The Right Way to Build Mobile-first B2C Startups in India

(Source: kenteegardin)

We have been thinking through how to start and build large mobile B2C businesses, with an eye toward the megatrend of mobile that is slowly building here in India.   Megatrend-wise, the number of mobile internet users in India has grown rapidly (60-100M mobile web users depending on who you believe in) and that trend is likely to continue.

While this megatrend is creating an opportunity to build mobile-first B2C businesses, the lack of monetization methods is a big problem. Stumbling blocks include lack of depth in micro-payment platforms (outside of telcos) and a rather small mobile advertising market.

I believe that mobile-first startups need to keep gross burn low while iterating fast toward product-market fit –  there are two key metrics which I feel need to be optimized early-on and are lead indicators of the value that a business in this space can create:

1. Customer acquisition cost (CAC) associated with a fast growing user base
2. Engagement within the acquired user base

How to drive lower customer acquisition cost:

Low B2C CAC for a quickly scaling user base can mean one or more of the following:

• You have hit a need gap that might have a large market.
• Your product cuts through the clutter and provides an offering much better than competition / substitutes.
• Strong virality or word of mouth referrals which come from a wow consumer experience and/or a well designed social product.

Typically, cost of acquisition needs to be compared against the revenue or lifetime value of a user, but given monetization will take longer in India, absolute low customer acquisition costs are important for the business to grow and sustain. Dhingana, a Lightspeed-backed music streaming service on web and mobile, for instance has spent a minimal amount on above-the-line marketing and has reached several million monthly active users.

What if your customer acquisition costs are not low?

• Initial customer acquisition costs for new products are typically high. As you refine the product, channels and communication costs should improve.  So have a plan for driving down blended (over non-paid and paid channels) CAC.
• Explore acquisition channels that are opening up now: A key driver of TripAdvisor’s success was its understanding of Google SEO much ahead of competition. Social and mobile channels are opening up now and some aspects aren’t yet saturated or very well understood. Take advantage of such channels. For example, Facebook recently launched its in-stream advertising and provides an opportunity because it isn’t very popular yet.
• Think about alternate channels for customer acquisition (E.g. offline retailers for local oriented apps, banks for financial services, publishers for media content, etc.). However, ownership of the customer is always an issue with such channels.
• Figure out monetization sooner, rather than purely growing the user base: Easier said than done, but you might want to identify market segments where there are customers that have a higher willingness-to-pay.

In essence, low customer acquisition cost is a key indicator of a large future user base.

How to drive higher engagement and retention:

After user base growth, engagement and retention are the key indicators of a business’ sustainability.

Poor retention is like a leaky bucket. There is no way you can create or hold value if your service is unable to retain customers. Retention (% of users that continue to use your service) after three months of activation is a widely accepted engagement metric. Flurry recently reported an average retention of 35% after three months of registration across a large base of apps. If you don’t know which side of this average your retention is, you are blind to one of the most important aspects of building a mobile business. A few points to keep in mind when using the above average as a benchmark:

• The nature of your business impacts retention. Flurry’s own data shows the extremes, such as finance apps which average retention of 10%, while news/sports could be as high as 50% after three months. This does not mean you should change your business, but have the perspective when you are benchmarking your business.
• If your user base includes a large mix of older platforms like Symbian (especially in India), then expect your average to be lower than the global average, which has a large mix of iOS that is likely to have better experience and thus retention.
• Finally, this retention number is from developers who cared to install such a measurement tool. Many developers who didn’t would likely be at a lower retention for their applications.

More frequent use of your service makes it more valuable. Flurry reports average usage frequency of ~4 times per week within its sample. The use of game mechanics and notifications are approaches to building engagement. Foursquare is perhaps one of the leading examples in driving engagement through gamification. Tools such as Urban Airship, Badgeville, Bigdoor and Xtify could be useful to use here.

Start tracking engagement metrics as soon as you launch your service. Use tools such as MixPanel, Flurry, Apsalar, Kissmetrics to measure funnels and cohorts. Define core, casual and inactive users, and measure movement between these categories against weekly and monthly targets.

Delivering on these metrics will lead to monetization and sustainability over time:

Drive high engagement today to create valuable users for future: Eventually, a portion of users who you engage could pay for the service. If the service is providing enough value, people in India jump through quite a few hoops to find a way to pay. IRCTC (~20M monthly transactions) and online tax filing (15 M in 2010-11) are great examples of at scale online transactions.

Focus on building engaged user base for better ad-monetization: Overall, there is far more mobile ad inventory in India than there is demand from advertisers. Thus, a business that stands out in terms of user engagement and has an identity within its user base will attract ad budgets. For instance a strong sports-oriented platform could find youth-oriented brands as its takers. iPad has a strong identity and engagement within its user base and ads on iPad in India go at ~Rs 1000 CPM and there is always demand for more. On the contrary, if you are one more provider of mobile inventory, then you are likely to be used for performance campaigns with poor fill-rates and low CPMs.

Good performance is self-sustaining: Your performance on app stores as well as likelihood of getting featured on one improve if you have organic traction (low CAC) and have high engagement. Android for instance optimizes search results based on retention metrics of apps.

More monetization options are becoming available, albeit slowly:

Existing VAS business models are being challenged: While the above two metrics don’t apply as sharply to existing mobile VAS businesses that are monetizing through operator relationships, the wind  is certainly blowing in the direction that they would need to start thinking about these metrics as well (TRAI’s regulations and TDSAT’s recent ruling in TRAI’s favour).

Payments through telcos is a matter of time (could be long though): Given the circumstances, telcos are opening up to being a payment channel (and getting paid like one) where the mobile business is responsible for customer acquisition. Vodafone is already selectively allowing B2C businesses to keep 60-70% of the revenue that is being collected by Vodafone from users that were acquired directly by the B2C business. More on this in Dev’s post.

More payment options are opening up: There are more efforts underway at app-stores (Rupee payments at Google Play and iOS App Store, OVI/Blackberry integrating with Airtel/Vodafone billing gateways). There are also other ongoing efforts like mobile/online wallets and integration of telcos under a single payment solution which will all lead to a much more favorable payments ecosystem for mobile B2C businesses as they come into market.

Mobile advertising is getting organized: The mobile advertising ecosystem in India is firming up with multiple players from ad-networks (InMobi, Komli, Vserv) to media-buyers (Ad2C, Madhouse) setting up dedicated teams for the Indian market. Brands are already experimenting with mobile even though the budgets are small today. It is still a long way to go, but if smartphone penetration continues to grow, then mobile could very well be the largest targeted digital rich media platform available to a brand manager.

These are still early days and it is a long haul, but if you are building a mobile-first B2C business and focusing on the metrics above, there is a path to meaningful value creation.

Is there Value in Building a Business around Online Vernacular Content?

[Published in Yourstory.in]

There are two levels to this question:

a) Is there value in vernacular content?

b) Is there value in online vernacular content?

(My thoughts below the image)

(Source: Newshunt)

a) The first one is a clear YES, which wasn’t the case a few years back. In 2007, English publication readers constituted 10% of total print media readership, but garnered 60% of the total print ad-pie. Today, English still constitutes 10% of readers, but its share of the ad-pie has come down to 40%. In the same period Hindi grew from 20% to 30% of the ad-pie. To put things in perspective, the print-ad pie is ~$1B today, so Hindi print alone is at $300M of ad-revenue and growing at 17-18% annually. More data in a recent article in FE.

According to media buyers’ estimates, during 2007-09, the ad rate commanded by English newspapers was roughly 10x that of non-English dailies. This rate has contracted to about 8x and is further expected to come down to 5x or 4x in the next three years.

The above is also the driver for investments and growth in Hindi print. E.g. Blackstone’s investment in Jagran and Nalanda’s investment in DB Corp.

b) Value in online vernacular content is not showing in terms of monetization yet. Online advertising is gaining traction but it is mostly English today. However, it is encouraging that vernacular is building up readership – Dainik Bhaskar recently announced 200M monthly pageviews. Advertising spend on any media tends to inflect after reach (readership) crosses a threshold, and the signs for online vernacular are in the right direction.

Thus the answer to the question in the title of this post is “Yes, it seems so”, but it won’t be clear for some more time. Of course, when the answer is obvious to everyone, the opportunity no longer exists.

Takeaways for entrepreneurs:

- There is an opportunity in vernacular: Online vernacular readership is increasing and will increase faster as internet and mobile-data access continue to penetrate deeper beyond the English-speaking population.

- Monetization will take longer: Be prepared to keep a lid on the costs while the market shapes up. Good news is that the online ad-ecosystem is in place for English and given will bring $$$ to vernacular if there is an arbitrage opportunity in pricing.

- Local plays an important role in vernacular: 60%+ of ad-revenues  in vernacular-print come from regional sources (regional fmcg brands, education institutes, local government, etc). The content too has a very local taste – print publications customize their content every 25 kms to fit into local dialects and preferences. So keep localization in mind in terms of content and as well as monetization.

- Think mobile: With cost of devices and access continuously falling, mobile might be the primary channel for accessing vernacular content in India, unlike English.

- Define your space: Large offline publications will always be faster and cost efficient in building content. You need to define your space but still be meaningful to a large enough population.

- Think out of the box, especially if you are looking to raise venture funds. Content production is a linear businesses. Can there be a platform play where the effort/cost of building content is not directly proportional to content monetization?

- Finally, keep an eye on vernacular even if you run an online transaction business (like ecommerce). If vernacular audience is valuable to an advertiser (online or offline), it is likely valuable to you as well, so don’t close your doors on them by having an English-only website. The “access” value proposition of ecommerce is also more suited to the non-metros of India, which constitute ~50% of the orders today.

Please add your thoughts in the comments section.

Why Lightspeed invested in OneAssist

Yesterday, we formally announced that Lightspeed and Sequoia invested in OneAssist, a company that creates and markets assistance and protection-oriented membership plans for consumers.  OneAssist was incubated and founded in the Lightspeed offices during 2011 by Gagan Maini and Subrat Pani.  We’ve known Gagan for almost five years and frequently traded views on business ideas and opportunities in the payments, loyalty and concierge space.  Gagan and Subrat have known each other since the late-90s, when they worked together at the SBI-GE cards joint venture.  They have each built new businesses from scratch inside larger companies – Gagan most recently started the Indian operations for CPP and Subrat built the credit cards business at Kotak – and we’re excited to back them in building a new company in this white space.

The thesis behind OneAssist is that consumers increasingly value peace of mind, convenience and assistance with respect to certain events that can disrupt or interrupt our everyday lives (such as the loss of a phone or wallet, health emergencies etc.).  This is driven by: (i) increasing time scarcity – especially in double income households, (ii) a cultural preference for ‘assistance’ (witness services such as Naukri’s ‘assisted’ online job postings, where sales reps hand-hold employers through the job posting process, JustDial’s assisted directory service, IRCTC’s agent channel for booking online tickets etc), and (iii) an emerging orientation towards protecting oneself from unforeseen future events (health insurance didn’t meaningfully exist 10 years ago and is a 13,000 Cr industry now).  And perhaps more anecdotally, a growing sense of taking responsibility for oneself and one’s family.

We believe there is a large opportunity to create a branded, consumer-oriented assistance and protection platform across multiple segments.  The initial use cases OneAssist will support are the loss (or theft) of a wallet (including cards, driving license, PAN card etc) and the loss (or theft) of a mobile phone.  In each case, the company takes on the chore of cancelling credit/debit cards (or remotely wiping and locking a phone), protecting against misuse of cards and/or data, providing emergency assistance (such as providing a replacement handset with data fully backed-up), and replacing essential identity documents such as a driving license or PAN card.  Each product also offers certain group insurance benefits to protect against financial loss.  Plans are priced at Rs 1,000 to 2000 per annum depending on the chosen package plan, which equates to just about Rupees 3-5 a day.

In addition to marketing directly to consumers, the company would also market their products through affinity partners (such as banks, telcos, retail, etc) and corporates who have large customer or employee bases and can offer such products as very relevant value added service or benefits for a fee.

This business model is notoriously difficult to execute against given the importance of delivering against the promise in ‘moments of truth’, the myriad of supply-chain partnerships and capabilities that must be developed and coordinated, the direct and partner-driven sales and marketing capabilities that must be built to achieve scale and the customer engagement strategies that must be deployed to ensure high customer satisfaction and loyalty. We believe that Gagan and Subrat are the best entrepreneurs to take on this challenge and wish them and their team the very best as they embark upon this adventure.

Social/Mobile Platforms have Changed the Game in the US (but not India yet)

[Published in Pluggd.in]

I was looking at some stats on growth of consumer social and mobile platforms between 2008 and now. Even though it’s an obvious point, the contrast is quite stark and shows how much the world has changed in a short time.  It’s almost hard to imagine a world where Facebook was a startup, LinkedIn and Twitter had very small user bases and iOS and Android each had less than 10M users. But this was the case in early 2008.

The numbers above are based on Crunchbase, SEC filings and news reports – I think they’re directionally correct although there may be some numbers that are not exactly right.

While all these above-mentioned platforms or quasi-platforms (and others I have not mentioned) have impacted startups in the US and Europe, I think Facebook and Android are the real game-changers in India as opposed to LinkedIn, Twitter or iOS.

Why Facebook and Android in India?  Here’s why: When I think of consumer platforms (a much abused term), I think of a few criteria:

1. a large, engaged and fast-growing audience (100M+ users)
2. a developer friendly culture and technology base
3. a monetization vehicle that is providing enough return to developers for their time

In my opinion, three platforms stand out today and meet this criteria – Facebook, iOS and Android – in many parts of the world.  However, they all fall down in India when it comes to #3 (monetization) and (for now) #1 (audience size).  I have no doubt these platforms will get to the right audience sizes in India in the next 12-24 months – Facebook claims ~50M users and Android has <10M in India. In the meantime, Google reigns supreme for reaching users.

So, the upshot is that now is the time to start companies leveraging these platforms in India.

[previously published on Nextwala blog]

Local News Aggregation

Our colleague Dev has posted on his Nextwala blog regarding his search for a utility app for local news aggregation. The article was also published on VCCircle.

Mobile Rev-Share Changes Might Spark a Fire

(Source: Andrew Bolin)

[Published in Medianama]

I attended the Founders Forum event in Mumbai, organized by Rajesh Sawhney, Brent Hoberman and Jonathan Goodwin, as well as the Nokia Growth Partners Mobile Internet event.

Jonathan Bill of Vodafone spoke at both these events about upcoming changes in Vodafone’s offdeck rev-share regime in India.  This change, along with a potential broadband data plan price war and growth in smartphone users could result in a real transition in mobile data usage over the remainder of this year, charting a way out of the slump that I discussed in my last post.

Vodafone will start to offer more favorable rev-share deals to those direct-to-consumer mobile apps/services companies that will not rely on Vodafone for promotion and customer acquistion. In other words, developers will keep 70% of the revenue from their applications (at a scale of Rs 1 cr+ in billings; 60% below that), as opposed to the 25-30% currently prevalent here.  70% is more in line with what Apple and Google offer to developers for iOS and Android apps respectively as well as what operators are offering in the US, Europe, China and Japan.

The bet here is that the smaller operators like Aircel and Tata DoCoMo follow relatively quickly and then the larger ones like Airtel and Reliance may be compelled to follow suit – in aggregate, these greater offdeck rev-shares will drive more innovation and more revenue for developers.  Nokia, among others, is citing a 3-5x jump in conversation rates when operator billing is enabled for paid apps and in-app purchases.

I don’t think mobile operators are risking much in the short- to medium-term by tring this since this change in rev-share would only apply to offdeck billing and not to the majority of revenue that these operators get through whitelabeled services, data plans and p2p SMS that they already offer.  In the long-term, though, whitelabel services will suffer from competition from D2C apps/services – also, ARPU from data plans will come down in price wars although overall data plan revenue should go up with significantly higher numbers of data subscriptions.

I don’t expect these changes to break open the eco-system overnight.  70% rev-share to developers was offered in the US for several years prior to the iPhone being introduced in 2007, yet the eco-system there did not break-out.  Why?  Because there is lots of other friction in the eco-system as well, including multi-step transaction flows for consumers, 4-6 month payout periods for developers, reconciliation issues, no standard app discovery methodology (although app stores are starting to be offered by most operators today), no offdeck billing aggregator in India, fragmented platforms, lack of customer trust, and limited success/availability of multiple business models like paid apps, in-app billing, in-app advertising etc.

However, assuming this change from Vodafone comes through in the next couple of months, here’s some of what could ensue:

• In anticipation of other operators following through with the same model, I expect to see the formation of many new teams with strong consumer acquisition, engagement and retention DNA.  Hopefully, with funds freed up for product and marketing, there should be a greater focus on building brand and acquiring customers directly on what will be the leading platforms in India in the next few years: mobile Web and Android (in my opinion, not SMS, USSD, J2ME or iOS).  I am bullish about the prospects of some of these D2C categories, especially related to entertainment.

• Mobile ad networks (e.g. Google, InMobi, Appia, Getjar) will benefit from some increased performance-based ad spend from developers.  As we have seen in other countries, mobile content providers (music, ringtones, apps) with direct revenue models have been the earliest adopters of mobile advertising because they have been able to tie marketing spend directly to revenue.

• Existing whitelabel MVAS vendors will launch consumer brands or start pushing their nascent consumer brands more aggressively.  In other geographies where the D2C eco-system opened up, whitelabel vendors have struggled tremendously with building consumer brands and have mostly failed.  Impediments include trying to maintain relationships with their mobile operator customers while competing with them in their D2C business and not having the consumer DNA in the team for user acquisition and retention.

• Other mobile operators might slowly start offering similar rev-shares although I think they will wait to see the results of Vodafone’s new initiative before risking their arguably miniscule offdeck billing revenue streams.

• We may see a carrier payments aggregator emerge once enough operators have changed their offdeck rev-share percentages.  InMobi (with Smartpay) and Opera are already moving this way in India as announced at MWC.  Boku, Zong, Paypal may come this way over time.  There should be a space for a standalone Indian carrier payments aggregator, along the lines of what Qpass did in the US a decade ago.

So, I see a much more vibrant and larger MVAS eco-system emerging over the next few years.  Now is a right time to start direct-to-consumer companies in mobile – we are seeing a ton of founders with exciting new ideas.  Bring it on!

(previously published on Nextwala blog and Medianama)

India’s Mobile Apps & Services Industry is in a Slump…

I find myself simultaneously excited by the future prospects of India’s mobile value-added services (MVAS) industry and depressed by the current friction in the eco-system.  Overall though, I am cautiously optimistic – there is some hope on the horizon in the form of upcoming offdeck rev-share changes, smartphone growth, and the (rumored) Reliance 4G launch.

So, what is the problem?

Mobile operator ARPU in India has collapsed from roughly $10 in 2005 to $3 currently, compared to a steady $11 in China and $70 in the US.  There is over-competition in the market – good news for consumers in terms of voice prices but bad news for consumers in terms of slower rollout of broadband and high wireless data prices.

Wireless data in India is relatively early – it accounts for ~$4.8 billion in revenue (according to IAMAI and Analysys Mason) or 16% of overall wireless revenue of ~$30 billion.  MVAS (excluding data plans and p2p SMS) accounts for approximately half of wireless data revenue in India.  Contrast this to US data revenue of ~$70 billion in 2011 (approximately 35-40% of overall wireless revenue of $200 billion) and China data revenue of $32 billion (approximately 27% of overall wireless revenue of $120 billion).  There are approximately 50 million mobile Internet users in India out of ~800 million mobile users.

MVAS companies in India are not growing fast (or at all).  Since they have traditionally focused on building businesses inside the operator walled garden, they have been governed by the 25-30% cap on the rev-share that they get.  Recent TRAI regulation changes have not helped the vendors (although I think consumers have benefited from the elimination of spam and seamy billing practices).  Due to their whitelabel nature and lack of consumer branding, most MVAS companies are being increasingly commoditized.  They also have a high cost base given the rev-share constraint, content licensing costs and the fixed cost of managing operator relationships.

The leading MVAS companies like OnMobile, IMIMobile, Comviva and One97 have now refocused their attention outside India.  Beyond that, there is a long-tail of MVAS companies, none of which seem to have truly punched through $5-10M per year in revenue and many of which have now optimized for cash-flow at the expense of growth.

No alternative payments platform in place.  Operator billing is the most pervasive payment mechanism in the world, and in India (apart from cash and checks).  Some sort of alternative mechanism needs to come along, whether cash load networks or mobile wallets with integration to net banking/ETF/credit cards/cash load networks or operator billing aggregators.  18 million credit cards is a miniscule number relative to 800 million+ mobile users.

But I think there is some hope on the horizon.  Here’s what to look out for in the next 12-24 months:

1) offdeck rev-shares could be poised to increase dramatically from 30% to developers going up to 70% in the next 12 months, with Vodafone leading the charge (more on this in the next post).

2) over the next 2-3 years, as true smartphones (Android/iOS) grow to ~100 million installed base, from the current 10-15 million, consumers will have access to a global applications database and regular payment options.

3) Reliance 4G may disrupt on pricing and rev-shares to break open the market.  This might drive a data plan price war.

(republished from Nextwala blog)