Stereotypes and Mangoes
I called the guy who booked my Uber in the morning to verify the pickup location. He heard me speak and asked if I was an Uber Commute driver, and I was happy to find another customer who knew what I was doing. Instead, he said, “I’ll cancel the ride then.” When I asked why, he said, “Sorry, but Uber Commute sucks!”
Wow, that was an unpleasant surprise! My mind started coming up with a thousand responses — “What did I do to you?”, “I’m not the jerk who gave you a ride the last time”, “Why do you think all Uber Commuters are the same?”… But all I said was, “Yeah ok, your call bro.”
This one hit close to home. I often stereotype auto drivers and IT cabbies under the same “rash drivers, out to kill someone” tag. I should watch out for inherent biases before making general, sweeping conclusions!
Day 3
The lady who refused my ride the last time pings again, and I debate briefly in my head before accepting the ride. This time it works, and I pick her up without any fuss. She is a developer who is building an Android app launcher called Hapoos. Have you ever used a launcher, she asks. Yes I have, I proudly answer, trying to show off that I’m not an ignoramus, and I know how this tech stuff works. I’ve used Aviate (now part of Yahoo!) and Nova launcher before, and have loved the personalisation they offer on my phone.
Hapoos is an Indian regional language launcher built by ex-Daily Hunt folks Shreyas Desai and Maruti Borker. They claim to be the only app launcher with Hindi, Tamil and Marathi languages.
She smiles, and says she is happy to meet one of the few people in India who knows what app launchers are. “Its tough for me to explain to people what I do”, she quips. I laugh and tell her I know how that feels, recalling me trying to explain to my parents what I did when I was in a consulting job.
“We are a bunch of techies who built Daily Hunt, the famous Indian regional news and content app, so we know a thing or two about building tools for regional consumption. We have built this cool app launcher, but we aren’t able to get users to download the app and start using it. We are bootstrapped and don’t know how long this can go on without adoption”, she says with a heavy heart.
I’m thinking of the famous quote from Field of Dreams - “If you build it, they will come” and how wrong that statement is. My Mom is a big fan of getting her Tamil news and current affairs fix on Daily Hunt. Its definitely a sticky proposition once the audience get to know about the product. But how do you tell the not-so-tech-savvy world that there’s such a kickass thing out there that they aren’t even aware of?
“I know a few startups where techies built a great product, but weren’t able to market it well. What’s it with Bangalore techies who think they know it all?”, I remark in a snide manner. And then it hits me, I’m stereotyping techies exactly the way I decided NOT to do this morning. I quickly change gears and suggest some growth hacks we used in the early days of Momoe.
