STARTUP SPECIAL... We Ditched English to Get a Move On

We Ditched English to Get a Move On

THE HARD THING ABOUT... BUILDING FOR BHARAT WITH LOW MONETISATION

ANKUSH SACHDEVA
CEO, ShareChat

Cracking the ‘Bharat’ audience was the one place where we faced several challenges. We had to pivot our model multiple times by taking stock of our user’s WhatsAapp behaviour.

The first problem was that when we had the ‘English’ language option, more than 50% of our users would choose English and wouldn’t engage too much in the app. When we interacted with them, we realised that they could not speak English beyond exchanging basic pleasantries.

The underlying reason for this behaviour was that people had a lack of trust towards a regional language app. They seemed to have developed mistrust with several local language recharge apps that would claim to give cashbacks but never did.

For this reason, we had to eventually get rid of the English option because our users were unwilling to choose the local language at all. Once we removed English, the engagement on the app shot up by a big magnitude. We also ensured that we did not charge the user anything.

Moreover, our initial product offered both content and services. After studying user behaviour from 2014 to 2015, we realised that most of the users were only seeking local content and did not care for the services. So we pivoted again. In October 2015, we launched the product that is currently running.

That said, I do not think monetisation is going to be a challenge because it is a function of the burgeoning digital ad market. In every geography where there is internet penetration, the digital ad market has grown much faster when compared to the traditional ad market, which is why we believe that monetisation will eventually follow.

(As told to Varsha Bansal)

ET 16AUG18