoring and offline haggling: Price discovery has migrated online. A pair he sells at ₹320 might be visible online at ₹240. Whether or not the online listing is comparable, it anchors expectation. Offline, bargaining has normalized - he says ~90 out of 100 people now ask for a discount, which was rare earlier.

“People started having the mindset to bargain now. When they go to big shops, they don’t bargain. Wherever I go, I tell them that I have a shop and it would be appreciated if you can reduce the price. If they say it is fixed rate, then I don’t get into bargaining mode. But today many people try to reduce. If 100 people come, 90 of them try to reduce the price.”

• Channel shift weakened in-store discovery: Previously, the shop was the first place a customer figured out what they wanted. Now the decision happens elsewhere; the store is an order-fulfillment stop. When you’re judged on your ability to match a photo, assortment precision matters more than breadth.

They (Customers) don’t show the photo as soon as they come. They first ask us to show the latest model. We also show them. We would take out everything and show them. Then they specifically show the photo and ask for a particular design or model. We immediately understand that they have not come to buy anything. When we tell them that we don’t have that model, they would leave and business gets affected. Also, if I am selling it at 320 rupees, the same is sold for 240 rupees online. So, they prefer online.

Kathir can’t always source the models customers ask for. Even with brand catalogues and article numbers (e.g., VKC), the supplier network doesn’t mirror online variety. Ordering by phone helps for replenishment, but for design-specific requests, he still prefers visiting in person to hunt sizes 8–9 (the most demanded). This introduces lag and mismatch.

When he started, nearby options were limited. Today, he counts ~15 additional shops in the vicinity. The effect is two-fold: split footfall and lower switching costs.

Inventory risk has risen:

• Old stock isn’t always returnable (typically only within ~1 month).

• Ageing materials can “break like biscuit” or bleed color if unused too long - dead stock becomes defective stock.

Operational frictions that amplify the decline

• Manpower and trust: He once managed ~30 workers; today it’s mostly family. He cites phone addiction, low reliability, and attitude issues among new hires. Less help means fewer hands to serve, search stock, and sell - a disadvantage when customers expect instant design matches.

• Credit leakage: He extends credit to “good” customers; some don’t repay. Small losses matter more when margins are tight.

• Digitization gap: He adopted PhonePe after demonetization to avoid losing sales, but still validates via SMS, and avoids computerized billing - writing bills on paper with a seal if pressed. It works, but it places him slightly out of sync with customers who expect formal receipts.

• Supplier trust has thinned: The old mode - big wholesalers extending stock on trust - has faded. Without that cushion, scaling up quickly for seasonal bursts is harder.

God as a companion.

Every time Kathir speaks about any topic - the customer, the vendor, the supplier, or money—there is an element of God that he invokes in the conversation.

Starting with simple things, like how he begins his day, Kathir performs a puja, prays to God, and feels grateful for the first sale. He closes the day with a prayer. All these gestures are an attempt to invite God into his business because he fundamentally believes that everything - from the customer to the ups and downs of his life, the uncertainties about the shop’s future - is an act of God.

Every purchase feels like a blessing that a customer chose to buy footwear from his shop. Consequently, his customer service stems from this mindset of service rather than transaction. He addresses customers politely, asks about their daily lives, and feels great when he meets their needs. He feels sad and guilty when he cannot.

The aspect of God is invoked in every conversation; it feels as if God is Kathir’s business partner. In his mind, God is real, present, and an integral part of the business.

By God’s grace, I have everything including a house. I need to earn at least 30K per month which I don’t get. I have been trying to improve my business but I am unable to do. I know to do lot of jobs. I have worked in grocery shop, jewel shop, iron shop, arrack shop, whiskey shop, worked in cinema theatres. But now I want to do some business which is actually in demand.

Conclusion

The store will probably not last. One shutter is already a tea stall. Another is just storage. The last is limping along. At some point, it too will change. Kathir’s story isn’t about footwear. It’s about how the rules change mid-game, and sometimes there’s nothing you can do about it.

For forty years, he did everything right: opened early, stocked wide, treated people well. It worked brilliantly - until the day it stopped working at all. The world didn’t get meaner. The game just changed.

Kathir talks about moving into juice and ice cream - businesses with daily demand, more suited to the pace of today. He sees it as another blessing, another test, another line of survival.

This research was conducted for the People+AI’s report ‘People’s Voice’ where we uncovered AI opportunities for Indian MSMEs. You can download the full report here.

Download the report

Seekho is a business that shouldn’t work: charging people for content they can get free elsewhere. On the surface, Seekho looks like just another short-form video app. Vertical clips, swipes, quick dopamine hits - the same language Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts speak. But Seekho’s promise is different: Netflix for education.

That sounds bold, until you open it. Because what you find inside is not professors teaching Python or directors like Christopher Nolan breaking down cinema. Instead, the content feels surprisingly everyday.

• ‘How to update your Aadhaar card?’.

• ‘Businesses you can start with ₹50,000’.

• ‘How to shoot a YouTube video?’.

The topics aren’t glamorous. The creators aren’t celebrities. Many of these videos already exist for free on Instagram or YouTube. And yet, Seekho puts them behind a paywall - and millions of Indians pay.

So the obvious question is: why? Why would someone pay for what they could find free? What is it about the product, the design, the psychology of the user journey that turns free content into a subscription business?

In this edition, I unpack Seekho’s onboarding, positioning, engagement, retention, and quirks - not to glorify or dismiss, but to understand. Behind it lies a bigger story: how Indian users prize convenience and curation in ways Silicon Valley often underestimates.

Where does Seekho fit in?

Seekho isn’t the first app to experiment with “vertical video education.”

Back in 2020, Unacademy launched vertical video first education platform called Graphy, bringing in names like Harsha Bhogle and Viswanathan Anand to teach courses. The inspiration was obvious: MasterClass, but in reels format. High-quality, niche skills. Big personalities. Production polish.

And yet - it didn’t click. The format faded, the product pivoted, and today Graphy is more of a tool for creators to run communities than a destination for learning.

Seekho, however, has found traction. But not by chasing celebrities or premium niches. Instead, it’s done something subtler. If MasterClass is about inspiration, Seekho is about everyday hacks.

I tried placing Seekho in a 2x2 matrix of top businesses in the adjacent sectors

That puts Seekho in an odd but fertile quadrant: edutainment with a paywall. It’s like Blinkist - but instead of compressing books into summaries, Seekho compresses life skills into short clips.

The “Show” Model

Seekho calls itself the Netflix of education—not because of the content, but because of the structure.

On YouTube, anyone can upload. On Seekho, only curated “showrunners” can. Each showrunner is handpicked by the company, given pilot topics (say, how to make a resume or how to apply for a PAN card), and tested. If the pilot draws clicks and completion, the show gets extended. If it doesn’t, it’s cancelled.

This system solves a classic platform problem: quality vs. scale.

• Too open, like YouTube, and you drown in noise.

• Too restrictive, like a traditional course platform, and you risk stagnation.

Seekho strikes a middle path by betting on a small pool of vetted creators.

The numbers prove it: in 2024, founder Rohit shared that just 12 creators produced most of Seekho’s library. It’s also efficient - fewer creators means easier oversight, fewer quality issues, and stronger brand control.

The creators themselves are incentivized like Netflix studios. They wear Seekho t-shirts, open with a scripted “Seekho exclusive,” and run their shows semi-independently. If they plateau on one category, Seekho nudges them into another. Top creators can reportedly earn up to ₹2 lakhs/month.

But here’s the twist: despite this, creators only capture about 5% of Seekho’s total revenue. Why? Because customer acquisition eats the pie. That leaves Seekho more dependent on subscription volume - very different from YouTube’s ad-share model.

This is why the Netflix comparison holds. Netflix doesn’t open its doors to everyone it partners with select studios, funds their shows, and distributes them under its brand umbrella. Seekho is borrowing that playbook. When you watch a “Seekho show,” it doesn’t feel like one of a million random YouTube tutorials. It feels intentional - like you’re paying for order, not just information.

How Seekho Makes Money?

Every platform eventually answers the same question: who pays, and for what?

For Seekho, the answer is clear. Subscriptions only.

There are no ads, no affiliate links, no brand sponsorships in the background. Every show on Seekho sits behind a paywall. The funnel is simple:

• A teaser week for as little as ₹1, locked to autopay.

• Then, a subscription of ₹149/month on Android (₹199 on iOS).

• Or, for the committed, ₹599/year.

That’s it. No free tier, no ad-supported option.

(PS: The prices seem to have an A/B test across audience and devices hence these shall be taken as references)

It’s a bold stance in a market where YouTube dominates precisely because it is free. Seekho is betting on a very different psychology: people don’t just want free content, they want certainty, curation, and convenience - and they’ll pay for it.

The lack of ads also signals something important: Seekho doesn’t want to be in the attention business. It wants to be in the trust business.

When the only revenue line is subscriptions, you’re in a race against user fatigue: how many months before someone feels they’ve “extracted enough value” and cancels? That’s the paradox of Seekho: the same simplicity that makes its model appealing is also what makes it risky.

How does Seekho position itself?

Most of Seekho’s audience seem to come the old-fashioned way: paid ads. But what those ads say is more interesting than the spend behind them.

When you scan Seekho’s ad library, a pattern emerges. The messaging falls into a handful of buckets:

Authority & FOMO

An authoritative voice educates you about government schemes you might miss. This is classic fear-of-missing-out, packaged as public service.

Aspirational Hustle

The pitch that others are earning online while you are wasting time. Ads frame Seekho as the shortcut to income - whether through YouTube, Instagram, or side-business ideas.

Problem-Specific Triggers

Targeted nudges for people already struggling with something:

1. “Not getting views on your channel? Here’s how to fix it.”

2. “Milk production falling? Learn why and what to do.”

Cultural & Spiritual Hooks

Even planetary misalignments get a mention. If you feel stuck, maybe it’s your stars. Seekho positions itself as the platform where you’ll find not just practical fixes, but also broader life guidance.

Everyday Hacks

At the other end of the spectrum: cleaning, organizing, running a household better. Not glamorous, but deeply relatable.

Together, these ads show a clever strategy. Seekho isn’t trying to look like Harvard Online. It’s trying to be the trusted elder sibling who knows a little more than you do - and can save you time, money, or embarrassment.

Onboarding: The One-Rupee Test

Most apps roll out the red carpet when you first sign up - free trials, skip buttons, optional upgrades. Seekho takes the opposite approach. From the very first screen, after you punch in your mobile number, the app asks for money.

Not much - just ₹1. But that tiny request does something powerful: it locks in an autopay mandate. A week later, unless you cancel, you’re billed ₹149.

It’s a risky move. Asking for payment at step zero creates friction. But it also acts as a filter. By paying ₹1, a user signals intent. And by tying payment to autopay, Seekho converts curiosity into commitment.

The onboarding doesn’t leave this to chance. If you back out when UPI asks for ₹199, the app intercepts you with a persuasive video. It reassures you: “Only ₹1 today. Cancel anytime.” That little nudge rescues what could have been a lost customer.

This is smart design. Seekho treats payment failures as moments to educate and persuade.

The rest of the flow is straightforward - trial first, then a monthly plan. But the psychological magic is in that upfront ask. Seekho reframes payment not as a hurdle, but as proof of seriousness.

The Categories of Curiosity

If you want to understand Seekho, don’t just look at its features - look at its categories. Because categories are a mirror of what people really want.

At the top, you’ll find YouTube and Instagram playbooks for growing followers, making videos, and earning money online. Then comes Sarkari Kaam - everything from Aadhaar updates to applying for licenses to discovering government schemes. Surrounding these are courses on part-time income, small businesses, and market opportunities.

Notice the pattern? The categories orbit around three gravitational pulls:

1. Money – How to earn, save, or build something with low capital.

2. Fame – How to be seen, grow online, and build a personal brand.

3. Faith – How to align your life with cultural, spiritual, or astrological guidance.

Strip everything else away, and those are the big levers. Not abstract curiosity, not “learning for learning’s sake.” Seekho knows that in India, most learning is outcome-driven. Pottery isn’t about art - it’s about whether you can sell pots. Astrology isn’t just mysticism - it’s a framework for hope when money or fame feel out of reach.

This is what makes Seekho unique. Its library isn’t structured like a university syllabus. It’s structured like a mirror of aspiration. A catalogue of the small, practical, sometimes quirky ways Indians chase progress.

Browsing Like Netflix, Not YouTube

Click into a Seekho category and the resemblance is clear: it feels more like Netflix than YouTube.

Where YouTube surrounds every video with clutter - titles, descriptions, view counts, comments - Seekho strips all of that away. Each course is represented by a single thumbnail. The thumbnail does all the work: a splash of text, an image, and that’s it. No reviews. No ratings. No “10k people watched this.”

Inside the videos, the format is equally minimal. A creator speaks directly to the camera. Clips are intercut with AI-generated images, animations, and B-roll. Everything auto-plays to the next episode, nudging you into a binge loop.

There are lightweight engagement hooks: a like button, a share option, a bookmark tab. But comments icon is just a private feedback to the creator - not a public forum. There’s no space to argue, rate, or review.

It’s a very conscious choice. Udemy thrives on ratings. YouTube thrives on comments. Even MasterClass gives you long descriptions of each instructor. Seekho, like Netflix, hides the social layer. It replaces community judgment with a controlled, curated experience.

The upside: simplicity and focus.

The downside: isolation. You never quite know what others think of the content. Which means trust rests entirely on the Seekho brand itself.

The app studio playbook

Strip Seekho down and you’ll notice something striking: it’s incredibly simple.

The content isn’t complex. The design isn’t cluttered. The onboarding doesn’t meander. Every piece - from categories to videos to payments - is engineered for low friction. And once Seekho cracked this formula, they didn’t just stop. They scaled the playbook.

Instead of stuffing every possible need into one app, Seekho has spun up an app studio model:

• Arivu (knowledge) – Seekho reimagined for Tamil audiences.

• Nerchuko (learn) – a Telugu version.

• A dedicated English-learning app.

• A dedicated learning app for kids

• Even an AI chat app—likely an experiment in format.

Each one borrows the same skeleton: short, practical, bingeable content delivered with Netflix-style simplicity. But the skin changes - language, context, and audience.

This is smart for two reasons:

1. India is not one market. What works in Hindi may flop in Tamil. Separate apps let Seekho localize deeply without diluting the main product.

2. Distribution beats features. By cloning the model, Seekho multiplies its surface area for user acquisition, while keeping production costs low.

And according to reports, they’re already testing whether this playbook can travel beyond India - into the US and other markets.

Pain points

For all its polish, Seekho isn’t without its frustrations.

The first is philosophical: no free content. Every course sits behind a paywall. For some users, this feels like a dealbreaker - especially in a country where YouTube offers infinite tutorials for free. On forums and reviews, you often see the same complaint: “Why should I pay for what I can get on YouTube?”

Seekho’s answer is simple: curation over chaos. But the trade-off is clear - people who want to “sample before they buy” never get that chance inside the app.

The second pain point is practical: unsubscribing. Setting up autopay is easy - just ₹1 upfront, one click, and you’re in. But cancelling is a maze. You need to tap Profile → More → Settings → My Subscriptions before you even see the option. What started as low friction on the way in becomes high friction on the way out.

This is a classic tension in subscription products. Push too hard on retention mechanics, and you risk crossing into user hostility. It’s the digital equivalent of the hotel that makes check-in seamless but checkout painful.

These aren’t fatal flaws, but they do shape perception. For a brand built on trust and simplicity, hiding unsubscribe buttons can quietly erode both.

The bigger picture

Seekho is, in many ways, deceptively simple. A paywall on everyday tutorials. A handful of creators producing the bulk of content. A distribution engine running on paid ads.

And yet, that simplicity hides something profound. Seekho shows us that in India, people don’t always want “more.” They want clarity, certainty, and curation. They don’t want to sift through hours of YouTube videos. Getting Seekho subscription signals seriousness in life for an individual. That’s the genius here. Seekho hasn’t reinvented education. It has reframed it.

So is Seekho the future of Indian edtech? Or just a cleverly tuned subscription hack? Time will tell.

In the end, Seekho is a mirror of what India’s digital middle class values most: small wins, fast answers, and the feeling of moving forward.

If this essay sparked something for you, consider sharing it with a friend or community that might enjoy it too. I always love hearing different perspectives—feel free to reply here or drop a DM on Twitter/X.

Share

References:

1. [Entracker] Exclusive: Seekho set to raise $25 Mn, hits $4 Mn monthly revenue (Based on information from trusted sources, current revenue stands at $10M. If there are any discrepancies, the figures will be updated accordingly with supporting documentation.)

2. [Elevation Capital] Seekho: Building the ‘Netflix for Learning’ | Day One | Elevation Capital

3. [Waterbridge Ventures] Making Learning Addictive with Seekho, India’s First Edutainment OTT ft Rohit Choudhary | TOI S04E07

I was fifteen when my mother gave me the strangest gift: the power to choose my own name. Not a username or stage name - my actual legal name.

This sounds like freedom, but it was the opposite. My mother, who had been studying astrology, handed me a numerology book and told me to pick a name whose letters added up to 32. She was convinced that my ex-name wasn’t aiding my success. The next day, I had to announce to my 10th-grade class that I was now "Dharmesh Ba." They class gave me a standing ovation. I still don't know why.

When I passed my board examinations brilliantly, my mother attributed it to the cosmic forces now aligned in my favor. Every success thereafter-college admission, first job, first home-became evidence not of my effort, but of planetary intervention.

Here's what I learned: when you give someone else credit for your wins, you also give them power over your losses.

The effect of outsourced thinking

My mother didn't intend to make me dependent on astrology. She thought she was helping. But good intentions and good outcomes are different things, and the gap between them often widens over time.

Every time she attributed my success to cosmic forces, she subtly eroded my confidence in my own abilities. When things went wrong, she'd say it wasn't my fault-the timing was just bad, and I should wait a few months before trying anything new.

This created a feedback loop: the more I relied on astrological guidance, the less I trusted my own judgment. The less I trusted my judgment, the more I needed external validation. It's the same psychology that keeps people checking their phones every few minutes-each external input becomes a substitute for internal confidence.

The compound effect was profound. By my twenties, I couldn't make significant decisions without consulting the stars. I had accidentally trained myself to be helpless.

Tech makes astrology a daily affair

Traditional astrology had built-in friction. You consulted astrologers for major life decisions - marriage, career changes, health crises. The process was cumbersome: astrologer appointments, travel, waiting rooms. This friction kept astrology rare and significant.

Modern astrology apps have eliminated this friction entirely. They've taken something designed for life's biggest moments and turned it into a solution for daily anxieties.

The most popular query on these platforms isn't about career decisions or marriage prospects. It's variations of: "My boyfriend blocked me on Instagram. Will he come back?"

We've transformed a tool for major crossroads into a coping mechanism for minor inconveniences. The result is predictable: when every small problem becomes a cosmic question, you lose the ability to develop resilience for small problems.

The economics of addiction

Astrology apps have discovered something powerful: the most profitable customers are the least empowered ones.

Their business model is elegant in its simplicity. Offer a free first chat. By the time users are emotionally invested, introduce a paywall. Astrologers are incentivized to extend conversations and sell additional services. Users return whenever they face uncertainty - which, for humans, is roughly every day.

This creates what economists call a "negative externality" - the transaction benefits both parties in the short term while creating long-term costs that neither fully accounts for. The app gets subscription revenue, the user gets temporary comfort, but society gradually accumulates people who can't make decisions without celestial permission.

The parallel to other industries is obvious. Tobacco companies profit from addiction while creating long-term health costs. Social media companies profit from engagement while creating long-term attention problems. Astrology apps profit from dependency while creating long-term decision-making problems.

The incentive problem

My mother eventually realized what she'd done. In her late fourties, she actively discouraged me from seeking astrological guidance. She feared she'd raised a son who couldn't navigate life independently.

This moment of clarity reveals the core issue: astrology apps will never have this realization because their incentives prevent it. They profit most when users feel least capable of making their own decisions.

The AI acceleration

ChatGPT and similar apps will supercharge this trend. When astrological advice becomes instantly available, infinitely patient, and eerily personalized, the last barriers to dependency disappear.

AI will be sophisticated enough to provide genuine psychological insights (because it excels at pattern recognition in human behavior) while being fundamentally wrong about causation (because correlation isn't causation, even when delivered by neural networks).

We're approaching a world where an entire generation grows up outsourcing decision-making to algorithmic fortune tellers.

What actually compounds

The most expensive advice often costs nothing upfront but everything eventually.

The irony is profound: in seeking to control uncertainty through prediction, people become more vulnerable to uncertainty by abandoning the very skills that help navigate an unpredictable world.

The greatest prediction is the one we make with our own life.

But what if I told you about a founder who built something completely different? A product so essential that a hundred million monthly active users - a hundred million - have downloaded it, yet you've probably never heard of the person who created it. No TechCrunch headlines. No unicorn valuations. No founder Twitter celebrity.

This is the story of Nizam and "Where is My Train" (WIMT) - Google's first consumer product acquisition in India. ‘Where is my Train’ solved one simple problem - ‘How can I track train status every minute without internet or GPS?’.

Years after stepping away from active involvement Nizam and WIMT still organically get praise on Reddit and Twitter. The product speaks louder than its creator ever did.

This article is an edited version of a podcast-style video I recorded with him almost a year ago If you're building for India or interested in Indian digital products, you'll find this content extremely valuable. Consider taking notes as there's much to learn.

What does WIMT do?

For starters, "Where is my train" is an app that tracks trains without internet, using cell towers during journeys. It includes:

• Station-based wake-up alarm

• Offline access to train schedules and fares

• Coach and seat arrangements

• Live platform arrival and delay updates

The app works offline during your journey, requiring internet only when you're not on the train.

Intro

Where is my Train? This app, launched in 2015, was acquired by Google in 2018, becoming Google's first product acquisition in India. Nizam, a first-time entrepreneur, settled on building Where is my Train after exploring about 20 different concepts. This article will focus on how they discovered this idea and their reasoning behind it.

Why trains?

How did you land onto building Where is my train?

I always wanted to do something on my own. I dabbled with at least 20 ideas before "Where Is My Train." (WIMT) Whenever I shared the statement, "What if you could track a train without internet or GPS," people immediately asked, "How will you do that?" That's where I saw potential. Their curiosity made me choose this idea. Another thing that attracted me to "Where Is My Train" was the sheer number of people who use trains. There are 25 million people traveling daily whose needs are not satisfied.

In 2015, only few digital products could greatly elevate user experience and Uber's live cab tracking was one of them. Once I was going to pick up somebody from the railway station and faced a 30-minute delay in the train arrival. That sparked a thought: I came in an Uber and it was great to track - why not have the same for trains with thousands of people? My decision to work on WIMT was a mix of these thoughts.

There were multiple train tracking apps before WIMT, why did you have to build another one?

Everyone was subpar, actually. They were scraping NTES (National Train Enquiry System) data, scraping data from Indian Railways. They were just a shell holder of that same data. But at the end of the day, the problem is we need second-by-second updates of these trains, just like Uber. And that was not there with any of these apps.

The NTES is an official service provided by Indian Railways that offers real-time running information for trains across India. This includes updates on train schedules, live train status, estimated arrivals and departures at stations, delays, and train movements.

When you look at this public transport market itself, it looked like there was a lot of fragmentation and nobody was doing a great job at it. In India itself, there were 50-plus apps that show some demand in the market, but there is not a good app in that space. I have this philosophy: if an app in a category doesn't have a 4.6 or 4.7 rating with a huge number of downloads, that category is still not solved. You can go after it.

The Offline-First Philosophy: Building for Pre-Jio India

How did you strive to be different?

Earlier Nokia feature phones would display the tower location information along with signal strength. The cell info option was incredibly practical. Whenever you traveled on a bus or train, you could determine roughly where you were. The cell tower location data wasn't visible in Android.

I decided to track train location primarily using cell towers because high-quality GPS navigation is only necessary for turn-by-turn directions. For trains, which are about half a kilometer long, an accuracy of a few kilometers is sufficient.

In 2015, people turned off battery-draining features like internet to conserve power. Hence, I needed to build a completely offline solution for users in the pre-Jio era. That's the origin of building a train tracking solution that doesn't require internet or GPS. It seemed like magic to me, and I was eager to implement it.

From day one, the goal was to gather enough users utilizing the app inside trains so we could crowdsource data and create a Google Traffic equivalent for trains that everyone could access. While this was the initial concept, it took two years to reach the crowdsourcing phase. To build momentum and attract sufficient users on each train, I needed to take that offline approach.

How did you crowdsource cell tower data initially?

Without knowing cell tower distribution, how can you track trains using them? To address this, I created an APK that logs both GPS location and cell tower data in the background. I installed this app on my phone during a Wayanad (Kerala) trip with friends. I also distributed it to several friends who regularly travel to Chennai by train. The APK generated log files which they shared with me via email. I plotted these logs using Google Maps API and observed an interesting pattern.

When examining the cell tower distributions against GPS coordinates, a clear pattern emerged. Around railway stations, there was extremely high accuracy of cell tower coverage. Between stations, at least 2G towers existed, though the coverage was sparser. This makes sense because users primarily care about knowing when they've arrived at a station. The accuracy at stations was comparable to GPS, within a few meters. This density occurs because stations have many people making calls and using data, naturally requiring more towers, while remote areas have fewer. When plotted, I could literally see the railway tracks outlined by the tower coverage.

Another question was whether these cell tower IDs were static or changed daily. Without official data on tower locations, we needed to determine this ourselves. Through observation with the same APK, we discovered that the IDs were indeed static and could be utilized effectively. We ultimately compressed all of India's cell tower data along train routes into just 7-8 MB.

How did you manage to get the data of the cell phone towers of across the country?

So the initial cell tower data was purely collected by giving the app to friends, all the friends I know. I sent them the basic app, which also logs GPS and other information. Even before launching, I used to give that data logging app to many of my friends. If I found somebody going to Delhi or Kolkata, I would give it to them, and they would cover that trip. And if you cover a lot of main stretches, that's good enough.

Later, to gather more cell tower data, we innovated. There is curiosity among people to check the speed of the train. So we had a speedometer feature when we launched the app. When they used the speedometer feature, we would also get the GPS location and the cell tower location. And then we used that data for the cell tower mode.

And as more and more people used the app, it improved. So on day one, it was not that great, but it worked very well for a few routes, and it was also dependent on the cell tower operators.

The Anti-Marketing Growth Strategy

How did you get your first 1000 users?

We wanted to share our app with everyone who might use trains. About 80% of my friends were train users, some traveling weekly to Chennai. We shared the app with all of them, and our closest friends became regular testers, reporting bugs that helped us continuously improve the app.

When we first launched the app, searching "Where is my train" ranked us around 400th since these were all common words. Despite current complaints about the Play Store's fees, I must acknowledge that Google's Play Store algorithm is extremely efficient, and both Android and the Play Store were instrumental in helping address our visibility issue without any paid promotions.

Google's policies may not be ideal now, but they made browsers faster through WebKit investment. Google excels at distribution through the Play Store. We focused solely on reviews and ratings, which improved our app's visibility through the Play Store's algorithm. I never spent money on ads for WIMT - partly due to budget constraints, but mainly because we're always seeking to improve.

We focus solely on retention: are users loving our product? Initially, we only cared about avoiding one-star reviews. Though we never achieved a day with zero negative reviews, this obsession drove us toward quality. That's why we never expanded features but instead kept focusing on the same problem: quality.

What was the inflection point of hockey stick growth?

I tried talking to strangers at a railway station to get app installs. After 3 hours of humiliation, I only got about ten installs. I realized this wasn't an efficient use of my time—I could have spent that time coding instead. I concluded I should focus on improving the product rather than this approach to user acquisition.

We didn't focus much on distribution. We got about 40 downloads daily and were content with that. We integrated feedback throughout the app, collected user input, and solved problems to make the product useful. My main goal for this side project was generating enough ad revenue - about 20 lakhs- to match my previous salary so I could quit and work for myself full-time. With that modest target, I wasn't aiming for $100,000, as I wasn't sure that was even achievable.

Sharing app via bluetooth

Did you see usage patterns higher from certain states over other states?

We saw installs from all over India even at the initial stages. Since my friends were only from Tamil Nadu and likely weren't traveling regularly, I believe our customers found us primarily through search engines, with some word-of-mouth referrals.

We noticed many reviews mention "TTE recommended it." This makes sense when comparing train and food delivery apps. With Swiggy, you only share when you're excited about good food. But train travel is different. If you're wondering where your stop is, you'll ask another passenger. When they open Where Is My Train to answer you, you naturally ask about the app. People are idle on trains and check their location frequently. That's why we kept the distinctive blue color - when you see others using it, you build trust in the app.

With the train, the solution was the person beside you. After adding Bluetooth sharing, 50% of our installs came through it. Many weren't aware of their Google accounts - they just used Xender for transferring apps, similar to old MP3 transfers. This was eye-opening. I discovered that apps like Shareit had 100+ million downloads serving this market.

I often arrive early at train stations to check our platform board information. People frequently ask me for help understanding the displays. In one interesting encounter I recommended "Where Is My Train" app to a passenger. He asked me to send the "software" to him, then said "Xender it" - referring to Xender. When I tried to help him download it from Play Store, I discovered he didn't even have a Google account. It's extremely difficult to build good products without understanding your users.

Xender was a popular mobile app used for sharing and transferring files between devices without using cables, the internet, or mobile data. It works over Wi-Fi and supports cross-platform transfers between Android, iOS, Windows, and Mac devices. Xender was banned in India in June 2020

The zero ad policy

You wanted to earn your salary back through ads but eventually WIMT had zero ads. How did you resist your urge to not put ads given you were bootstrapping.

Ad revenue was my last resort, not first choice. I always prepare for worst-case scenarios, and ads could sustain our team if needed. We tried raising funds initially, meeting investors, but faced rejection. Our pitch focused too much on tech. One investor even suggested our product might be less relevant after Jio's launch.

We didn't activate monetization. My next step would be hiring more people. I recruited friends who were interested, with my co-founder Arun and I quitting first. After eight months, we brought on three others, offering good equity with a condition: no salary expectations for two years while we wouldn't monetize. This equity compensated for that risk. Within those two years, we expected to either be acquired, raise funding, or develop monetization - most likely raising funding. Unlike companies burning cash in "negative revenue," we were at "zero revenue" since our burn rate was minimal.

I identified two problems with ads. First, revenue numbers make people calculate company worth based solely on that. Second, I believed ads weren't the right monetization strategy for trains. I avoided ad revenue to focus on growth. People ask why not use ads to fund user acquisition, but users gained through ads have poor retention. Users appreciate WIMT for being ad-free, with many reviews highlighting this benefit. I was essentially trading potential revenue for growth, which aligns with my long-term vision.

The main goal of the company for the next two years was to grow the user base to 15-20 million with high user engagement and monthly active users. We had plans to introduce cab services or in-train entertainment options will only if they align with our primary objectives. I realised that with our current team, we won't have the bandwidth to focus on monetization avenues without affecting our growth.

When running a company, you get lots of advice - mostly bad ones. Friends pressured me to add ads, saying "One ad won't hurt the experience." But founders who actually run startups understood my vision. Binny (Bansal) once told me, "It's good. After reaching 100 million users, you can think about that. Focus on growth now and monetize later."

The Google Acquisition: When to Say Yes vs. Taking VC Money

How did the Google acquisition happen?

We reached a point where my team's savings were depleted and we needed to advance. Users wanted ticket booking in our app, but I told the team that with only five people, we shouldn't handle others' money. The main complaint about booking apps was refunds, and we'd need capital to handle those perfectly. This requires substantial funding to build proper customer support and infrastructure.

A VC firm from China contacted me on LinkedIn, saying they'd been searching for me. They were upset we hadn't done any press releases. When they visited, they barely looked at our pitch deck, compared us to WhatsApp's team - small team but good user base. They asked for our P&L, which I had no idea about and they wrote it on a tissue asking me to hand it over to our CA. Within two weeks, they gave us a term sheet.

After reviewing the term sheet, I discovered important clauses like liquidation preference. This means if someone invests $5 million and you sell for that amount, they get all $5 million first, leaving you nothing. Only after that does their ownership percentage matter. Regardless of valuation, investors only need to believe the company is worth their investment amount to be protected. With anti-dilution clauses and aggressive pro-rata rights, it seemed like a one-sided deal favoring investors. Based on my analysis, if we could exit at less than 3x what Google offered, taking Google's deal made more sense. For anything above 3x, taking this investment would be better.

I was in acquisition talks with several companies. I preferred Google because they were professional, appreciative, and never lowballed us, unlike some Indian companies that used fear tactics. Google's engineering culture resonated with us, and joining them was exciting for someone from my background. A Google exit would help my future startup ambitions. They focused on growing our product rather than immediate monetization like other companies. I also considered how joining Google would provide long-term career stability for my co-founders. The financial offer was good too. We were like five co-founders plus one junior engineer we had and one QA.

Second time founder

After WIMT how did you decide to build an app around distraction called Regain?

My strengths include running a lean team efficiently and managing B2C products - understanding customers, satisfying them, and handling launches. My main weaknesses are operation-sensitive businesses, which I've never worked with and seem stressful since things aren't fully under control. I'm also not a good salesperson; I've always feared or disliked selling, which is why I didn't explore other business problems initially. I can't enjoy talking to someone just to sell them something.

I needed a problem that's wide enough to gain users quickly. With WIMT, 80% of my friends used trains, making it a broad tech problem that was B2C and non-operational, aligning with my strengths.

Time is money. While spending money requires a PIN, making it controlled, anyone can take your time- tech companies, content creators, or random people sending messages. The biggest time-waster is watching Youtube Shorts and reels on mobile. We wanted to build the opposite force for these addictive platforms.

To address this we built Regain - a time blocker and productivity app. Regain targets professionals and students who value productivity, not those in service jobs using time for leisure. Even if Regain yields nothing after two years, exploring this psychological problem will be worthwhile.

You need to seek a moonshot opportunity. Only then should you raise funding, when you know something works exceptionally well. For example, with Regain, funding could help expand to smartphone addiction solutions for children or launching an addiction free phone. I don't like to seek investment till I am fairly confident that the growth is very good. In general, I'm cautious about borrowing money but willing to risk my own since I don't want to lose others' funds. When starting this company, I committed 10% of my portfolio to it and decided to use my own money initially. This calculated risk offers potentially significant rewards. Rather than relying solely on Nasdaq or index funds, I can invest in myself without financial strain. I simply consider it as having received 10% less from Google.

<Fin>

While this story focuses on Nizam's journey, "Where is My Train" was built by a remarkable team of co-founders - Arun, Sashi, Bala, and Sundaram - along with employees Kamakshi and Hepsy, all of whom believed in the vision enough to work without salary for two years. As Nizam puts it: "Without them this may not have been possible"

Western cultures operate on what we might call "transactional efficiency." The individual is the atomic unit. You can walk into a bank, buy a coffee, or close a business deal with minimal personal context. Trust flows through institutions - contracts, processes, brands. The system works because it's designed to be impersonal. Efficiency emerges from keeping the personal separate from the professional.

India operates differently. Here, the individual isn't an atom; they're a node in an interconnected web of relationships - family, community, school, hometown, caste. Trust doesn't flow through institutions alone; it flows through people. Therefore, before any meaningful interaction or transaction can occur, one must first establish context.

The conversation is the due diligence.

The questions that seem "intrusive" from a Western perspective are the data points for plotting a social map:

• "Where are you from?" (Geography, potential common ground)

• "What does your father do?" (Family background, social standing)

• "Are you married? Do you have children?" (Life stage, stability, responsibilities)

• "Which company do you work for? Which college did you attend?" (Professional/educational network)

The goal is to find a point of connection, a shared context, or a trusted third party that can anchor the relationship. The "extended conversation" is not inefficient; it is the work of building the necessary foundation of trust upon which everything else can be built.

Building Voice Agents for India

We often confuse efficiency with effectiveness. To build a voice agent that succeeds in India, we must abandon the Western model of transactional efficiency. Our guiding principle is this: the AI must be designed not as a tool, but as a participant in a relationship. The problem isn't technical - it's anthropological. Current AI systems fall into what I call the Cultural Uncanny Valley: they're human enough to trigger our social expectations, but alien enough to violate them.

Three types of conversation

To navigate this, let me architect AI's conversational capabilities into a three-tiered framework:

1. Utility Conversations: This governs the simple stuff: reminders, updates, confirmations. Here, brevity is king. Users want information, not intimacy. Get in, deliver value, get out. No small talk required.

2. Free Flowing Conversations: This operates in the realm of pure relationship. These are the conversations that serve no transactional purpose but fulfill a deeper human need-the digital equivalent of sitting on a porch, sharing silence with someone you trust. This is where AI companions, therapy bots, and digital astrologers live. The goal isn't efficiency; it's presence.

3. Persuasive Conversations: This sits in the profitable middle ground between Utility and Free Flowing. This is where the real money lives - every conversation that requires changing minds rather than simply providing information. Loan collections, insurance sales, complex purchases, understanding why someone abandoned their shopping cart. They require something more sophisticated: the ability to build just enough trust to accomplish a specific goal, then gracefully exit.

Most companies optimize for speed in simple transactions while fumbling the conversations that actually drive revenue. It's like perfecting your small talk while failing every job interview.

The companies that crack this code won't just build better voice agents - they'll unlock an entirely new category of digital relationship, one that respects both human psychology and business reality.

The Vocabulary of Persuasion

Most voice AI systems operating in India today are functionally illiterate in the language of human motivation.

They can handle the easy stuff - reminders, confirmations, basic transactions. But the moment you need to change someone's mind, to persuade rather than simply inform, the wheels fall off.

The problem starts with language itself. Current AI systems speak what I call "textbook Hindi"—technically correct but culturally hollow. They're trained on formal datasets and synthetic conversations that bear little resemblance to how real people actually talk. It's like learning English from a grammar book and then trying to charm someone at a bar.

But language is just the surface layer. The deeper challenge is cultural fluency - understanding not just what people say, but what their circumstances mean.

When a Maharashtrian farmer explains he can't make his EMI payment because of drought, he's not just conveying information. He's invoking a complex web of agricultural reality, seasonal dependency, and rural economics that requires genuine comprehension. An AI that responds with generic payment options instead of empathising and providing alternate solutions reveals itself as an outsider and loses all credibility.

Then there's the art of influence itself, which operates in realms that would make most programmers uncomfortable. Walk through any BPO center and you'll witness a masterclass in psychological calibration.

In a BPO center, you might observe someone selling insurance using slightly flirtatious language with men, saying things like "all good men should take care of their family" to boost their self-esteem and close the sale. Meanwhile, for loan collections, the opposite approach might be used - emphasizing shame and the repercussions of not paying. It's about understanding which emotional buttons to push, when to push them, and how hard. It requires an AI that can read between the lines of what people say to understand what they actually mean, then respond in the cultural dialect of persuasion that resonates with that specific person in that specific moment. The challenge isn't just to teach an AI to use shame as a lever, but to build the sophisticated ethical guardrails that know when such an approach is helpful versus when it becomes predatory.

Most AI systems today have some of the tools, but none of the nuanced understanding required for the delicate work of changing minds.

Patient Capital for an Impatient Nation

There's a pattern that repeats throughout history: the most transformative technologies don't just solve problems - they change how humans relate to each other. The telephone didn't just speed up communication; it rewired how families stayed connected. Television didn't just bring entertainment; it created shared cultural experiences across vast distances.

Voice AI in India sits at a similar inflection point, but with a twist that Silicon Valley hasn't fully grasped yet.

The technical challenges are solvable - more data, better models, smarter algorithms. But the real obstacle isn't computational; it's cultural. Most companies are guarding their customer conversations data to their life, sitting on treasure troves of linguistic gold while the ecosystem starves for the raw materials needed to build truly fluent AI.

This creates a paradox: the very data needed to solve the problem is locked away by companies afraid of losing competitive advantage. It's like trying to build roads while every landowner refuses to allow access to their property.

The solution requires thinking like infrastructure builders rather than product makers. Consider electricity: it took massive upfront investment to string power lines across entire continents before anyone could flip a switch and pay a small monthly fee. The early investors didn't see immediate returns, but they built the foundation upon which entire economies would eventually run.

Voice AI for India needs the same kind of patient capital and systems thinking. We're not just building chatbots; we're constructing the conversational infrastructure for 1.4 billion people across hundreds of dialects, thousands of cultural contexts, and millions of different ways of being human.

The companies that succeed won't be those trying to transplant Western efficiency onto Indian soil. They'll be the ones who understand that in a relationship-driven culture, AI isn't just about processing language - it's about earning the right to participate in the most intimate form of human connection: conversation itself.

An "ElevenLabs for India" is inevitable. But it won't be built by applying a Silicon Valley playbook to Indian problems. It will emerge from patient capital and cultural curiosity.

This is an interesting question. However, it represents a simplistic view of the employer-employee relationship. Let me explain why.

The challenges of human-driven sales

Let me explain this from the context of Business Hero as the insights are fresh in the memory. In our product, we're automating incoming lead enquiries from various social media and marketplace channels. With mass internet adoption, it's become easier for potential customers to fill forms, send messages, or express interest with a single button. This creates a large volume of enquiries at the top of the funnel. Determining which leads to focus on—those likely to convert into sales—requires significant intelligence.

Typically, businesses face several challenges when using people for this task:

1. Repetitive Communication: Regardless of conversion potential, you must invest the same effort across all channels, explaining your products and services in detail without getting tired. It's essentially repeating the same information continuously.

2. Timing Mismatches: Enquiries often peak at specific times—nighttime for some businesses, weekends for others, or during festivals. If your support or sales team isn't available at these crucial moments, leads go cold. Failing to respond within a few hours of expressed interest means potentially missing opportunities.

3. Workforce Limitations: Since this is primarily a filtering mechanism to move leads from the top to the bottom of the funnel, businesses are reluctant to hire highly qualified people at significant expense. Consequently, those who take these jobs often view them as temporary positions, leading to high attrition rates and increased training costs.

Beyond simple cost comparison

Equating AI's cost solely to people's salaries is overly simplistic. When pitching AI to businesses, we should emphasize efficiency improvements and greater control over processes. Until now, only tech companies had the ability to implement robust project management, track tasks, and maintain organized workflows through tools like Jira. AI extends these capabilities to non-tech industries with minimal manual intervention.

AI's value in different contexts

In many cases, AI can be particularly valuable in tier 2 and tier 3 cities where skilled professionals may be scarce. Specialists like doctors, computer engineers, or teachers often migrate to larger cities for better opportunities, leaving smaller towns with unmet needs. AI can help bridge this gap.

I've also seen examples in India where businesses employ AI to monitor existing salespeople rather than replace them. Automated phone calls or WhatsApp messages can check why CRM entries haven't been completed or leads haven't been followed up. This creates a form of AI middle management that optimizes efficiency.

Changing labor dynamics in India

A recent episode of a Tamil show 'Neeya Naana' debated why Tamil Nadu MSMEs are hiring workers from northern India for labor jobs. One interesting point was that Tamil society has improved educationally because basic survival needs are partially covered by the government or previous generations. The younger generation is encouraged to study, with the Tamil Nadu government allocating substantial budgets for education.

This has produced a generation unwilling to do blue-collar work, preferring white-collar jobs instead. While many "paper engineers" may need reskilling, they won't return to the menial jobs their parents did. It's not just about the type of work but also about dignity and respect. Some modern jobs, like delivery work for Swiggy, Zomato, or Zepto, have achieved a level of dignity that traditional blue-collar jobs like carpentry or construction work lack.

This creates a mismatch: factories struggle to find workers while white-collar positions see intense competition despite fewer openings.

The need for automation in India

The same person who enquired about my product mentioned about a lady working for 8,000 rupees monthly for ten years trained on a software without a yearly raise, I pointed out that finding her replacement will be difficult once she retires. Moreover, her children will likely never accept the same job at that pay rate.

This is precisely why automation in India will become necessary—not because we lack people, but because we need to improve efficiency across the board. We see this disparity when comparing B2B enquiry responses from Indian platforms like IndiaMart to those from China, with the former being significantly slower.

For Indian business owners competing globally, especially against countries like China, automation offers a way to increase efficiency and excel in their work. To conclude Indian businesses will not deploy AI to reduce cost but to improve efficiency. While this may be a controversial perspective, I believe it's an important conversation to have.

Another interesting thread on the lack of efficiency in customer communication in India vs China. Read the quoted tweets too

This isn't the end but merely the beginning. I believe we'll see more of these algorithmic productivity solutions taking root in India, and I'm not surprised that Optifye's founders were of Indian origin.

Evolving employer and employee relationship

Our family ran a puja store business for over four generations. Growing up, I knew people who had served in our shop for 10-15 years or more. Yet in the final 8 years before our shop closed in 2022, my parents struggled immensely with recruiting and retaining staff. Rising wages was one factor—our business margins simply couldn't accommodate them. But equally telling was how few people preferred working in a puja store anymore. The environment resembled a grocery setup: daily opening heavy shutters, moving large gunny bags around, working in a rustic setting that was physically demanding. Young workers increasingly gravitated toward saree stores, supermarkets, or jewelry shops where they could work in air-conditioned comfort with less physical strain.

I often find myself wondering: what fundamentally changed in these last few decades? The meaning of work itself, workplace preferences, the employer-employee relationship—all transformed dramatically. We've moved away from an era where limited workplace choices and uncertain futures for the families kept workers loyal to a single job. The risk of damaged reputation within a tight-knit business community, the need to borrow emergency funds without collateral and repay through dedicated work—these traditional social bonds have largely dissolved. When you ask business owners today, their instinctive answer might be "Staff aren't trustworthy anymore," but the reality is far more complex and multifaceted. The social contract that once defined these relationships has been completely rewritten, leaving traditional businesses struggling to adapt to a new employment landscape where loyalty is no longer secured through necessity but must be earned through competitive conditions.

Am I getting fooled?

Loyalty and trust are built over time, yet when employers approach hiring with the assumption that staff won't stick around or develop loyalty, they inevitably resort to alternative management methods to measure employee worth. And what gets measured gets managed.

A year ago, while interviewing business owners across the country, I met a gentleman running a beauty products store in a small town near Nagpur. When I asked how technology had improved his productivity, he pointed to a CCTV camera and declared, "That camera is my brother." Intrigued, I listened as he explained how the camera connected to WiFi, allowing him to monitor his store from anywhere—whether on the road or at home. In his mind, this camera "took care" of his business during his absence.

The store owner was convinced his staff spent most of their day absorbed in their mobile phones, only attending to customers diligently when he was physically present. He struggled with basic operational challenges: getting employees to report out-of-stock items, track inventory, and maintain engagement. His frustration led him to conclude that employee disengagement was the core problem. The deeper reality, however, was likely that these workers viewed their positions as temporary stepping stones—jobs they cared little about while waiting for better opportunities. This human reality meant nothing to his bottom line.

Beyond everyday management, the owner faced another significant challenge: theft during busy seasons. The store would fill with customers during festivals, requiring temporary workers to manage the crowds. These peak periods brought serious risks of shoplifting and inattentiveness from seasonal staff. The owner believed his surveillance system would allow him to "trace back to the source of truth" when incidents occurred.

AI middle managers

Larger businesses traditionally hire middle managers to address productivity challenges. These managers monitor ground-level staff and maintain operational order. Interestingly, this middle layer serves another critical function: it elevates the business owner's status. The hierarchical structure itself generates a certain fear and respect—the owner's words and instructions carry more weight when filtered through middle management. This supervisory buffer is a luxury many small business owners desire but simply cannot afford.

This gap creates a perfect white space for AI to occupy—monitoring employee productivity at both store and factory levels. When selling AI solutions in India, I've encountered persistent skepticism centered on labor being too inexpensive to justify the technology investment. But this perspective misses a crucial reality: human employees bring their own set of inefficiencies, and varying attitudes toward their jobs.

AI in this case isn't just replacing labor—it's positioning itself as that middle manager mediating between employees and business owners. Rather than eliminating frontline workers, it's would be the middle management layer that AI is quietly displacing while making overall throughput more efficient.

I've observed this transition in businesses where AI now makes follow-up calls to sales and customer support teams, ensuring they're pursuing leads and updating the CRM properly. We initially believed these systems would replace salespeople, but they're actually augmenting their supervisors.

The Indian startup Storepulse.ai recently demonstrated this evolution in action. Their intelligence layer atop standard CCTV cameras helps prevent misreporting and theft during inventory unpacking and stock unloading—tasks that would traditionally require human supervisory oversight. As these technologies become more sophisticated and affordable, we're witnessing the birth of algorithmic management where small business owners can finally access the supervisory capacity once reserved for larger operations.

Most factories and shops are already required to have CCTV cameras installed on their premises. It seems only a matter of time before these passive recording devices upgrade to AI-enhanced systems that enable business owners maximize productivity and efficiency. As dystopian as this might sound to some, given the context of how Indian business owners traditionally approach operations, this transition appears not just possible but probable.

Concluding thoughts

There exists a significant disconnect between the idealized world often advocated online versus the pragmatic realities of day-to-day business operations on the ground. This shift in workplace monitoring goes beyond just boss-worker relationships. It raises bigger questions about how we govern people and how comfortable we're becoming with surveillance throughout society. This evolution feels as inevitable as it is concerning—a reflection of society's willingness to embrace efficiency even when it arrives in forms we once considered too intrusive to accept. A business owner's installation of CCTV would receive a similar explanation as a car owner installing a dashcam, as they both want to access the source of truth. When used responsibly, AI-powered tools can identify bottlenecks in production or service, allowing businesses to optimize their operations and improve efficiency. But its a thin line.

In another tweet Hari (@haridigresses) articulates why a startup like optifye would get more adoption in India as compared to other countries.

New Decision-Makers, New Priorities

Mr. P is a 5th generation saree store owner and a close friend of my dad who hails from Erode, a tier 2 town in Tamil Nadu. He has become a sensation among businessmen in the circle as he had started posting reels on Instagram about the sarees in his store and has recently crossed 100K followers. Despite being in his late 50's, his perseverance to transform the business digitally has given hope to others that they could do the same.

When I asked about his motivation, he first gave me a generic answer about adapting with changing times and decreasing foot traffic. But the real reason emerged minutes later: he wanted the business to be attractive enough for his daughter to take over. "The younger generation is happy to sell even namkeen on Instagram," he told me, "but they aren't excited to take over a legacy business."

"Generational preferences change, shifting demand in ways that's hard to anticipate because it's not always linked to a product's usefulness." - Morgan Housel

The Old Guard: Relationship Over Process

You don't set out to merely maintain what your predecessors built—you expand upon their foundation. While previous generations established businesses on community trust (the neighborhood kirana store, the community jeweler), today's inheritors face a different reality: their customers' children shop based on brand trust, not relationships.

This transition demands evolution. The digitization journey often begins modestly—QR payments, digital billing, security cameras, marketplace listings—but represents a profound shift from "maintaining the family legacy" to "transforming it for a new generation of consumers who trust differently."

The Acceleration: External Forces

COVID's impact went beyond job losses; it ignited a wave of micro-entrepreneurs. Regional business YouTube channels exploded, democratizing previously exclusive knowledge. Suddenly, relatable people were sharing tips and tricks for starting businesses on a shoestring budget. This surge in accessible information is fueling a new generation of entrepreneurs. More choices for consumers mean the old "open the shop and they will come" mentality is dead. Businesses now must offer something unique to stand out.

The threshold: Setting the bar for customer experience

These younger entrepreneurs aren't just bringing technical skills to family businesses—they're bringing transformed expectations. Having grown up as consumers of seamless digital experiences from ecommerce platforms, D2C brands, food delivery apps, and OTT services, they expect the same quality in their business tools. When they take charge of family enterprises, they naturally want to provide similar experiences to their own customers. This creates a powerful feedback loop: their personal experiences as digital consumers directly shape the experiences they want to deliver as business owners.

The ultimatum: Adopt or Fade

Beyond individual motivations, macro forces are at play. Government digitization initiatives like e-invoicing, GST, and account aggregators, coupled with evolving customer expectations (online browsing, Google reviews, Instagram presence, digital payments), are pushing businesses to embrace digital tools—or risk becoming obsolete.

The Shift: From "Why Software?" to "Which Software?"

MSME software adoption comes with some real struggle:

• Customization Conundrum: MSMEs operate with unique workflows that reflect decades of business wisdom. "One-size-fits-all" software rarely works for MSMEs with unique processes. They lack the resources for in-house customization, making online purchases risky.

• Support Shortfall: In today’s world, employees don’t stay forever—they come and go. Picture this: your store manager, who knows the software inside out, grabs their Diwali bonus and disappears. Poof! All that knowledge goes with them. There’s no formal handover or “Knowledge Transfer” (KT) to save the day. So, MSMEs have to find someone new and train them from scratch—over and over again. It’s a cycle that slows everything down.

• Guidance Gap: With so many options out there, MSMEs can feel lost. They don’t always know what they need, and there’s rarely anyone to guide them through the maze. Software providers who invest in education and community-building are establishing themselves as go-to resources rather than mere vendors.

• Trust Deficit: MSMEs are wary of big tech, fearing exploitation like marketplace undercutting, commission hikes, or data misuse. They worry about eventually being replaced by the very companies promising to help.

• Limited Options: For many MSMEs, software choices are limited. They often turn to local vendors who build and customize solutions, which sounds great—until you realize it’s like buying mutual funds through a middleman. It’s convenient, but you might not get the best deal or the latest tech. With fewer options to choose from, they end up settling for what’s available rather than what’s ideal.

A new generation of decision-makers are steering these businesses into the digital age. The question isn’t whether MSMEs will adopt software—it’s how we, as builders, will rise to meet their needs.

Two sisters, Saranya and Preeti, hail from Tamil Nadu and have wed into families with contrasting marriage situations. While the older sibling, Saranya, entered into a traditional arranged marriage, her younger sister Preeti chose to marry someone she had fallen in love with.

Despite both Saranya and her spouse being employed, Saranya has voluntarily shouldered the entire burden of household management alongside her mother-in-law. They take care of meal preparation, housekeeping, and overall home organization. Saranya embraced these responsibilities willingly, with minimal objections or opposition. She even considered herself fortunate to be married to her husband.

Prior to her marriage, her younger sister Preeti considered the traditional household roles to be normal, based on the examples set by her parents and brother in law in her life. However, her perspective shifts after she begins living with her spouse. Her husband's willingness to assist with household chores comes as a welcome surprise to Preeti, who discovers that their shared responsibilities significantly improve her quality of life.

Preeti grows increasingly concerned about her brother-in-law's lack of involvement in household tasks. She subtly expresses her disapproval by indirectly comparing him to her own husband, praising his helpfulness. Preeti also gently encourages her sister to be more assertive in requesting her husband's participation in domestic responsibilities.

Preeti, maintains a constant presence in Saranya's life through Instagram feeds and WhatsApp statuses. One morning, as Saranya hurriedly prepares her home before heading to work, she notices a WhatsApp status update from Preeti. The image displays Preeti relaxing in bed with a coffee, accompanied by a caption 'Lucky to have such a husband in my life'. The apparently harmless update triggers feelings of discontent in Saranya regarding her own situation, even though her actual circumstances remain unchanged.

Preeti's weekend outings with her husband now appear on Instagram feed, which sparks passive fights between Saranya and her husband. She urges her husband to take her out, dressed up to enjoy an evening, only for it to result in a series of WhatsApp status updates.

Before she even realizes it, Saranya falls prey to the status game, except this is just on WhatsApp.

Social media feeds and carefully curated online personas, it's easy to fall prey to what psychologists call the availability heuristic. This mental shortcut describes our tendency to overestimate the frequency of events that are easily recalled, often due to their vividness or recent exposure. These posts, while not necessarily representative of reality, can create a distorted perception of others' lives, making us feel inadequate or envious.

A fictional narrative inspired by various anecdotes shared on the Tamil discussion program 'Neeya Naana'.

Invisible Indian family game

In my family wedding gatherings are more than just kind gestures and meeting relatives. They are a way to showcase their social status. Attendees discuss business, money, children and their jobs, land, wealth, cars, and everything materialistic. It was either pride in having these things or gossip about someone not having them.

Now social media has given rise to new touch points beyond traditional wedding gatherings. These interactions now occur through non-verbal cues via WhatsApp statuses, photos shared in family groups, and video calls with relatives. For example, an uncle buying a new car hundreds of kilometers away can affect my dad's mental health.

The constant exposure to others' achievements and happy moments through social media can make these events seem more frequent and important than they truly are, leading to dissatisfaction with our own circumstances.

These digital signal also extend to how we percieve love and friendship

Love and friendship

I've had the same WhatsApp profile picture for the last 4 years. I never bothered to change it, as I didn't find the need. My wife, however, changes hers frequently. Sometimes she has a profile picture, and sometimes she doesn't.

I didn't find this particularly strange until one day I realized that her profile picture disappears every time we have an argument. It took me a few months to decipher this pattern, but I soon realized that if her profile picture vanishes, it means I've really upset her. It reflects her state of mind.

I have uncovered stories from Gen Z boys about how WhatsApp status updates send social signals in their circle. A boy posting a romantic poem or song on his status is not only dedicating it to his girlfriend but also signaling to his friends that he is capable of having a partner, which he takes pride in as an achievement.

Similarly, people who lift their phones to capture the title card of movies in theaters are posting status updates to signal that they have watched the movie on the first day, first show.

Conclusion

We started by achieving things in life to create memories. Later, it evolved into creating, remembering, and sharing those memories. Now, sharing has taken precedence.

I’m particularly fascinated by how AI can magnify these social signals within families and friendships— revealing new layers of human interaction. Observing the ways individuals shape their online identities, uphold cultural rituals, and navigate “status games” offers us a unique vantage point from which to interpret evolving social norms. Its only about time we would start manufacturing memories to win the game.

(somewhere in near future)

"Hey ChatGPT, can you write a script and execute my social media response to my sister's WhatsApp status?" the user asks, proceeding to select the 'deep jealous' button in the interface.

I recently moved to a new home in Bangalore, and one of the first things my wife and I figured out was whether our new location was Zepto-friendly or BlinkIt-friendly (i.e., we tried to determine which dark store was nearby). For people visiting a metro city like Bangalore or Delhi from smaller towns, quick commerce feels like magic - a feature from the future.

To be honest, quick commerce can be addictive. While many analysts and VCs on Twitter will show you macro trends about why quick commerce will or won't work, let me take you through an alternate societal lens.

Quick Commerce and role of women in households

Imagine its Valentine's Day, and you're expected to gift your partner something unique. You have two choices:

1. Put in effort, scout for the best gift possible by understanding her preferences, and discover something special to buy for her.

2. Tap on Blinkit, where there are pre-curated roses that get delivered to your home in 8 minutes.

Which of these options would earn you more brownie points in a relationship? The correct answer is (1). If you think it's (2), then good luck finding a partner or saving the one you have. Many times, it's not the action but the intent behind it that forms a stronger identity in a relationship.

Now extend this concept to millions of homemaker women in India whose identity is solely based on how well they take care of the family. It's their effort to curate and purchase the best quality items at the most affordable price that forms their identity in these relationships. Habits don't change; they get replaced. If you have to convince these homemakers to use quick commerce, their identity will need to shift from being a homemaker to a breadwinner in the family. Unless that happens, it's going to be a struggle, but I'm wishing it happens faster than ever.

It's documented in multiple instances that when a woman in the family braves all the odds to contribute financially to the household, the family members chip in to be flexible and change their preferences.

I recently asked my aunt, who is a homemaker in the heart of Bangalore, if she uses quick commerce. She laughingly replied, "If everything comes to my doorstep, then what is my excuse to step out?"

Quick commerce and loneliness

One of my romantic pet peeves is spending time in a supermarket with my partner. I have always loved visiting different supermarkets with my wife. There is something romantic about walking through the aisles, moving from one section to another, envisioning our life unfolding in the web of consumerism.

It's not just my pet peeve; Indian families, in general, love spending family time in grocery stores. Going monthly shopping to a supermarket solves both grocery and family entertainment problems in one shot. In his book "It Happens Only in India," Kishore Biyani highlights the behavior of families hanging out at grocery stores as a reason why he chose to have wider aisles compared to narrow ones like in Costco or Walmart.

Now, if we move towards a quick commerce world where everything comes to your doorstep in 10 minutes or so, what do you do with the rest of your time? Consume content? Laze around? Be lonely? Have you ever thought about the fact that the same crowd who are elated with 8-minute grocery delivery are the ones standing in mile-long queues at an IKEA counter, waiting hours to book a table at Naru Noodle Bar, or waiting in a digital queue for Coldplay tickets? I'm not saying quick commerce leads to loneliness, but when we solve for grocery at our fingertips, we only solve the utilitarian aspect but miss the psychological one.

That is why people long for unique experiences that define them. When life becomes extremely efficient, it leaves us with more time on our hands, and an empty person with more time starts questioning their identity and longs for experiences and relationships that define them. Going to a Coldplay concert or eating at Naru Noodle Bar are not just experiences; they become part of your identity. They help you define your tribe.

I hope to see our offline experiences getting a sharper upgrade in terms of experience, aesthetics, and customer service. As the bar is set higher in terms of expectations, premium becomes basic, and luxury becomes the aspiration.

Quick commerce and Kirana stores

Will Kirana stores die? Unfortunately, the answer is yes. It's not solely because of quick commerce; there's more to it than meets the eye. One of the biggest moats a grocery store has is its location and the business owner's ability to understand the pulse of the neighborhood. You make more money in the business if you can achieve a higher turnover of products on the shelf.

In most cases, once you open a store, FMCG distributors come looking for you, requesting that you stock their products. It's an aggregation game. A kirana store is nothing but a glorified warehouse with a storefront. When you ask a small to medium kirana store owner why they started the business, you typically find one of these answers:

1. "I don't want to work under anyone, so I started on my own."

2. "I found an attractive place with nice visibility up for rent, and I grabbed it."

For digital natives who start businesses with business model canvases and MVPs, this decision-making process might sound unrelatable. Since most kiranas are run by individual proprietors, their personal goals and business goals are usually intertwined. Once they achieve their personal goals of buying a home, getting children educated and married, they continue to run the shop without much change in their way of doing business, as it has become part of their identity. In short, they are resistant to change.

You can gauge the moat of a business by identifying how keen one generation is to pass it on to the next. Running a kirana store is a low-margin, low-moat business. For the second geenration taking over a small kirana store is the last option. Kiranas that are resistant to change will fade away, irrespective of quick commerce or not.

"For a business to be truly customer-focused, it needs to ignore what people say. Instead it needs to concentrate on what people feel." - Rory Sutherland, Alchemy

Quick commerce makes people feel powerful. Undoubtedly, it's a good business. However, its societal impact would be interesting to revisit in the next decade.

The same applies to many jobs in India. Running a Kirana store is a thankless and lonely job. With thin margins and multiple SKUs, it is a challenging business to run without appropriate systems and manpower. Yet, most small Kirana stores are individually or family-run.

Kirana Club app is a social networking app for small grocery store owners to connect and share their opinions with each other. I caught up with the founder, Aishwarya Jain, to learn about the challenges of building a specialized social network and retaining users.

How did the Kirana Club start?

Yeah, so to give you some context, Anshul, who's also my husband, started a company called Retail Pulse in 2020. They got it funded by Entrepreneur First (EF) and started a SaaS product for FMCG companies because they wanted insights and analytics from the shelves of grocery stores, which is largely unknown to FMCG companies. 

FMCG companies never sell directly to grocery stores. They give items to super stockists, then super stockists give them to distributors, who then give them to grocery stores. They don't know what's happening on the ground level or what the (retailer’s) shelf looks like. One thing FMCG companies understand is that if their product is visible, it will sell more. So they care a lot about what's happening on the shelf, and we were giving them those insights. They were making that SaaS product, and at that time, I was involved in a limited capacity. I was working with MoneyView and then joined Fampay. Anshul was doing this alone. 

We planned to use weekly sales visits by the representatives to capture shelf photos at retail stores. By analyzing these images, we aimed to provide FMCG companies with insights about grocery store shelves. Of course, we had checks and balances like the photo can't be taken from any other camera; it can only be taken from our app. It can't be uploaded etc. There were a bunch of things to ensure that no fraud was happening. This way, we were working with Unilever and PepsiCo, to name a few. 

But soon we realized that the sales guy was becoming a blocker in the whole billion-dollar business we were trying to create. His main work is to get the orders from the grocery store. He doesn't care about the things happening on the store shelf. He does get some incentive, but his main goal is to get his order booked because that's his KPI. Hence, he was a little demotivated to click pictures. That's when we realized that if we want it to become a big business, this person can't be a blocker. That's when we realized we had to take the photos ourselves. Then we thought, "How about we get the source on the platform?" The source being the grocery shopkeeper, because he wants extra incentives, he has his own shop, and he has time. 

There are not just insights of shelves; there is a lot more that we can sell to FMCG companies because, in the end, I knew the problems that an FMCG was facing. That's when we thought about the different ways of getting a grocery shopkeeper on a platform. We experimented with a few. And if the platform is going to be the hero now, then I think I can play a significant role. That's when Anshul said, 'Why don't you come on board?' And I joined as a co-founder in 2022. 

You have worked with India 1 and India 2 segments. What do you think are the differences in building products for them?

In simple terms the difference lies in the way they use product.  We are very much evolved in India 1. Design has now reached a level where just solving functional needs is not enough. You have to delight. When you deal with India 2, the functional aspect takes over, right? The things that are obvious to you (India 1) might not be obvious for them (India 2). For example they (India 2) don't scroll horizontally in the app. They just don't. 

You have to show everything right there. You have to make everything big and bold, right? You have to use voice search versus, say, text. I think in India 2, functional improvements are a work in progress, whereas, in India 1, I feel it doesn't cut it if you just build functional things. They need to be delighted. Why are you better than that? Because I know 10 other apps who are doing something similar to what you are doing. I know 10 other UPI apps, right? How do you make me feel like 'wow' versus where you are like, 'Solve my life's basic problem'? 

Grocery store owners are the hardest to reach and convince, even with incentives. They're the most difficult to recruit. How did you approach them, and what was your MVP like?

We had a bunch of idea before we started Kirana Club and finally decided we wanted to build a community, thru our research we found that kiranas are working in silos leading to lack of the right information. We thought we could make SaaS because they also have a lot of inventory management, accounting, and other related tasks. But we realized, after doing a lot of phone calls to understand if they even needed SaaS solutions? For example, when it comes to making bills, a shopkeeper said that when a customer comes to his shop, they don't wait for him to give them a bill. And it's not like they have help. Most of the grocery store owners that we are dealing with don't have help. Family members sort things out one by one. That is the majority of India. So we were moving towards this business community idea. We created a Facebook group and grew it organically. We had to seed some content on the Facebook group initially because every community has a cold start problem. So we seeded content based on the limited understanding and conversations we had with grocery store owners.

 What was the value prop of the Facebook group? What did you tell them to convince and join?

So we said, 'We are making a group where you can seek help from other kiranas. There are a thousand or a hundred people like you who can  help you. If you have any questions related to the market or FMCG, you can talk to them and discuss it. We are making a digital social group.' And everyone has familiarity with Facebook. In fact, the majority of the users we have acquired are via the Facebook group we created. So, on Facebook, people agreed to join with low friction. We had to feed some content, and within no time, we saw conversations around Jeera, Chanaa, Parle G, Tide, Surf Excel, and also about distributors. People naturally started interacting. They were discussing things related to the grocery business and started seeking for information about various things. That's when we realized that if we enable this on my app, people should be able to use it given we replicate this experience..

Other than this, we ran an experiment called Kirana Premier League. We told people, that ' You will get a list of the products, if you have any of it, click a photo & submit to win rewards. We will generate a new list daily, if they send photo of the products to us religiously, they will show up on the leaderboard. The best users will be rewarded. The list was of grocery items, so it was attractive to grocery store owners because only they had the products. This game went viral, and YouTubers made videos. A lot of people started participating because it was fun & easy. Their shop has a lot of products, so they thought, 'Let's see what comes today, I'll click a photo and send it. I'll get something.'"

But this was to drive additional engagement, larger aim was to create a community to help kiranas with the right information and eventually get brands to the platform so that they get access to the right schemes & margins/offers from the source which is happening today as we have partnered with all big brands

Kirana Club could have continued to be a Facebook group. Why did you build an app?

As I mentioned earlier, my initial goal was to connect FMCG companies & kiranas plus build a business in this process, & doing that on facebook has its limitations as the product only allows you to do so much 

A lot of them who might be reading this newsletter might not be understanding the world of market and Grocery stores, right? If you could help them understand in simple words, what is this mandi and what are these rates and what are these conversations about?

When referring to the "mandi," they essentially mean the commodity market. There is a place where all the wholesalers and AMC (Agricultural Market Committee) wholesalers sit together. Grocery store owners go there to understand what is happening with the prices of various commodities such as cumin, garam masala, dry foods, lentils, oil, etc. They want to stay informed about the fluctuations in the rates of these products because, unlike packaged products, the prices are not decided by the companies themselves. Instead, the market determines the rates.

The area where grocery store owners go to purchase these commodities, conduct research, and explore is called the "mandi." This term is used so frequently and extensively that it has become a part of their everyday language. 

Do rates differ for different states and cities?

Yes, it does. different areas get access to different quality of output/ production leading difference in prices +  cost to transport also varies.

I noticed that when installing the Kirana Club app, users are asked if they are a grocery store owner, thinking of starting a store, or a distributor/sales representative. How did you arrive at these specific options, and what was the decision-making process behind them?

The thing is, if we want only grocery store owners to use this platform, what are the ways to achieve this? we have to stop them during onboarding. We were very clear that they can't come inside and create unnecessary noise. we want to cut the noise. So, what are the ways? we could ask them to do KYC and provide some certification. These are some general ways to increase the barriers and get the right people. But we were not selling products like other b2b commerce, where people will go through KYC hassle. We are a community app, so we need to keep it light. we decided not to tell them anything and just give them three options. Are you a grocery store owner, a wholesaler, or a consumer? I won't give any explanation; I will just a simpel ques. If you select 'grocery store owner,' you're naturally a grocery store owner. Otherwise, why would you lie? There's no incentive to lie, and you will move on. If you're a consumer, select 'consumer.' If you're a wholesaler, select 'wholesaler.' The moment you select 'consumer,' the app gets blocked for you.

This was just a way to filter people. for consumers, there's nothing. If someone selects the wrong option by mistake, we give them a form where they have to upload all the certificates, and only then does the app get unblocked for them. Otherwise, a consumer is not allowed inside.

I noticed that grocery store owners can update their own rates on the app, but there's a warning about potential consequences for uploading wrong rates. How did you arrive at this design decision, and did you anticipate a lot of incorrect data being entered into the platform?

This was largely done to ensure people don't spread fake news to win rewards. 

You mentioned that you developed a reward system during your time at FamPay. What's the difference between building rewards for teenagers versus grocery store owners, and why do you think the rewards section works for Kirana Club?

Interesting question. I think the philosophy was the same when we were building both reward systems. I will break down the intention at both places.

At FamPay, when I joined, we were facing some challenges with activation. Activation for us means when people do their first transaction, whether it's UPI or card. I realized that people were not doing that first transaction. It's not like they weren't purchasing; they were buying vada pav, drinking tea, buying registers, and all kinds of things were happening, but not from our app.

My simple thought process was, how about we facilitate the first transaction. Once they see the value, they will naturally do the second and third transactions. We added 50 Rs in their wallet, enough to do 1 transaction. Fraud wasn't a big issue coz it was KYC’d user

After that, we saw that retention and activation skyrocketed. Every transaction gave you certain coins, and coins gave you access to spinners that could unlock cash or other things. You could buy tickets for an iPhone lottery, sneakers, Nike, and all sorts of products. The whole system was built in such a way that every action you take gives you certain points and essentially takes you up the ladder in your access to rewards.

When I talk about what we did in Kirana Club, we were solving a cold start problem. There was a lot of content being made, but we realised that grocery store owners have limited time in their lives, and they were putting effort into making all this content and helping others. We thought, what if there was some gratification?

We came up with "Punji '' which means wealth. A reward for the effort done to help the community. So everytime you contribute in the community, yo get punji/points which can eventually win you prizes like cctv, weighing machine etc 

The idea was to motivate people to do more because, in the end, we have to understand that a grocery store owner makes a limited amount of money and has limited time. If he gets rewarded for his hard effort with aspirational things, like CCTV,it can be very motivating.

I noticed that you have something called Kirana Awards. How did that come about, and are people able to relate to it? What was the incentive behind creating these awards?

Favourite kirana creator Awards was essentially a way to reward all the creators throughout the year who worked for us and for the community, so to speak. There are a lot of people who are tirelessly creating content, sharing commodity tips, building good content, and if something worked in their business, they would quickly make a video about it and put in that effort. So we thought, of course, we're giving them rewards, but rewards take time to materialise due to the levels and all that, but how about we make it emotionally exciting for them to feel honoured?

Think about it like this: a grocery store owners doesn't get much recognition. It's not a glorified job. So if there's suddenly a platform that is essentially saying that their work is award-worthy, their motivation shoots up to do more and to do better.

This was initiated by the content and community team that we have. We have so many people doing good work, and because of them, we have a solid community and so much  engagement today.

What is the business model for Kirana Club? 

Our mission is to become one platform for brands & kiranas to find each other. 85% of grocery sales happens through kiranas but FMCG today don't have a direct line of connection with them. 

They need on ground insights, sampling for new products, trade marketing, schemes promotion all of that is dependent on the sales rep today, which is neither efficient nor scalable. Given 20Lk+ kiranas engage on our platform we are very well placed to help the brands 

It seems like you're also building a consumer insights company, specifically a grocery insights company. Is that how you see it?

No we are not just an insight company, but since our community is pretty vocal it helps us generate insights for the FMCG companies .

What's your vision for Kirana Club in the next five years?

We aim to have a thriving community of grocery store owners who are getting the right information and access to the right products. Right now, we have information, but soon we plan to enable commerce. We are also integrating with ONDC (Open Network for Digital Commerce) which will allow them to buy from brands & wholesalers on the platform. So, commerce enablement is the next stop.

<Fin>

Welcome to edition 3 of our blog post series, "People's Voice: A Series on Uncovering Opportunities for AI in Small Businesses." This time, we're diving deep into the crucial topic of customers. Let's explore the intricate relationships that small businesses build with their clientele and uncover potential AI opportunities in enhancing these connections.

1. Chota TAM / Bada Kaam

In contrast to e-commerce businesses that view their Total Addressable Markets (TAM) in the millions and span multiple countries, local shop owners perceive their immediate neighbourhood as their potential. This means that every customer is substantial to their business operations. Their courteous and friendly demeanour during customer interactions is an investment in customer market fostering customer loyalty.

“We should talk to the customers kindly and give them whatever they ask for correctly. We should treat them with respect. Then definitely they will come again. If we speak rudely they don’t come tomorrow. It depends on the way we speak. If something is unavailable, I ask them to come tomorrow and it will be available tomorrow.” - #24 | H2,Clothing Store, Tiruppur (TN)

Relationship over short-term losses

They prioritise enhancing customer satisfaction to a great extent, even to the point of enduring financial setbacks.

Customers are important and because of them only our business is running. Sometimes customers try to bargain in spare parts, I deny them because I don’t use roadside spare parts in the vehicles. But sometimes for customer’s satisfaction we have to fix spare parts in cost price only. Our profit might be very low with that customer but we have to let go. Sometimes we don’t get profit also but we let customer do his way. We feel our customer base should not go down - #7 | A1, Four wheeler Garage, Bandara (MH)

Demonstrating politeness, patience, and kindness to customers can lead to repeat business and positive referrals.

I will turn a regular customer into a loyal customer. First, it starts with the impression they get when they visit my shop. If they like the attitude and helpfulness of the staff, or if they appreciate the way they showcase the latest fashion trends, they are more likely to come back. However, if I don't have a particular item at the moment, I will assure them that I will inform them when it becomes available. If I want to bring them back, I will find a way to convince them. - #12|J1, Clothing Store, Nagpur (MH)

To turn a one-time customer into a regular one, I invest time in addressing their concerns. I aim to meet their business needs. When a customer has a complaint about a product they've purchased from elsewhere, it's an opportunity for us. I try to provide personalized attention and explanations. Some shops prefer not to honor warranties because if they replace items under warranty, customers are likely to return frequently for replacements. Instead, they encourage customers to buy new items. We, on the other hand, inform customers about warranties and provide replacements, which builds trust. Customers know that when they come to our shop, they can have their needs addressed, items changed or replaced, and this trust leads to repeat business. - #21 | V2, Mobile Store, Coimbatore (TN)

Reap the benefit later

In certain instances, business owners go the extra mile to assist customers with inquiries that do not immediately result in a sale.

We have to explain things to the customer and clarify any doubts. In a jewellery shop, a customer purchases jewellery worth 50,000 to 1 lakh, but they may not know about its purity. Therefore, creating trust depends on our behavior. We used to take our customers to the manufacturing unit so that they can see that the right materials are available here. We show them our work, and then they trust that our work is good. - #2 | S3, Furniture Store, Prayagraj (UP)

At my shop, I prioritize customer satisfaction by offering a wide range of products and services. As an ICICI Prudential agent, I provide insurance solutions and mediclaim services. Additionally, I am an authorized IRCTC agent, enabling me to assist customers in booking train tickets using my laptop. My goal is to ensure that every customer finds what they need and leaves my shop satisfied. While Smart Bazaar offers a diverse selection of products, it does not provide train ticket booking services. However, at my shop, customers can not only purchase various products but also conveniently book their train tickets, especially catering to older individuals who may have difficulty accessing the railway station. - #13 | S8, Cosmetics/Fancy Store, Durgapur (WB)

Where do they struggle?

• Handling tough customers: When shopkeepers and staff are busy, managing a difficult or unhappy customer can be hard. For example, a customer leaving without buying anything due to lack of desired stock can be disheartening.

• Lack of customer service skills: New store owners and staff often struggle to read and respond to customer emotions, leading to a poor shopping experience.

• Challenges in gathering client Insights: Business owners often struggle with too many daily tasks and responsibilities. They don't have the time or tools to improve customer experiences by collecting feedback. They rely on intuition and conversations instead of a structured feedback, which might miss important issues.

If you are building for SMEs, here is an opportunity statement

💡 How can we assist small business owners and their staff in assessing the tone of their customer conversations, and offer recommendations to to foster long term relationships?

2. Offering flexible payment to retain customers

Another crucial element in cultivating customer trust is business flexibility. Retailers perceive flexibility as accommodating returns, offering discounts, price negotiations, and extending credit. We will delve into each of these aspects in the following discussion.

2.1. Respecting Product Returns:

A store's reputation is intrinsically linked to the quality of its products. When customers find that their purchases do not meet their expectations, they are inclined to return the items. Retailers, in turn, respect these returns, even if they did not explicitly promise to do so before the sale. This practice fosters trust.

“I don't refuse returns. If I did that, then they wouldn't come to me. I am the neighborhood shop. I have only a couple of customers all day. I don't get a thousand. If I refuse them, they wouldn't come to me. If they have used the goods, then I call them and tell them. She had ₹600 due, and she returned it to me. I deducted the amount from what was due from her.” - #16 | P3, Clothing store, Asansol (WB)

In certain instances, retailers extend their customer service by accepting returns of products beyond their warranty or return period.

“ *There is a bulb product, we do marking by writing a date on it. The customer comes to me and the date expires by few days, other shopkeepers might not return, however, we give them benefit by accepting that product and giving them a new product. So the customer feels that we are late by a day and still the shopkeeper has accepted the return. This makes him feel that this shopkeeper is a genuine person and he is trustworthy and fulfill his commitment.” - *#5 | V1, Electricals/Hardware Store, Pratapgarh (UP)

2.2. Discount Policies:

We found that a consistent discount policy was generally lacking. Instead, they occasionally implement promotional deals or offers, often tied to festive seasons. However, one common practice is offering greater discounts to loyal customers, fostering appreciation and encouraging repeat business. This relationship can even evolve into friendship, with some regular customers visiting the store for leisure.

“*If he is my regular customer, many mechanics also come to us for getting cars repaired, I give more discount to my continue coming customers. If it is new customer we come to know. We see the vehicle number and come to know that this vehicle has come from Raipur or Nagpur or somewhere else. We know that this outside customer will never come again to our workshop. Only 2% difference is there in our discounts for regular and new customers.” - *#7 | A1, Mechanic Garage, Bhandara (Maharashtra)

“We give discounts, it depends. Some people go without discounts as well. If we feel like reducing the price, we would reduce it and give them the discount. We must be making a profit of 500 rupees, so we can afford to reduce the price by 50 rupees and sell that item to them.” - #25 | K1, Footwear Store, Tiruppur, (TN)

“We offer a lot of promotions during Diwali, depending on the market situation. It varies based on factors like which models are in demand and what benefits we can provide. We offer discounts and accessories. If a mobile phone costs 10,000 rupees, we might offer a discount of 500 rupees, which attracts customers. We can also provide accessories at a lower price, which can be quite profitable.” - #21 | V2, Mobile Store, Coimbatore, (TN)

One particular example was a saree retailer who opted to offload his unsold stock to his existing customers at a significantly reduced price rather than scrapping it. His rationale was that this gesture would incentivize his customers to return more frequently.

“We try to sell unsold stock at a lower cost. There are people who sell things on the (roadside) platform, they come buy sarees in a bulk. If I sell it to them at 50 rupees I will get no benefit but If I get regular customers and I give the same discount to them I will find some benefit at least. So why should I give it to these platform sellers. Our regular customers will be happy that I sold this to them. They will come back to me the next day thinking that I gave him a good price.” - #24 | H2, Clothing Store, Tiruppur (TN)

2. 3 Negotiation:

In the case of retailers dealing with non-MRP goods, there isn't a set price. Instead, they gauge the price based on the customer’s behaviour. The primary aim of the store owner is to avoid selling the products at a loss but compromise on their profit margin.

“If someone asks for a discount after already receiving one, I would still be willing to reduce the price slightly. However, as a business owner, I cannot bear the cost myself. For example, if I purchase something for 100 rupees and sell it for 120 rupees, I make a profit of 20 rupees. If a customer requests to buy it for 90 rupees, I cannot accept that offer. In that case, I would have to cover the additional 10 rupees from my own pocket. That's why I always clearly state the final price, and if the customer agrees, they can make the purchase. Otherwise, there is nothing more I can do.” - # 14 | J2, Cosmetics/Fancy store, Durgapur (WB)

“Now, customers have started bargaining. Earlier, they never used to bargain. We, on our own, reduce the price because we feel guilty. Even if they don't ask, we have to reduce the cost by at least 20 to 30 rupees. People have started having the mindset to bargain now. When they go to big shops, they don't bargain. If 100 people come, 90 of them try to reduce the price.” - #25 | K1, Footwear Store, Tiruppur (TN)

2. 4 Credit:

While most shopkeepers we encountered were reluctant to offer credit to their patrons, a handful used this as a unique selling point against their competition. Regular customers who frequently make purchases are typically the ones granted credit.

In a grocery store (#23.M3), a credit account is initiated where the shopkeeper records the outstanding balance on a piece of paper.

“We can give credit to those who have been our regular customers. We don't know who the person is when they come for the first time. When they start buying things and promise to pay the money weekly, then we can trust them. We also give them card, which they keep with them.I write the names in the card. Like in this card, the person has to pay 1674 rupees.” - #23 | M3, Grocery Store, Tiruppur (TN)

In an electrical store (#5.V1), especially for substantial bulk purchases for new homes, the shopkeeper employs a dedicated loan collection agent who goes from house to house to gather payments.

“We have another person focuses on collecting payments from people who owe us. I will provide travel allowance and cover petrol expenses for this person as their main job is to recover payments. They will be working in the field. The person in charge of collecting payments will handle recovery efforts and take orders from customers who want products, while also focusing on payment collection.” - #5 | V1 ,Electricals/Hardware Store, Pratapgarh (UP)

In the grocery store scenario, the business owner has minimal information about the debtor, whereas in the latter case, the retailer possesses more detailed information such as the debtor's name, address, and occupation.

Where do they struggle?

• While store owners are willing to accept returns of defective items, they may not be able to get a refund from their suppliers, resulting in a loss due to damaged stock.

• Retailers often struggle with negotiations due to the lack of a formal billing and inventory system. Remembering product prices can be difficult. Sticking to a fixed price might turn away customers, but too much flexibility could result in losses after accounting for operational costs such as rent, salaries, and electricity.

• Giving customers credit can be a gamble. If they fail to repay, they may avoid the store and find other options. This puts the store owner in a tough spot, as pushing too hard for payment could lose the customer. Often, they end up having to forgive the debt.

Conclusion:

The magic mantra of running a small business lies not in what SMEs say, but in what they don't say. When developing solutions for SMEs, observing one person over an extended period yields better insights than conducting a survey with 100 different individuals. The flexibility of transactions and the importance of building relationships are beautiful aspects of small businesses, but they come at a cost. The key question to ponder is how technology can be integrated into the lives of SMEs without compromising the relationships they value.

The full report of this study is available to read here 👇

Download the report

If you are excited about building AI solutions for India, join the People+AI WhatsApp group to brainstorm ideas and attend exclusive events.

Join WhatsApp community

A good business location provides excellent business. It can attract new customers and retain existing ones. Therefore, a prime location is a great customer acquisition strategy. Even in large shopping complexes, having a shop on the ground floor is significantly more expensive than having one on the first floor. By having a shop on the ground floor with great visibility, the additional cost paid for the shop is justified, and there is no need for additional marketing efforts to acquire customers.

In this edition, we will examine the factors that influence the decision to establish a business. This study was conducted in collaboration with People+AI, and you can read the full report here.

Factors for starting a business

The decision to establish a store is a blend of the shop's location, the demands of the local community, and the expertise of the business owner. The selection of products and services offered must align with the neighbourhood's preferences to ensure a steady flow of customers. We will dive into each of the three factors in detail below.

Location

Business owners place a high emphasis on the visibility and accessibility of their establishment to their target customers. For instance (#6.P1), an exam prep bookstore owner in Prataphgarh (UP) chose to open his shop right outside a college, recognising the prime location and the presence of student crowd around.

I figured this location would be suitable because there is a college (nearby) in Pratapgarh, which is the only degree college in the area. When the college is open, there is always a crowd of children, which is my busiest time. - #6 | P1 , Book store, Prataphgarh (UP)

Similarly, (#20.S11), a grocery store owner in Coimbatore, opened her grocery store, after observing a vacant shop in a location frequented by weekend shoppers at the Sunday market.

(On Sundays) a farmer’s market is set up in the empty space over there (nearby). There is usually a lot of rush here, making vehicles difficult to enter. Therefore, people who are buying vegetables will definitely come and purchase items from here (in my shop). So people around 4km, 8-10 km away from here, they will come and buy everything and go. - #20 | S11, Grocery Store, Coimbatore (TN)

Neighbourhood needs

The second crucial factor in opening a store is understanding the needs of the local community. Business owners often consider the distance a customer must travel to buy a product. If buying certain things is difficult because the shops are far away or not easily accessible, they want to open a store closer to potential customers. For example, (#2.S3) observed a rise in tall residential buildings and aimed to cater to customers who were travelling long distances to buy furniture and opened a store closer to the vicinity.

I selected this location because it is in a market area. I saw that wedding things like sarees are purchased from clothes shops. Furniture is also used during weddings. There is Shanti puram colony 2 km away, and it is a big and nice colony. I have seen outsiders visiting there and building new houses, so they need furniture. How will they go 5 km away to purchase furniture? If you are 1 km away and you do things here, those things will not be done 5 kms away. The service that you give here, 5 km away, will not be able to give that service. - #2 | S3, Furniture Store, Prayagraj (UP)

However, this approach can have a downside. The proliferation of numerous similar businesses in an area can lead to market saturation. Therefore, business owners must strike a careful balance between accessibility and market competition.

Owner's expertise

The third component of establishing a store relates to the business owner's expertise. Although some elements of managing a store can be learned through trial and error, certain businesses necessitate prior proficiency. For instance, (#7.A1), who operates a car garage and sells spare parts in Bhandara(MH), initiated this venture due to his acquired skill of repairing cars from his former job. He decided to start his own business after mastering these skills.

I had some technical knowledge about this work (from before). I had interest in this so I chose this business. I have interest in cars very much and that is the reason I started up this business (four wheeler garage and spare parts store). - #7 | A1, Mechanic Garage, Bhandara (MH)

In some instances, entrepreneurs test their business on a smaller scale, such as a home-based business, before transitioning it into a full-scale store. (#4.S5) chose to initiate a saree business from her home, capitalizing on the unique insight that she could source high-quality sarees from Kolkata, not Surat, which are favored by Marvadi women in her community.

Initially, I operated the business from home. I specialize in selling unique products, specifically pure fabric clothes. I am the only one in the entire Pratapgarh region who sells pure fabric clothes. I exclusively purchase pure fabric and sell it. Additionally, I also buy designer clothes. Pure chiffon and georgette fabrics are not sold here. Only clothes from Surat are available. I source my products from Jaipur and Kolkata. Kolkata has pure georgette fabric, while Jaipur has the craftsmanship. Unlike all other shops here, I obtain my products from Jaipur and Kolkata and do not buy anything from Surat. - #4 | S5, Clothing Store, Pratapgarh (UP)

Where do they struggle?

When a small business owner is choosing where to open their shop, it's like making a big bet. They know being near their customers is key. But, if there are too many similar shops around, it can hit their earnings hard. Right now, they're going by gut feeling, not facts. This approach is risky. A wrong choice can be really costly, turning into a tough situation.

Conclusion

The importance of location for a business cannot be overstated. The conscious positioning of a business determines visibility, accessibility, and overall convenience, all of which have a bearing on business success.

The full report of this study is available to read here 👇

Download the report

If you are excited about building AI solutions for India, join the People+AI WhatsApp group to brainstorm ideas and attend exclusive events.

Join WhatsApp community