Yahoo India have announced the launch of Yahoo Storytellers, a content marketing solution for brands and agencies that leverages Yahoo’s editorial expertise, extensive data, and native advertising through Yahoo Gemini. Now marketers in India can leverage Yahoo Storytellers to successfully develop, distribute and measure premium branded content that meets consumers’ high expectations and drives engagement.
Gurmit Singh, Vice President and Managing Director, Yahoo India said
A successful content marketing campaign equates to how well you understand your consumers. With Yahoo Storytellers, we’re offering a better way for brands to create powerful content that’s informed by data and engages the right audience. The promise of using data to make content marketing effective is hyper-personalization at work, making sure that content is valuable to both brands and users.
Yahoo Storytellers will help brands to build successful content marketing strategies, including content consulting services, development of premium video, a full range of editorial content and influencer activations across social platforms.
In India, Yahoo has partnered with multiple brands to help them create successful campaigns, including Accenture, Amazon, Madhya Pradesh Tourism and Tourism Australia among others.
For Madhya Pradesh Tourism, to activate their brand promise of MP mein dil hua bache sa [Reconnect with your inner child], Yahoo tapped into the creative community on Tumblr and commissioned four illustrators to create art-based travelogues. Over the course of the campaign, 32 articles were posted on MP Illustrated & shared through native advertising as well as earned social reach, thanks to a fresh approach to content.
With the expansion of its Content Marketing solutions through Yahoo Storytellers, Yahoo will help brands connect with a highly engaged audience and drive measurable results for their campaigns.
With around 391 million users, India has already become the second highest country in terms of mobile internet users. This is expected to grow rapidly to around 650 million mobile internet users by 2020. At the same time, data consumption by 2020 could potentially increase 10-14 times. The Boston Consulting Group [BCG], along with TiE, have released a report titled The $250 Billion Digital Volcano: Dormant No More that describes this phenomenal digital adoption in the country.
The impending digital salience can be seen from the following indicators:
High speed mobile internet adoption is set to reach ~550 Mn users by 2020, almost 85% of the total mobile internet users
Average data consumption is projected to reach ~7-10 GB per user per month by 2020
India’s internet economy is expected to double from USD 125 Bn to USD 250 Bn, growing from
the current ~5% to ~7.5% of the country’s GDP
The report reveals that while so far mobile internet users have proliferated and Smartphone users have gone up by 4 times, high speed internet users have still been limited only to ~56%. Thus, average data consumption per user continues to be low, standing at less than 1 GB data per month vis-a-vis developing economies like Indonesia and Brazil at 2–3 GB/month and developed economies like Japan and US at 9–11 GB/month. However, the situation is about to change.
Nimisha Jain, a BCG partner and report co-author said
It is essential to understand the three forces that are now synergizing to unlock internet consumption in India. Firstly, by 2020, 4G enabled devices are expected to grow 6 times to 550 Mn devices, constituting 70% devices in use. Secondly, reliable high speed data is becoming both ubiquitous as well as mass affordable (data rates have reduced to less than one-third in just 4–5 months). Lastly, digital content is proliferating as well as improving in quality, thus driving consumption.
Increased high speed internet adoption, the report says, is expected to increase time spent online by 2020 to almost 3-4 times. Moreover, the amount of video consumed online is on the rise especially driven by online media and entertainment. As internet access ceases to be a constraint, consumers will become more quality conscious, resulting in an increase in the average video resolution. Driven by these changes in online consumption, average data consumption per user is set to increase by 10-14 times by 2020.
The report comes at a time, when the conversation has moved from ‘Internet of Things’ to ‘Internet of Everything’, and digitization presents a great opportunity for multiple stakeholders. Innovation is what leads to sustainability, and sustainable growth in the current entrepreneurship ecosystem will enable India to chart its own success story.
India’s internet economy is expected to double to become USD 250 billion by 2020. E-commerce and financial services are projected to lead this growth. For instance, share of digital payment transactions could more than double to go up to 30–40% by 2020. Digital economy will have a much broader influence beyond the direct economic impact. Digital adoption will deliver several citizen-centric social benefits like enhancing ease of doing business, improving access to services and products and transforming governance.
As the new digital paradigm emerges, adapting to change will become critical. For instance the impact on jobs is expected to be transformational. Increased automation will minimize manual and repetitive roles while roles in upcoming spaces become coveted, e.g. Human-machine interaction. Existing roles will also undergo transformation as low-value adding tasks get automated. New ways of working are expected to emerge with an increasingly flexible workforce optimizing for efficiency. At the same time, genesis of new technology-led business models will give impetus to entrepreneurial activity and create new opportunities.
About India Internet Day
India Internet Day is a leadership conference that looks at setting conversations around a long term vision for the industry. The idea of India Internet Day is to look at paradigm shifts in the internet industry globally and what that means for the internet business in India. While based in India, the event seeks to have a strong global connect. The forum also explores the shape of things to come while connecting with the established players, outliers and experimenters – making the forum as a point of reference. In this our fifth year, #iDay2017 goes beyond the predefined boundaries and explore issues of far more relevance and impact. For more information, please visit India Internet Day
How would it be if you could stream online videos or browse websites on your TV ? How about a device that could measure your level of activity throughout the day ? How would it be if a device helps keep your home secure ? With the Smart Living Store you can find out! Amazon India announces the launch of Smart Living Store – a dedicated store aimed at providing customers the one stop shop for all smart devices across various product categories.
The store brings across a ‘smart’ selection from various categories such as wearables, health devices and home solutions to one store. The store has a wide range of selection covering top brands across various categories with products such as Philips Hue smart lights, D Link & TP Link smart plugs, Go Pro action cameras, Fitbit, Garmin smart activity trackers, Samsung Gear S3 smartwatches, Foscam smart security devices and Merge virtual reality.
Noor Patel, Director, Category Management at Amazon said
At Amazon we are continuously working towards improving customer experience. The Smart Living Store will help customers browse for various smart, innovative and interactive devices across categories which can help simplify their lives. Smart Devices are expected to witness high growth in India in the coming years and customers can now enjoy shopping for the entire selection under one store.
The Smart Living Store will also feature a blog to help customers get a better perspective on the use and functionalities of smart devices. Consumers on Amazon and the Amazon mobile shopping app have an easy and convenient access to 100 million products across hundreds of categories. They benefit from a safe and secure ordering experience, convenient electronic payments, Cash on Delivery, Amazon’s 24*7 customer service support, and a globally recognized and comprehensive 100% purchase protection provided by Amazon’s A-to-Z Guarantee. They can also enjoy Amazon.in’s guaranteed next-day, two day delivery, Sunday and Morning delivery on products fulfilled by Amazon.
HackerEarth, leader in innovation and talent management software, is set to host the fourth edition of the India’s largest developer confluence, the IndiaHacks 2017 in association with Honeywell. The confluence is aimed at encouraging developers from across the globe and celebrating the spirit of hacking. Registrations are now open and the event will be conducted in three phases : Phase 1 [online], Phase 2 [offline-zonal] and Phase 3 [offline- final].
The code fest will be a series of four offline hackathons and one online hackathon across 3 zones. Participants stand a chance to win cash prizes upto INR 35 Lakhs. There will be two programming tracks around Algorithms/Data Structures and Machine Learning. These online challenges will have developers solving complex programming problems by using concepts of algorithms, data structures, data science, etc.
The remaining 3 will be hackathons on FinTech, IOT and Artificial Intelligence. These hackathons will see developers build unique and interesting products in less than 48 hours. Hacks will be evaluated based on parameters such as uniqueness of the idea, usability of the hack, code quality, design and other parameters.
The first stage is the Idea Submission & Online Hackathon. Participants can submit their ideas here
Each hackathon will have separate themes. Participants across the country will have six weeks to submit their unique ideas & hacks. The submissions are evaluated and the top twenty teams from each zone are shortlisted for Phase II-the zonal level offline hackathons.
The zonal hackathons will be held in Delhi [North Zone], Pune [West Zone], and Bangalore [South Zone] between 29th July~19th August. The participants will build hacks related to the theme/domain. Hacks will be evaluated on parameters like uniqueness of idea, usability of hack, code quality, design etc. The top five teams from each zone will be invited to the grand finale. More than 200 finalists are expected to be part of the final offline hackathon from September 8th-9th.
The biggest attraction of the fourth edition of IndiaHacks will be the Developer Conference in Bangalore-India’s biggest developer confluence. Along with the grand finale of IndiaHacks, the audience will be treated to a host of talks, discussions, and tech workshops by the biggest names in the industry. The event is also supported by IBM, RBS, HERE, S&P Global, Zoho and Active.AI
Sachin Gupta, CEO and Co-founder, HackerEarth said
It has been four years since we started HackerEarth and hackathons have been an integral part of our community. IndiaHacks is our annual flagship event that has been about recognizing and rewarding the hackers-the problem-solvers among us. This will be our fourth edition and we are aiming to make this a massive confluence. There will be interesting programming challenges and hackathons for every kind of hacker and developer from across the world. Through this event, we are trying to encourage programmers and coders to up their game and bring out their best.
IndiaHacks 2016 was a huge success with 1,43,000 registrations from 1500 cities in 21 countries. The developer conference had 55 speakers from various industry verticals who spoke about various topics ranging from technical to management to startups. Some of the keynote speakers included Puneet Soni, Anand Chandrasekaran, Harish Sivaramakrishnan and Viral Shah among others.
IndiaHacks 2016 also saw two of its winners Pally [Fintech] and IOTRANICS [IoT] start their own companies and get funded.
Senthil Kumar from IOTRANICS had this to say about IndiaHacks 2016
The winning moment in IndiaHacks 2016 was a huge confidence booster and an opportunity to showcase our innovation to the world. Our idea, SaveMom, was selected as best social innovation by Airmaker, a Singapore-based startup accelerator. We are happy to share that we started our company JioVio HealthCare in Singapore.
About HackerEarth
HackerEarth is the leading provider of innovation and talent management software to some of the world’s foremost companies, including Pitney Bowes, Amazon, Walmart Labs, Honeywell, and more. HackerEarth has powered innovation and talent management for large enterprises across major industries such as financial services, retail, healthcare and manufacturing. HackerEarth empowers businesses to connect with developer community to crowd-source ideas into real-life products and helps them assess technical talent for hiring. For more information, please visit HackerEarth
Today, technology and its know-how is a fundamental requirement in every sphere, whether it’s about running our personal affairs or our professional agenda every day. The same theory applies to companies, hunting for the right candidates to fit their work environment. With the accession of the internet, social media, and high-end applicant tracking systems, employers today need to take a more proactive approach to find and source candidates.
This has to be done by pushing the brand name forward with the help of each and every available technical expertise available. Taking into consideration the intricacy of the hiring process and different ideas of conducting recruitments, only the use of a general psychometric test is not going to work out.
That is why, there has been an emergence of a range of automation tools for various tasks, ranging from performing keyword searches of resumes to conducting behavioural and skills assessments. These tools can be integrated into human resource information systems or articulated products. They can also be premeditated to implement particular HR management philosophies.
Employers who commit to their employer branding see an average growth of 11%, thus making HR technology an attractive item to overburdened recruiting teams – NovoGroup, 2016
Universal Adoption of Automation Tools
In the 1930’s, the company for Barbasol Shaving cream, had over hundred employees. However, in 2009, Perio Inc., Barbasol’s owner, Thomas Murray, decided to open a factory in Ashland, Ohio, to manufacture the shaving cream. With mechanics at hand, the company now only needed 22 employees to start a first shift. Hence, prior to opening the facility, Perio brought in JC Rice, Vice President Shared Services for Perio-Barbasol and Kevin Klinvex, to rethink the hiring process.
Perio Inc. received about 3000 applications, but they wanted to follow a consistent process, that could handle that number of candidates. Hence, to sort out the torrent of applications that came in, Perio used three online tools from Select International, of which two were used to screen candidates.
After an initial interview, the chosen candidates were then given the Select Assessment for Manufacturing, a test designed to evaluate personality and behavioural traits that were relevant to the hourly manufacturing employees. Those who passed the assessments were given reference and background checks. Based on the ease of this initial round of hiring, Perio Inc. used the process to pick applicants for additional shifts, thereby adding another production line altogether. At present, The plant has brought 70 manufacturing jobs to Ashland, which runs two shifts a day, five days a week.
HR technology trends on the rise
How do you know who to hire? How do you know what your employees want in the workplace? How do you predict how a new update or change in your workplace is going to go over?
HR technology has been undergoing one of the most tumultuous phases since the past decade, thus undergoing a revolution. From mobile, to SaaS, to social media, the HR technology has been changing rapidly. According to CB Insights, a venture capital database, more than two billion dollars were invested into HR tech systems and platforms in 2016 in their quest for the next big thing in breakthrough technology. A research conducted by Deloitteestimated a revenue of USD 240 billion dollars, spent only for recruitment and talent acquisition.
HR technology solutions that give recruiters the competitive edge are already the game changers for recruiting professionals. With the rapid rise in technology, recruiters and HR professionals are all racing at arms-length. HR technologies have brought science and metrics into the game. As these technologies get more cost effective and easier to use, more people are jumping onto this cultism. These advances are meant to take the guesswork out of hiring, and lessen the threat of the much-dreaded bad hire. Here is a look at the tech that everyone is talking about.
Video interviewing, after psychometric tests, has become one of the wildly popular tech tools in recruiting & HR that has quickly proven to be an ROI superstar. According to an infographic by SparkHire
Beyond 6 out of 10 companies presently use video interviews in their recruiting process.
Recruiters can watch 10 one-way video interviews within the same amount of time taken to conduct just one phone screen interview.
Companies that use video interviews for recruiting can save as much as 67% on the cost for travelling.
HR is moving at such a fast pace and what used to be advanced software just a few of years back, is now being quickly replaced. It has become distinct that talent management software is no longer just a ‘cool’ option for HR departments to have, but it has become the standard procedure. HR pros and recruiters are falling over each other for new software.
Other than video interviews, another HR tech tool that is on the rise and has taken a firm hold on the HR and recruiting world, is social media. Many companies are going even further LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook for improving their recruiting services by use of niche sites, which have become a very popular source for tough-to-fill positions and passive candidate scouting.
Another popular technology which is seeing the light of day in most companies is the integration of gamification into their recruiting process. According to an article published in Mashable, Richard Taylor, senior VP for communications and industry affairs at the Entertainment Software Association, 70% of major employers utilize interactive software and games to train employees.
In 2013, Mettl, India’s leading online skill assessment platform, introduced the Case Study evaluator to pioneer the measurement of business skill evaluation, using the methodology of case study. This case study simulator is available in a simulation format wherein users simply require to log on to the Mettl platform and choose to participate in the treasure hunt, graphically depicted as the gamification of a business case problem, after an invitation from a participating company or institution. Mettl’s CEO & Co-founder Ketan Kapoor stated that their vision by doing so, is to to redefine the standards of skill assessments globally, by employing technology to measure hands-on skills and not just knowledge on any subject.
Over to you
The HR technology space is worth USD 14 Billion. Around 15 years ago companies mainly focused on making HR tools easier for HR people to use, rather than for employees. However, today the demand is for HR technology to deliver a great employee experience that makes work-life more productive and interesting; HR tools need to feel more interesting and less like training and performance administration.
As the shift to automated accelerates, HR vendors too need to adapt fast. Psychometric assessments are a great way to gauge candidates applying for a job application, but HR tech tools are fantastic, especially tool when talent is required ASAP. New software and social platforms can discover the best and brightest candidate, allowing HR or hiring teams to establish immediate dialogue with them. This software alone has the ability to change the HR equation. Who knows? You might even discover someone who ignites your imagination, leading to creating a position just to get this genius on board.
Hiring software can automate processes, grade candidates, and provide HR professionals with some direction. With the advent of web services, the same tools can be used by both large and small organizations.
The HR technology landscape is ever-evolving, but as companies embrace the science, they should also never forget that it is not infallible. Remember the human dimension. The best HR practitioners and leaders know their organizations and culture brand on a innate level. Finding talent can be made a lot easier by these fantastic technologies, but finding the ‘right fit’ transcends even technology.
About the author
Tonmoy Shingal is the Co-founder & COO of Mettl, an online assessment platform to measure, analyze and improve people skills. It is ideal for companies looking to run multi-competency assessments for hiring, certification and training of existing employees. Further details about Tonmoy Shingal can be found here and more details about Mettl can be found here
If you are in India, you would have definitely visited Big Bazaar at least once and experienced a chat with the cashier asking you to signup for a Loyalty Card. Whether it is in India or elsewhere, shoppers love discounts and they often shop from a place [offline/online] that offers them maximum discounts. Though we love discounts, according to a study, Indians are most demanding, yet loyal customers globally. What if customers are rewarded for their loyalty to a brand via Loyalty Points that can be redeemed across different partners in various verticals like e-commerce, food, travel, etc. 🙂 Sounds interesting, ain’t it ?
According to published customer research reports, the most preferred form of rewarding loyalty is through ‘loyalty points’ that a customer accumulates from transactions, and their fungible nature makes them universally acceptable across the network of partner brands, of a multi-brand loyalty program [Source]. In India, PAYBACK is formidable player in the multi brand loyalty program market.
It offers its members multitude of benefits over traditional, stand-alone customer loyalty schemes. It has over 50 partners including affiliate brands participating in the PAYBACK Network across categories in-store as well as online [Source].
Importantly, PAYBACK Partners are mostly market leaders in consumer segments covering daily needs, ranging from food to travel and entertainment. With such a varied portfolio of partners, PAYBACK Members can earn points on everyday shopping and redeem them for attractive rewards, at their preference.
Today, we have a discussion with Mr Gaurav Khurana, Chief Marketing Officer of PayBack India about the PayBack program, Market Share, overall loyalty programs market, competition, etc. So let’s get started…
Tell us about PAYBACK program ? How was the company conceptualized ? What was the idea behind PAYBACK ?
PAYBACK, the largest loyalty program in Europe entered Indian market in 2010. Today it is India’s largest multi-brand loyalty program offering its members a multitude of benefits over traditional, stand-alone customer loyalty schemes. With over 50 in-stores and online partner brands, the program has a wide reach covering nearly 70% of everyday consumer spend categories ranging from groceries, travel, entertainment, apparel and more.
PAYBACK enables consumers to collect and redeem loyalty points with a wide range of relevant partners across formats using a single card or even their mobile number on the move. The brand has received an overwhelming response in the country with over 60 million customers already associated with the platform and growing by the year.
PAYBACK entered the Indian market via acquisition of iMint, what are some of positive’s that came out of this acquisition [apart from customer base, please talk about local know-how, etc.]
The transition post-acquisition into the Indian market was smooth, iMint being a strong brand with multiple partners and a large member base. Also, with iMint being the established player in India and on other side PAYBACK adding a huge benefit to the existing business and introducing international expertise, with a massive global partner network resulted in a consolidated ecosystem in loyalty space. This move added more value to member & partners, making the rewards and loyalty sector accomplish new heights in a such an exclusive business model.
Who are your partner brands across the retail industry ?
PAYBACK is multi-brand loyalty program with more than 50 online and offline and affiliate brand partners across a diverse kitty of categories. Brands range from fuel leader HPCL, to banking partners ICICI Bank, American Express, daily needs partner Big Bazaar, travel portals; Makemytrip and Tripadvisor, apparel brands; Central, FBB, Brand Factory, Rare Rabbit, entertainment portal; Bookmyshow, online portals; ebay, voylla, naaptol, electronics and Home Décor brands; eZone & Hometown & affiliate partners like Amazon, Flipkart, Snapdeal, Jabong, Myntra just to name a few. The network is growing at a very fast pace.
Mr Gaurav Khurana, Chief Marketing Officer-PAYBACK India
How much market share does PAYBACK have in the Loyalty cards segment ?
We are currently one of the industry leaders in coalition loyalty space in India. PAYBACK has been the only successful brand in India to build a diverse partner portfolio and over 60 million members already associated with the platform and is growing continuously.
Apart from online partners [like Flipkart, Shopclues etc.], how much does offline partners contribute to the overall revenue of PAYBACK.
Our major chunk of the business is contributed from our offline businesses. Our partners are renowned brands in this section and they play an essential role in this business, with a 70% revenue clocking in from offline, we can safely say that this our main line.
Our online business is fast gaining momentum in India, as a growing economy, the digital boom has increased the business here, we are at a 30% currently. PAYBACK have been working with large offline partners like Future Group, HPCL, ICICI, these brands have been associated with us for a long time.
How and where does PAYBACK help customers and retailers by using data analytics ?
PAYBACK Platform help retailers in manifold ways:
We integrate our solution with the existing POS/ERP infrastructure
We capture customer data to the last mile [basket & product level data]
We run in-depth analytics driven by multi-dimensional view of spend & usage patterns
We enable retailers to gain real-time insights into customer behaviour and propose ways to engage and retain
We provide integration with the PAYBACK rewards database
We personalize multi-channel communications
The insights are used for targeted engagement campaigns through a multi-channel ecosystem; E-mailers, SMS, web, social media and so on. These enable retailers to plan interventions throughout the customer life-cycle and plan retention and engagement activities instead of a single-minded one for all approach. This business intelligence [BI] is relevant specifically in cases of banking and retail industries which move a high volume of data and need to create much sharper offerings in order to create differentiation in the competitive landscape.
As part of the retention strategy at each retailer, various experiential offerings are also built in into the transactional ecosystem to create a distinction which may include home delivery, separate queues, variable benefits, privilege access, etc. at pre-defined retail outlets. For PAYBACK apparel and fashion is the biggest segment, followed by grocery. This segment sees high value in loyalty programs as it ensures customer stickiness. Further advanced analytics help determine customer behaviour and retailers are able to customize programs for each of their customer segments and also engage inactive customers.
Can you share some of the competitors of PAYBACK in India?
We are currently one of the industry leaders in the coalition loyalty space in India. With over 50 in-stores and online partner brands, PAYBACK has been the only successful brand in India to build a diverse partner portfolio and over 60 million members already associated with the platform.
We continue to benchmark ourselves against our own potential and targets. We need to invest in our capabilities to ensure we keep pace with the changing demographic, technology and evolving needs of our customer base.
Please share some interesting trends observed by PAYBACK in terms of consumer behaviour?
We see a huge change in consumer dynamics, with a large scale shift from offline to online consumption of goods & services and a change in demand of the categories retailing online. The new age customers tend to be quite experimental in nature and we are seeing more movement in new and unconventional categories like Furniture, Health and Beauty care, Apparel and Groceries as opposed to traditional online categories of books and consumer electronics.
In online world, personalization of experiences is the key to purchase consideration while segmentation with location considerations is critical to offline retailers. Among the factors that are driving retail choices, in additional to end prices and delivery experience are the trust in the retail brand, good returns policy, depth of offerings and loyalty incentives. Shoppers are increasingly valuing digitally enhanced in-store experiences or web channel experiences, easy check-in and check-out experiences and consistent omni-channel customer engagement which are increasingly influencing purchase as well as purchase location decisions.
Moreover, we do see an increasingly ingrained value consciousness among consumers fueled by the open discount models but also the fact that customers are willing to go an additional mile to draw more benefits in their day to day purchases.
Each Loyalty card company offers some unique value proposition , how does PAYBACK ensure to stay ahead of the competitors ?
PAYBACK is India’s largest coalition loyalty program and has been successfully adding a substantial customer base to their wide spread network. It provides many advantages over traditional, stand-alone customer loyalty schemes restricted to a single brand or company. The power of PAYBACK stems from amalgamating loyalty benefits from many attractive partners namely, using one single card, members earn loyalty points when they shop at a wide range of merchants and brands – offline and online.
PAYBACK has been the only successful brand in India to build a diverse portfolio of partner brands both in-store and online with options to earn and redeem points and avail rewards. Importantly, all PAYBACK partners are mostly market leaders in consumer segments covering every aspect of the consumer life ranging from daily needs, fuel, travel, home-care, shopping to entertainment.
As a result, members are able to accumulate a large number of points quickly. A coalition of strong partners united on the common PAYBACK platform also multiplies redemption opportunities. The combination of rapid accumulation of points and their easy redemption for desirable rewards is what makes PAYBACK so attractive. Other benefits include discounts on purchases through points earned or through coupons and exclusive special offers. Shoppers love these unrivaled features, because they simply get more value for every rupee spent. All this has helped PAYBACK stay ahead of the market as a specialist in building coalition and adding value to both the partners and consumers alike while contributing to the growing loyalty market in India.
What are your future/expansion plans ?
We are seeing a healthy rise in the loyalty transactions over the past few years in India. More real-time and personalized experiences delivered to the customers have been the actual reasons behind this upsurge. Understanding this scenario, we aim to:
Continue to acquire new partnerships
Focus on adding value to our existing network of offline and online partners
Continue to innovate and offer a rewarding experience to our members
Educate shoppers today on the advantages of loyalty points and how best to utilize them
The idea is to grow our network through our initiatives as driving loyalty, engagement and customer experience is the future of customer acquisition and retention.
Closing comments for our readers on Loyalty Card market landscape.
In India, loyalty transactions have been growing consistently over the past few years due to more real-time and personalized experience being delivered to the customers. With the advent of new age businesses and technological capabilities, there has been remarkable change in consumer behaviour and their affinity to brands and offers. The demographics are changing and majority of new age people are having higher retail spend.
From fuel, apparels, entertainment, travel, financial services and daily needs all these categories are leading to tangible retail spend. In such a scenario, coalition loyalty program would be game-changer as it offers a diverse portfolio of partner brands in-store and online, with options to earn and spend points, and avail rewards. Loyalty programme which consolidates the reward system will go a long way in ensuring customer stickiness.
We thank Mr Gaurav for his time and sharing valuable insights for our readers! If you have any questions for the PAYBACK team about the program, impact on retail segment, etc., please email them to himanshu.sheth@gmail.com or leave your question in the comments section.
Contributing to more than one-third of the daily user on-boarding and verification’s on third party mobile apps, TrueSDK is now available for iOS and web-based platforms in addition to Android platform. The update will allow developers and startups across verticals and across mobile and web platforms to leverage TrueSDK’s phone number identity based frictionless service for authenticating, auto-filing profile and on-boarding users. TrueSDK offers end users a seamless and one tap process for authentication and verification by using their phone number based True caller identity.
Priyam Bose, Director and Head Worldwide Developer Relations at Truecaller said
TrueCaller is growing at an unprecedented pace and TrueSDK was born out of the sheer commitment to give back to the developer community and to help simplify user on-boarding. While so far, the service was only available for Android platform, TrueSDK will now become platform agnostic with its additional support for iOS and web platforms, making it easier for developers to create unified experiences across platforms for their end users.
This opens up opportunities for developers to create multiple use-cases, keeping mobile number identity at the heart of the solution.
Since its launch last year, TrueSDK has partnered with leading digital brands, app developers and startups in India such as Quikr, Mobikwik, RedBus, CarDekho, OYO, Ixigo, Sharechat and FreshMenu among others.
Highlighting the key milestones on TrueSDK, Priyam Bose added
TrueSDK is contributing over one third of daily user on-boarding and verification’s for our app partners. Number of apps leveraging TrueSDK [across use cases] has grown by over 8x and daily signups/verification’s via TrueSDK have gone up by 15x.
Further engaging and extending the commitment to the developer and startup community, Truecaller has also recently initiated an all-India Build for Mobile tour to foster innovation, collaboration on the Truecaller platform. The tour has been successfully concluded in Bengaluru and Gurgaon, collectively witnessing overwhelming participation from over 300 developers and product leads. Next stop of this India tour will be in Mumbai.
In last September’s Google for India event, Google announced YouTube Go, YouTube app re-imagined for the next generation of YouTube users. After months of expanded testing and refinement, YouTube has announced that the beta version of YouTube Go available for download on the Google Play Store in India.
Every aspect of YouTube Go was designed from the ground up, with four main principles in mind : It’s relatable, with fresh and relevant video recommendations tailored to your preferences; the app is designed to be offline first and improve the experience of watching videos on a slower network; it gives you more control over data usage, by providing choice and transparency into the amount of data spent on streaming or saving videos. And finally, it’s social, allowing you to share videos quickly and easily with friends nearby.
Key features of YouTube Go include
A home built for you : YouTube Go home screen features trending and popular videos in your area, so that you can find and discover videos that you and your community care about.
Preview videos before you save or watch : On YouTube Go you will see a preview of the video when you tap on a thumbnail, giving you a better sense of what the video is about before you decide if you want to watch it.
Choose your resolution when saving or streaming videos: You can choose to save a video for offline viewing later or stream it now. And you can also choose the amount of data you’d like to spend on that video.
Share videos with friends nearby : Share videos with friends and family nearby without using any data. You can send and receive videos instantly and offline with others using the YouTube Go app.
To get us to this point, YouTube has worked hard on refining the features that its users have inspired to build, gaining new insights along the way. YouTube has also worked hard behind the scenes to make sharing videos with nearby friends an even more seamless experience, and ensuring that the app works well across a wide range of phones and connectivity.
If you would like to find out when YouTube Go is fully ready, you can sign up here
