applications – Dutch Uncles

The Organic World Opts For Omnichannel Expansion Strategy

Aakash Sharma — Thu, 19 Aug 2021 03:35:08 +0000

One of the most prominent natural and organic products supermarket chains in South India, The Organic World has announced plans to strengthen its business in India to enter diversified segments. As part of its omnichannel (multiple-channel) strategy, the retail e-commerce brand plans to open an additional ten stores in the Southern Indian states by mid-2022 and expand its impact on e-commerce through technology like an easy-to-use mobile application.

Current products of The Organic World include pesticide-free organic fruits and vegetables, fat-free snacks, chemical-free groceries, toxin-free household products, natural and preservative-free personal care products, and health and wellness products, including childcare accessories.

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The planned expansion of The Organic World reaffirms its commitment to providing customers with better choice, from product types and customer service to discounts and loyalty programs.

What is omnichannel expansion?

Omnichannel expansion in multi-line retail is becoming an increasingly popular way for companies to expand their operations. Emerging retailers everywhere are combining interconnected omnichannel paths with traditional public advertising methods. Websites, emails, social media posts and brick and mortar stores promote similar information, tips and products of a particular brand, giving more visibility to the intended message.

The Organic World’s expansion plan aims to simplify its reach to provide customers with better options, offer products that offer increasingly healthier choices, and help them grow according to their ultra-busy lifestyles.

It is essential to keep up with technological developments

Through The Organic World mobile application, the company aims to supply more than 1,500 non-pharmaceutical products to its customers. With the planned increase in the number of its physical stores, the company will be able to acquire all the necessary facilities and organic market segments in the South Indian market.

The Organic World’s omnichannel strategy highlights its movement in the organic products market to ensure quality products available to many customers. It also gives small local retailers a bigger platform to compete in mass production via its e-commerce arm, increasing the market for SMEs and expanding the purchasing ambit of consumers.

The Organic World omnichannel expansion and growth spurt

Over the past four years, The Organic World has gradually increased its market regarding natural and organic products in Bengaluru. In early 2021, the retail chain consisted of 10 outlets in the city. The brand’s unique design and simplicity reflect its best propositions for consumers across the entire monthly need’s expenditure basket, which indicates its loyalty to being a dependable retailer.

As The Organic World ramps up its stores in Bangalore and other Southern states, the brand will significantly contribute to India’s organic commodities market value by 2022.

The Indian market for natural restaurants

The Indian organic products and food market was valued at $849.5 million in 2020. The market is forecasted to rise at an average annual rate of about 20.5% during 2021-26 and rise to $2.601 billion in valuation.

Rising levels of health consciousness are driving the demand for organic food in the country as consumers pay attention to the nutrient content and quality of their food. The COVID-19 pandemic has further increased consumer spending on health and wellbeing.

Businesses of all sizes operating in the food and wellness sectors can take advantage of these changing trends. They must work towards tech adoption and omnichannel strategies for their business expansion, just like The Organic World has.

The post The Organic World Opts For Omnichannel Expansion Strategy appeared first on Dutch Uncles.

Will App-Based Lending Work in India?

Anju Nambiar — Mon, 12 Apr 2021 06:35:03 +0000

When talking about app-based lending start-ups, CRED is the name that pops up. CRED is India’s youngest unicorn that encourages customers to pay their credit card bills on time in exchange for exclusive rewards, and extra credit.

While CRED has an affluent customer base, there are numerous fintech start-ups achieving tremendous heights offering app-based lending services to less-affluent customers.

The finest example is ‘mPokket’, a Kolkata-based start-up offering instant micro-loans for the country’s youth, mainly students seeking to do higher education. There are multiple scenarios where the youth is in desperate need of a short term, quick cash fix.

mPokket is confident of assuming its position as a market leader in student credit soon. mPokket is one of the very first micro loan start-ups in India and they have already declared a revenue of $9 M coming only from Indian students and self-employed professionals in the country. They also recently appointed a Chief Financial Officer (CFO) ‘Sanjay Kumar Agarwal.

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In the present climate, fintech start-ups will see that the market and demand is huge for app-based lending.

EarlySalary’s success

A very interesting start-up quickly grabbed the pulse of the youth at the right time. We’re talking about ‘EarlySalary’, a Pune-based start-up which is an online lender of salary advances and ‘quick cash’ mostly for young corporate professionals.

App-based lending has worked splendidly for EarlySalary as it competes against MoneyTap, GyanDhan, Slice, and Udhar, alongside mPokket.

In October of 2020, EarlySalary raised $10 M backed by Chiratae Ventures and Eight Roads Ventures.

Risks for app lending customers and start-ups

Currently India has over 706 online lending start-ups in India. Not all of them are as impressive as the companies mentioned here. In fact, a lot of them promise instant loans but put customers in debt traps. Quick personal loans do work in India. Especially during the current financial crisis and the lockdowns that are occurring in India. People are in dire need of cash that they can instantly borrow from the privacy of their phones.

What’s in it for me?

The answer to the question on whether or not app-based lending works in India is a definite yes. In the present climate, fintech start-ups will see that the market and demand is huge for app-based lending.

Targeting students, young working professionals, and corporate employees is the right approach for start-ups. The self-employed customer segment is also a viable market for app-based lending start-ups.

As an app-based lender, you need to set yourself apart from the numerous illegitimate money lending firms by building trust with your customers.

Malicious app lenders caused 6 suicides in Telangana this year which led to a crackdown by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) and the Hyderabad Police. Authorities are tightening their scrutiny around money-lending apps and your start-up needs to keep well away from predatory lending practices.

Moreover, you need to keep your interest rates low, because high rates can be a red flag that will turn your customers away. Also, be transparent with the interest rates, and stick to your word.

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Whatfix’s Digital Adoption Platform Disrupts the Way Application Support and Training is Delivered

Aakash Sharma — Wed, 03 Mar 2021 00:35:03 +0000

Whatfix is a SaaS-based company that provides application guidance and performance support for web applications and software to businesses. Whatfix allows businesses to create interactive models displayed in their web applications. It operates primarily in San José, California and Bengaluru, India.

Whatfix was founded in 2014 with three employees, and today, it employs 300 people in six offices around the world. It serves over 500 clients, 100 of which are Fortune 1000 companies. Its mission is to empower companies to maximize their business results by removing technological complexities for their users. The company’s goal is to simplify the application ecosystem and make the technology more user-friendly for employees and customers using digital adoption platforms.

What role does a digital adoption platform play?

The job of a digital adoption platform (DAP) is to facilitate digital acceptance by customers within a business segment. With DAPs, users can quickly and easily learn to use new technologies as it guides them through the application and provides them with extensive resources to answer their questions. The software ensures that users do not learn certain activities on the platform and do not forget essential functions.

Why is the digital adoption platform (DAP) important?

Over 91% of software company failures are caused by misuse and integration of software and other user processes. Digital adoption platforms help to avoid user mistakes in an app by guiding users through various strategies and activities step by step.

DAPs help improve end-user personalization. When you invest in new technology for your business or as part of a product, you want your customers and employees to get the most out of the technology. DAPs show people all aspects of technology and how to use it. This ensures that your business gets the maximum value (and, therefore, the top ROI) from the app.

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Whatfix aims to simplify the application ecosystem and make the technology more user-friendly for employees and customers using digital adoption platforms.

Whatfix’s projections for the global digital adoption platform demand

Digital transformation is one of the critical strategies in any new age or a transforming legacy company’s plan. Their success depends to a large extent on how users adopt and adapt to these digital technologies. Whatfix’s digital adoption platform disrupts end-user applications and business support, provides context-sensitive, real-time assistance, and bypasses web applications to offer on-demand continuing education and preventative support.

Maintaining optimum customer experience is a tall order as the world moves forward with massive digitization in every sphere. Before the digital introduction, there was no ‘uniform view’ of data flow from different departments like marketing to sales to customer success, within a firm. Therefore, they could not generate information based on real-time data. This harmed the overall customer experience. In such a case, a large scalable digital platform is needed to integrate the body’s central nervous system with existing tools and techniques. This is what Whatfix is aiming for.

Whatfix provides businesses with agile business technology

Whatfix offers scalability, speed and flexibility to serve customers of large and small business scalability. Optimizing data between teams and automating routine processes help in increasing efficiency and developing a scalable business model- this is at the core of Whatfix’s digital platform strategy. The solutions support rapid growth for a business, and it can even go global with the right push.

At Whatfix, customer experience is at the heart of its business model. Early in their journey, the founders of Whatfix realized that Customer relationship management (CRM) technology must meet a wide range of customer needs. The company’s digital solutions offer increased customization, integration and reporting across the enterprise to enable faster, data-driven decisions.

Giving sales reps a real-time view of the customer journey enables a business to sell smarter. This increases employee productivity by up to 40% and allows hassle-free customer service.

How do digital adoption platforms help business?

Digital adoption helps in several ways, a few of which are:

360-degree overview of the data flow

Data is up to date – without an internal breakout

Automated pipeline management

Helps reach better data-driven outcomes

Differentiated buyer journeys

Automated workflows

Plus, digital power lies in personalization and integration. This allows integrating all state-of-the-art-tools from around the world and serves a business’s central nervous system.

How is Whatfix tapping the SMEs- what can others learn?

Anyone using an app that requires onboarding, training, or support is a potential partner for a digital platform business. While a tech company doesn’t necessarily target SMEs, it can attract businesses of all sizes in all industries. However, an ideal target segment includes many start-ups, as the complexity of the problem digital platforms solve varies. The technology application of any business is a unique set of strategies and must work effectively. This helps ensure the optimal use of custom business applications.

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Evolution Of Telegram: How It Grew Going Back 2013

Naina Sood — Fri, 12 Feb 2021 02:35:03 +0000

Telegram topped the list of the most downloaded non-gaming apps globally in January 2021. The messaging platform saw over 63 million installs during the month, about four times its downloads during the same period last year. Let’s dig into the history of this fastest-growing product and its evolution over the years:

The launch of Telegram

Telegram was started in 2013 after a contest for Android developers. The alpha version of the app was initially launched for iOS on 14 August 2013 and Android in October 2013 with secret chats and self-destruct timers. After completely documenting the Application Programming Interface (API), the code of the app became an open source as the app touched 1,00,000 daily active users during the first year of its launch. In 2014, the company made the app available for desktop and allowed documents to be sent and received on the app besides introducing voice messages.

The company continuously worked on making the app supportive of iOS and Android products. Meanwhile, the privacy and secret chat settings were upgraded with account self-destruction.

Third party integration, mass reach

The company rigorously spent the first two years in fixing the basics of the app and garnered around 60 million active users. The year 2015 brought in the advancements as the company launched channels to broadcast messages to masses, which gave the product worldwide reach, and a platform for third-party developers to create bots which helped add features to Telegram like payments, moderate groups, emails and much more.

Supergroups, game play and goodies

A lot of developments were brought in to add fun features, especially GIFs, hashtags, sticker panels, emojis to pep up the app and keep the group chats rolling. It created ‘Supergroups’ to tackle its competitor WhatApp’s group limit by increasing the maximum number of users for its group chats to 1,000. By 2016, the group power reached 5,000 members besides updating channels and bots which were integrated with services like YouTube and Foursquare for easy video and location sharing. After integrating the bots, the company notched up by introducing the gaming platform by the end of 2016.

Voice calls, interactive map, secret chat

The company rang in 2017 with voice calls built on end-to-end encryption along with a dedicated video hosting platform called Telescope. The groups levelled up by June 2017, increasing the maximum members to 10,000. It also added a self-destruct timer for photos and videos to give users the option to send disappearing media in private chats. This ‘secret chat’ was the company’s main selling point besides the bigger group capacity. Telegram also expanded its localisation by launching the Translations Platform for users.

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With over 400 million monthly active users in April 2020, Telegram added video calling with end-to-end encryption like Signal and WhatsApp, which Zoom does not have yet.

The dark mode on Telegram

By 2018, Telegram introduced two types of dark modes on its mobile app — night and tinted night, a feature which its competitors are yet to device. The company focused on making its privacy settings more flexible besides creating location-based public chats by 2019. It also introduced ‘Polls 2.0’ which allows users to conduct various types of polls within chat groups and channels.

With over 400 million monthly active users in April 2020, Telegram added video calling with end-to-end encryption like Signal and WhatsApp, which Zoom does not have yet. The group voice chat feature came out by December.

Targeting to build a diverse platform, the app ventured into becoming an online learning tool. The Quiz Polls, a unique offering, was introduced in January 2020 for educational tests. In January 2021, Telegram allowed users to import messages and media from other apps like WhatsApp, Line and KakaoTalk as millions flocked to its platform.

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Open Source Will Keep Driving The Growing Need For APIs

Naina Sood — Fri, 12 Feb 2021 00:30:03 +0000

The growing importance of Application Programming Interface (API) in our daily lives is becoming more evident. The growth of APIs is skyrocketing as almost every company, including Uber, Facebook, bookings.com is using an API to integrate businesses and offer a better product.The open-source software (OSS) movement has shifted how the world develops applications. The core idea is to give away the source code to your software or make it freely available so that anyone can study, fix and improve it. Open source for APIs has opened up the possibility of contributing back to an original codebase that expands the value of software to the entire community. Through this, developers are able to access the building blocks they need to deliver modern applications. An open source will continue to drive the growing need for APIs:

Open source for realising full API potential

APIs are here to stay. Almost all the top cloud providers like AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google have acted as massive centralising hubs of
technology that primarily consist of APIs. Open source is leading to much better and bigger integration. For APIs to develop their full potential, it is important to develop common and open API principles.

Lowering barriers

OSS is all about lowering barriers and making it easier for developers to meet their goals. For instance, developers wants to send a million records over the wire for an API call, they are able to easily redesign their API using OSS that allow for batched access to API data without onerous controls. This also makes for a better API while still respecting the personal rights and privacy of end users.

Product longevity/cost cutting

Building upon an open source safeguards the longevity of an API management solution, since the tools are free from lock-in. This helps empower API owners with security and the ability to evolve the software long term. Avoiding subscription fees, it can also help make start-ups leaner, or help enterprises cut costs.

New business opportunity

APIs are so fundamental now that when they are designed by default to be discoverable, freely available, and open to consumption, entirely new business opportunities will emerge. Openness leads to more innovation, greater developer productivity, and more developer freedom.

Data interoperability

APIs allow applications to connect to each other and free flow of data. Open source is driving APIs to allow easy access to data in any shape and form and reimplement the same as it seems fit. Take for example how open-source APIs have made data sets available for the COVID-19 fight. The use of established guidelines and open data formats is ensuring data interoperability amongst scientists and healthcare providers as they address the pandemic.

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Open source is driving APIs to allow easy access to data in any shape and form and reimplement the same as it seems fit.

Industry groups are emerging to look at how data should flow between different entities. All of this increases the value for an open source to make APIs more consistent, while making the lives of those consuming the product much easier.

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