This is the story of how Aravind, Abhishek and I collaborated for the first time in 2018.
To introduce myself, I’m Kishore, a product designer based out of Chennai.
I had then been working on a personal project — Project365, through which Aravind and Abhishek discovered me.
After a few email exchanges, the work was set in motion. The design deliverables were clear from the get-go. Both the co-founders were clear in their vision. Being a part-time freelancer, I’d choose only a few projects to work within a year. Typically, I’d filter projects based on the scope, budget and clarity of vision. All of this was a great fit for Hypto and we set the ball rolling.
Product Brief
Hypto’s initial product idea was to create an app for retail consumers, that would offer cashback for every transaction based on their card. The cashbacks would be offered in cash, coupled with instant withdrawals to your bank account. Merchants would benefit from understanding customer behaviour and act accordingly to increase retention and sales.
The idea was to design a mobile app for consumers to onboard with their bank-issued cards (debit/credit), avail offers from stores near them. Merchants, on the other side, would have a web portal to create campaigns, analyze and understand consumer behaviour.
The design phase.
As with any other startup, starting from scratch, we had to bring Hypto to life with a brand identity. The idea was to use “Hypotenuse” as a direct line of communication between a retailer and a customer.
After a few rounds of design iterations, we arrived at this logo for Hypto.
It was not perfect by any means, but we had very little time to market and the focus was more on bringing the product “hypto” to life.
The idea of card-based cashbacks was not new. But getting cashbacks on your everyday transactions at your retail stores was. There was however a big challenge upon us — Trust. As a customer, I’d be wary of saving my credit/debit cards on an app that I’ve barely heard of. Everyone was on the same page and we designed the onboarding experience to build trust in Hypto and save their cards.
On the merchant’s side, we created a web portal with options to create campaigns, set cashback %% and the ability to target customers with filters. Analytics was a core part of this portal, as that would enable merchants to optimize campaigns for the highest ROI. Here’s a sneak peak of the portal that we designed.
I would love to dive deep into the whole process of designing the app, but this story is just a brief throwback of how Hypto as a brand was created back in 2018 and how I came into the picture. Maybe a case study is on the cards in the near future 😉.
2–3 months after our initial interaction, the team set in motion to get things executed and I learnt that Hypto faced a lot of challenges to integrate with financial institutions. Ultimately, the credit-cards based loyalty program was axed and they went live with UPI based cashbacks. I had moved on to a different company back then and was busy with my career and travels.
