Stories from the Next 300 Million

For times when whitespaces are coming into focus, I think talking to users is an especially powerful way to figure out problems and needs. It’s also a good way to do a reality-check on ivory-tower thinking by founders and investors.

We interviewed a bunch of potential panelists from as far away as Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Haryana, Punjab and Delhi. Two things we realized: actual location of users is very different from where app companies think their users are (perhaps a problem to solved by a startup). And storekeepers and farmers are almost impossible to get (they’re extra-super-busy).

Sahil did a wonderful job moderating the panel (in Hindi), drawing out simple but powerful stories that I think could launch a hundred startups. And the panelists (from Uttarakhand, UP and Haryana) were very clear and focused on describing their problems as well as their usage of apps. If you want to skip directly to the video, it’s at the bottom of this post.

I will certainly remember, for a long time, Babita’s Deep Blue Sea viewing experience, Bhagwat Singh’s 30km walk+drive to get to the nearest bank or hospital, Bal Govind’s showing of earthquakes and dinosaurs to his students, and Yukti’s work on Chegg.com to pay for her apartment rental loan. Later during the conference, I heard a bunch of founders referring back to these stories & personas to illustrate the problems their startups were solving.

The panelists had a pragmatic approach to the Internet—the stories we heard were mainly around solving real-life problems, such as earning income, finding educational content to teach students, buying stuff for work, checking up on government initiatives, getting loans, etc.

Content was a clear current area of usage and need, including entertainment (video, stories, poetry), general knowledge/news, health, education, government info and transportation timings. Google, Youtube, Facebook, Whatsapp, Sharechat, Pratilipi were mentioned a few times.

There was more payments and shopping activity amongst the panelists than I had anticipated, including a willingness to continue even if it resulted in initial problems (e.g. remittance being sent to wrong account). Flipkart, PayTM, BHIM were mentioned a few times.

Panelists talked about discovering apps mainly through Facebook ads and word-of-mouth through in-person demonstrations. There seemed to be some impact of newspaper ads. There seems to be a lot of scope for startups to get local ambassadors to demonstrate apps and set up accounts (e.g. Gmail) forpeople around them.

Panelists talked about the need to have better input methods — they mentioned voice typing from Google as well as local language keypads from multiple vendors as being very useful. Panelists also said they need more websites, apps and even just basic phone functionality (like making phone calls) in local languages.

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