The curious case of Whatsapp…
and opportunities for indian startups
I recently started working in a Venture Capital firm. Everyday I hear ~6 startup pitches and get numerous more email pitches. The sheer variety and degree of innovation is amazing, and a lot of times, overwhelming. But over time, you tend to form certain patterns. This post is about one of the patterns I saw recently.
Over the past week, some notable startups I talked to:
- An app to connect you to local businesses
- A workforce management tool
- A trip planning platform
- A personal concierge service
From the surface, all of them seem like very different businesses. But, when asked about how currently the problem they address is being catered; all of them have the same answer. The answer being —
Then, I came upon a path breaking realisation (at least seemed so to me at that time) —
Whatsapp is everywhere.
Really.
Don’t believe me. See for yourself —
- Local businesses use Whatsapp to interacting with customers and take orders.
- Small companies sell deals via Whatsapp (if news is to be believed)
- Grocery shopping
- Brokers using it for showcasing properties to customers
- Friends using Whatsapp to plan a trip together
- Customer support : Gujarat State Road Transport Corporation (GSRTC) is providing Volvo bus helpline service through WhatsApp
- Whatsapp is the new way for telemarketers to send spam
- Teacher-parent communication
- Political campaigns / Anti-corruption hotline (as used by AAP here)
- Content sharing : Jokes/Memes/Pictures
- Marketing channel for events/content
What exactly is happening here?
To give an idea of how mobile engagement has shaped up, let me quote an interesting insight, originally posted by Mary Meeker of KPCB.
She also gives a few reasons, why mobile messaging is shaping up the way it is.
Calling as opposed to IMs, requires your 100% attention, are real-time and demands immediate action. Although that might be suitable for certain scenarios, for others Messaging is the way to go.
Graphical vs Conversational User Interface
Graphical User Interface, though it’s served us well for a long time, is beginning to fray around the edges. We’re now grappling with an unintended side effect of ubiquitous computing: a surge in complexity that overwhelms the graphical-only interface. It can take as many as 18 clicks on 10 different screens to make one simple airline reservation while we’re faced with an unwieldy array of buttons, ads, drop-downs, text boxes, hierarchical menus and more.
What makes the problem worse is that we’re forcing the GUI into a mobile-interface world even as the information and tasks available to us continue to increase. Whether it’s because of available real estate or the desire for invisible design, interface screens are increasingly smaller, narrower or simply nonexistent.
What we need now is to be able to simply talk with our devices. That’s why I believe it’s finally time for the conversational user interface, or “CUI.”
Mobile first users
While this huge growth in Instant Messaging or CUI can be attributed to the growth of smartphones in India-like countries, it is also important to note that:
With a population of 1.2 billion, India has 907 million mobile subscriptions with just 15% of all mobile subscriptions being the smartphone percentage (as compared to 39% in China).
If this is considered any sort of an indicator, we are bound to see messaging platforms entering into out lives in even more ways.
Current wave of indian startups
Take into example, the current Indian startup ecosystem. There are atleast a dozen Whatsapp/messaging based personal consierge services startups which perform even the most complex of your demands with just a message.
Some of the notable one’s being — Haptik, Goodservice, Dudegenie, Mygenie, Genie, Hellogenie, Tathastu, Jugaado, Instano, Dunzo, Tars, Hoodoo, Istaari, Speedy, Wingman, YourGuy and many more are getting started every single day(and being shut down as well).
All of these conversational systems differ in the degree with which the human or computer controls the conversation (initiative).
This recent trend in the startup ecosystem, along with what is happening with messaging platforms in our other asian counter-parts (China, Japan and Korea), suggests a drastic change coming our way (with the way we interact with our devices).
Messaging leaders across the globe are trying to create cross-platform operating systems that are context-persistent communication hubs for more and more services.
While global leaders like Whatsapp, Facebook Messenger and Snapchat are yet to become a one-stop communication hub, the country leaders in China, Japan and Taiwan are already there (atleast technology wise). They can do payments, games, taxi services and what not.
If this story is to pan out globally, we might see these apps being our default interfaces for every service.
An even more curious case of WeChat
As Connie Chan of Andreessen Horowitz rightly points out, WeChat has evolved itself from a messaging platform to a mobile operating system of some sorts. WeChat’s Average Revenue Per User is 7 USD, which is seven times the ARPU of Whatsapp. Connie writes beautifully here, what and how WeChat has become a model of how messaging platforms all across the world might evolve into. Do read the article, especially about WeChat’s app-within-an-app model.
WeChat was used to send 1 billion of virtual red envelopes just on one day (Chinese New Year). It is also used to offer government services to it’s 549mn users.
There is already a lot of chat and social commerce happening over WeChat. There is no reason why this would not translate into India.
What really to be seen is — who does it?
What it means for the future?
With the indian ecosystem already ready for the next wave of services that might come in future, what really needs to be seen is — who will bring the technological advancement that is needed.
No doubt, Natural Language Processing and AI is getting better everyday. But, still not good enough to build trust for chat commerce.
With that being said, there is no reason it can’t happen in the next couple of years. A lot of smart brains are already on it.
Once you get to the point that computers understand us, the next step is that computers get embedded in us, and we become the next UI.
