Fintech Growth & Distribution

Why distribution beats product in financial services: customer acquisition vs growth, unit economics, aggregators, marketplaces and trust in intermediated channels.

Escalators vs Elevators: What Are You Building?

I first wrote a short version of this on LinkedIn in October 2014. Eleven years later, the question still feels relevant. So here’s a longer take. Some years…

Oct 2026
Understanding the power of gamification

For the last 2 weeks, I have been learning Spanish on Duolingo. It’s amazing. The Duolingo app is just phenomenally well designed for helping one go deeper into…

Aug 2020
Behavior Elasticity > Demand Elasticity. A quick Coffee Poll

We ran a quick poll for people who used to drink a coffee (or two) everyday at the barista next to their office, asking how WFH during COVID…

May 2020
Search Vs Social – the long tail of ad revenues

Google and Facebook together took away 64% of the total US online advertising spends. And Facebook had around 65% of the overall online display ad-spends. These are incredible…

Jul 2016
Unit Economics in the times of Auction Marketing Models

Unit Economics is all we hear these days in the consumer technology world. Unfortunately for many start-ups seeking venture funds, this is the biggest hurdle they need to…

Apr 2016
Marshmallow Test and Insurance Marketing

I spent the last week reading up “The Marshmallow Test by Walter Mischel”. And while the book is a fascinating summary of key findings (and some of its…

Jan 2016
SMS is reborn as an acqui channel in the Smartphone age

In the early days of Deal4Loans, we used to get a lot of traffic and leads through SMS campaigns. Especially for products like Personal Loans (Simple pitch and…

Oct 2015
3 tips for New To Bank Acquisitions – Digital Banking Toolkit

Why Online Acquisitions Acquiring New To Bank (NTB) customers is a key agenda for most Digital Heads at Banks. Its only logical that online acquisition budgets are getting…

Oct 2015
Uber and Free Market Economics

Uber has changed the way we travel within cities. On a recent trip to Jaipur, the first thing I did on reaching the city, was to top-up my…

Sep 2015
Mood as the context for marketing

Something very interesting happened while I was using the Linkedin App on my mobile. I liked an article and pop came the message from Linkedin checking if I…

Jun 2015
Are commission based channels low on trust

In US car salesmen are amongst the least trusted professionals. On digging deeper one finds that they share these low rankings with advertising professionals, stockbrokers, insurance salesmen and…

Nov 2013
9 challenges in digitizing the sales force

Very few of us embrace change.Most of us would try our best to avoid any change in the status quo. Especially if it drastically impacts the way we…

Sep 2013
Customer Complaints and Social Media

Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other social platforms have provided an immense tool in the hands of the consumers. Suddenly the lone voice of the consumer, can get magnified…

Aug 2012
Next phase of digital marketplaces

Internet adoption has seen the evolution of some usual suspects across most geographies and one of the key category is that of Digital Marketplaces. A portal which successfully…

Feb 2012
Loss making airlines and profitable aggregators

The Indian skies are witnessing a strange situation. Most of the carriers who form the backbone of Indian aviation industry are suffering from huge operating losses – from…

Nov 2011
Free Pricing takes toll on non-life insurers

Today’s ET had a front page article with the same headline “Free Pricing takes toll on non-life insurers” where it reported that the once lucrative Fire Insurance segment…

Aug 2008