Growth Archives - Page 2 of 3

Speaker: Jared Harding, Head of Product, Sweatcoin

0:00 — Introduction to Sweatcoin

Jared Harding: I’m going to kick things off with a quick question. Who has Sweatcoin currently or, at some point, downloaded it on their phone? There are a few hands.

That was the result I was hoping for. I’ll explain later why that’s the case. Kicking things off with who we are. So we’re a gamified pedometer app leveraging behavioral science to overcome physical inactivity. I’m sure we’ve all at some point procrastinated doing exercise. We’re trying to use behavioral science to persuade people to exercise now. So, we convert your steps into value to motivate you to walk more.

So, how do we do that?

First of all, we track your steps, and then we convert them into a currency, which is called Sweatcoins. Then you can go and spend those Sweatcoins in our marketplace.

You can purchase offers without affiliate partners or donate to charities. Our goal is to make walking rewarding in every sense of the word. Since our launch in 2015, we’ve had 120 million registrations, tracked 30 trillion steps, and converted them into Sweatcoins.

The reason I asked the question at the beginning and why I got the result I wanted, which was not many hands, is probably that number of 120 million is quite surprising, given that only a couple of people raised their hands in the audience. That’s a testament to the fact that our acquisition growth engine works as we want it to because most of you in the audience are too affluent to download Sweatcoin.

You are not our target audience. The fact that not many of you installed it indicates that our growth engine is working as we want. So this is our annual acquisition since launch. As you can see, we went through an initial growth curve, our first hockey stick. Then we saw a big decline, and then we saw another hockey stick. What might have happened at the beginning of 2019 that caused this decline here?

That’s when I joined Sweatcoin. So, it took a couple of years to work out what was going wrong, and then we finally worked it out. Covid didn’t help in 2020 when it continued to go down, but in 2021 and 2022, we saw our second hockey stick. So what I’d like to share with you guys today is a chronology of our story; how we’ve built our growth engine. It’s a retrospective story.

In hindsight, everything makes sense. At the time, we didn’t know what was going on. Now we think we understand what’s happening and hopefully won’t see another decline.

3:15 — Building an Effective Growth Engine

Jared Harding: So 2016 to 2021, I’ve classed this as our learning phase. It took us five to six years to understand and fine-tune our growth engine. It took many experiments. Many of them failed. It required plenty of luck for us to work out what was working for us. So that leads to 2022. Looking at some numbers we’ve achieved this year, we achieved 66 million registrations in 2022.

The most amazing thing about that is that 40 million of those cost us absolutely nothing. Our average cost per in-store across all of those was just 10 cents. That made us the most downloaded health and fitness app in 2022. We’re a high volume, low LTV product. So, if we depend on performance marketing to acquire users, it’s like trying to land a 747 on an aircraft carrier. When you look at it in terms of your CAC and LTV ratios. So we need more than advertising to build a business our size. Hence, we’ve built many product growth tools that have gotten us to these numbers.

These are our four key channels, broken down into the numbers each of those is driving. Our biggest channel is organic. Of those 66 million, 29 million are from organic, which is free; it costs us nothing. Referrals are next, which are mostly free.

Then Ambassadors, primarily micro-influencers, from that we get around 12 million. Finally, advertising is only 4.5 million. That’s the most expensive.

The order of our channels by the number of installs is inverse to how much each is costing us. Let’s go through these, starting with the smallest channel, advertising. 7% of our registrations come from that, and our cost per registration is about a dollar through that channel. It’s a super dependable and easy-to-target channel. Any business, when starting out, goes straight to this because you can start with it immediately.

The issue with advertising is that it is extremely expensive and very time-consuming. We think of paid ads as the ignition for our growth engine. The next is ambassadors or influencers. This is 20% of our registrations, it’s four and a half times cheaper than ads, and it provides users of equal quality.

The key thing we’ve done differently here from many other companies is that we’ve built a proprietary solution for our influencers. When you invite 30 friends on Sweatcoin, you get promoted to become an influencer. Effectively, we are using this to identify people in our audience who may not have monetized their audiences previously. Therefore, it’s underpriced attention, but we can access 100 or 200 installs from those users. What’s exciting about this particular channel is that we can help them build a community on Sweatcoin itself.

We’re not focusing on influencers; we are only acquiring as many users as possible. For us, it’s about acquiring users that stay with us. So we give all different functionality that allows them to engage their audience and drive up our attention of that audience.

The next is referrals. This represents 30% of our registrations, which is 200 times cheaper than ads. It costs us less than a cent per install that we drive through referral. We view this as the core of the growth engine. It’s nearly free, yet it provides our best quality users.

We see 50% higher attention from these users versus advertising. That’s because people installing Sweatcoin have their immediate networks around them. You’ll see this in any product. Your referred traffic is always your best traffic and is likely to share the same characteristics.

This is why we see referrals as the core of our growth. Then finally, organic. This one I don’t understand that well. Only a few people do. I believe many marketers think they understand it, but not many people understand how organic traffic works.

However, this drives 44% of our registrations. The amazing thing about it is that it’s free because we don’t do this through PR work. We do this all through the product first. So the things that are driving this are unattributed referrals. This is like word of mouth, people talking to each other, app store rankings, SEO, brand notoriety, media coverage, and user-generated social media content. One of the speakers mentioned user-generated content earlier, and that’s been huge for us. If you can become the leader in your domain, you can unlock that organic tailwind. You need to find a way to identify customers early in their journey, when they’re searching, for example. If you become the owner of that particular domain, then you can interact with more customers at that point.

8:50 — How Sweatcoin Became the #1 Fitness App in Brazil

Jared Harding: When we launched in Brazil earlier, before we launched, we were still driving 20 or 30,000 in stores per day. Then you’ll see the pink line, April 30th, starts to pick up. That’s our influencers. We went to a bunch of influencers, worked with some influencer agencies, and used it to light the fire. Once we have that, we see the blue line, which is our organic traffic. Then the yellow line, our referred traffic, starts to kick in.

With the yellow line, the more volumes you start driving, you start seeing those multiplier effects with your referral.

Same with organic. After the first few days, we were already ranked the number one health and fitness app on the Brazilian app store; which then started driving organic traffic. After a couple of days, with the number one free app of any category on the Brazilian app store, that drove up further.

What you see at the bottom are our paid ads. This represents a tiny portion; therefore, the amount we had to invest to achieve this is here. On 3rd and 4th May, during the peak, we saw 3.3 million installs on a single day which cost us barely anything. We are trying to piece all of this together and work out the key learnings we’ve learned through that time.

The first is referrals. Referrals act like the core of any growth engine, and you can’t get the flywheel spinning without it. So, it also delivers your best users. I can’t stress this enough for any early-stage company — double down on referrals. Spend all your time building a really core referral engine. You won’t see results from it immediately. It takes many tests. We’ve probably done 30 to 50 tests on different referrals. We have about five or six at any point in time running in the app. So you need to test these.

The second is using incentives creatively. Any good referral mechanism has incentives built into it. You can never rely on just the core product being the thing that drives referrals; incentives drive referrals. You can do that creatively so that you don’t have to spend unnecessarily and say, “Hey, invite a friend, and we’ll pay you five pounds.” Do it with prize draws, competitions, randomizes, or different functionalities with network effects. This means that your cost per install through that channel is tiny. That’s why we see only less than 1 cent per install through our referral channel.

The next is to own as many channels as possible. We own our influencer channels and our referral channels. We’ve built a product for each of those use cases, which ensures that we can have the best quality users.

So for influencers, we can decide what classifiers as a user they are willing to pay for. It needs to be a user that has reached a certain point in the conversion funnel. You can’t do that through paid advertising. The only way to do it through paid advertising is to, instead of looking at CPIs, look at your cost per a certain stage in the funnel, but all that does is increase your expenses. So it’s not effective at all.

12:44 — Leveraging Spikes for Organic Growth

Jared Harding: The next is to leverage spikes. This goes back to what we saw in Brazil. Suppose you condense your efforts and effectively engineer a high-intensity targeted growth spike in a certain area. In that case, you can generate tailwinds from organic traffic and get more multiplier effects.

Consider whether you can phase your spend, if you’re using advertising spend or influencer spend at a certain point to light that fire. Then magnify the organic multiplier effect.

The next is org matters. At Sweat Coin, in order to get genuine product-led growth, product and growth teams need to work together. So we have a product growth squad and a growth team. We look at it as the product growth squad building the internal tools that the growth team needs to deliver those. Many organizations have siloed product and growth teams and you don’t get the same effect. The product team spends all their time focused on delivering user experience facing things, not necessarily driving metrics that the growth team is. Therefore, the growth team only has pay channels.

Then the final thing is you need to experiment like crazy. If you don’t have a product team sitting within your growth team, it’s impossible to experiment. You can experiment with content without a product team, but you can’t experiment with the same degree that we’ve been able to do at Sweatcoin.

If there’s one takeaway from these pointers, it is about creating the right organization to achieve this. Thank you.

Mom’s the Word: edamama Growth Story So Far

Moderator: Saurabh Madan – VP, SEA, ANZ & Japan – MoEngage

Speakers:
Bela Gupta D’Souza – Founder – edamama

Bela Gupta D’Souza: How is everyone doing today? I hope you’re looking forward to today’s session. I’m here to share a little bit about edamama, our growth story and how we actually work with MoEngage. As an e-commerce omnichannel retail brand that’s about two and a half years old in the Philippines, I wanted to start off by saying, we work with a lot of different partners in the ecosystem, as is the case with most retail businesses. And one of the things that truly makes me proud to be here today is, we really do feel like MoEngage is a very strategic partner to our business. It gives me a lot of pride to see your success in this market. So congratulations to Saurabh and the MoEngage team. We’re really happy to see your growth here.

I’m here to talk to you a little bit about our journey. My journey as a founder, how we got started, what were the pain points really that we were solving for. I wanted to quickly start by seeing how many parents we have in the audience, show of hands? Okay quite a few, that’s great. So a little bit about edamama, right.

02:10 – The Journey of edamama

Our mission is quite simple. We’re here to help mothers simplify decision making and find everyday joy in parenting. The way we want to do this is really by simplifying their lives as when it comes to consuming content, whether it’s purchasing services and products online, or it’s building community experiences for mothers that makes their lives a lot simpler.

And my story in building this company started with a personal pain point that I experienced. So I’ve been living and working in the Philippines for a decade now. I have two children, a nine year old and a four year old. I’ve been in the tech space for a long time, building startups for other people.

But the inspiration for edamama really came knocking at my doorstep quite literally. This would be early 2018, I was looking to purchase a tricycle for one of my kids. I went onto one of the online platforms here in the Philippines. I looked at my options, I typed tricycle and I looked at the different listings there and I found something that looks quite similar to this item here on the screen.

It seemed like a legitimate seller and so I checked out, paid a good price for it and waited for my order to arrive. I was really looking forward to this experience but lo and behold, this is a rendition of what really showed up at my doorstep.

I exaggerate a little bit, but really what I got was a box of nuts and bolts. There was no manual, it was thrown out because clearly it wasn’t a language that I would not have understood. It was upon me as a customer to assemble this product, figure out how to do it and then use it.

I got there eventually, took a few more people to assemble this product and when I saw the final product, I felt it wasn’t actually safe to put my child on it. So I decided not to continue with the product and I wanted to return it. I tried to contact the seller, I tried to contact the platform, no response. I just wasn’t able to return this, so it became a bit of a write off for me, so I just decided not to use the product. But it dawned on me in that moment, how underserved we are as customers. If you think about the Filipino landscape, mothers are really at the heart of a household.

This is a matriarchal society. We, at the center of decision making when it comes to products and services, we are really trusted by our own family members to bring the right products into our home. And we really care about safety and product and all of these considerations, trustworthiness of products in addition to the price.

04:52 – Identifying the Pain Points

We’re super users of the internet. When you have a baby for the first time, the time and money that you spend online really makes you a very active digital consumer. But the journey online is really broken and it boiled down to these four things, right? Firstly, a very fragmented experience, and this is not just my experience with shopping online, but in general when it comes to accessing content, community commerce experiences online, it’s really fragmented. You go to multiple platforms to get everything that you’re looking for. Quality and trust concerns, I mentioned this already, you want to make sure that the products that you’re buying for your children are not just safe and trustworthy, but you also get a good price for them.

The third is, search led shopping. The assumption is that we will all go to a search bar on a shopping platform and type what we need. But parenting is really a discovery led experience. Deciding what product you want to buy is a function of a problem or a pain point or a symptom or information that you’re seeking, which actually leads you to the product that you’re looking for.

And finally, customer service. Those of us who have lived in the Philippines know, probably through our own experience as customers. We’ve all had those frustrating moments with businesses and brands, customer facing brands where service is really lip service and there’s a lot more that can be done to really understand the pain points and needs and preferences of customers and going out of your way to really delight your customers.

And so keeping those things in mind, I realized I wasn’t alone. Hundreds of thousands of mothers feel the same way. And this really came to light when we launched our platform. So, we took edamama live in May of 2020. It just so happens that this was at a time where Philippines was experiencing one of the world’s most strict lockdowns.

We’ve all been there. So it was a time where mothers were already feeling quite insecure, worried about the future, trying to protect their homes and their families. So we were really able to offer an essential service to parents at that time. We definitely feel very fortunate in a way that we could build our company and our brand at a time where there was a great need for it.

But you know, really taking a step back and thinking of this opportunity more broadly. I talked a little bit about the pain points. It’s a fragmented experience, product safety, quality concerns, but really juxtaposing against that is the opportunity that we see for the Philippines.

So firstly, we are one of the fastest growing e-commerce markets, not just in the region, but in the world today. It took a pandemic perhaps to trigger that inflection point for the Philippines. But if you look at the stats, the internet economy in the Philippines is going to be about a $40 billion industry by 2025. And e-commerce as a contribution to that is at about 65%. So $26 billion, right? So very high potential for e-commerce in the Philippines given that we are the second most populated country in Southeast Asia. Very young, very digitally savvy, very social media savvy market. So it was only a matter of time before e-commerce really caught up.

You see a lot of homegrown e-commerce brands around the region for e-commerce. There’s none in the Philippines today. You just have sort of the large marketplaces, but a very exciting opportunity for e-commerce as a whole and the pandemic has meant that a lot of customers have come to trust online for their purchasing decisions. Also very exciting for us is a market in which there’s still a strong growth rate in terms of families having children. Many countries around the world are experiencing negative population growth. The Philippines actually has amongst the highest baby and under 14 population in the region.

We definitely were very excited about not just solving for the problems and pain points of mothers in the Philippines but we also recognize the big opportunity that we have to serve this market. So the way I really like to think about it is that mothers are not only really powerful consumers, they are incredibly powerful influencers and storytellers. For the moms in the audience or the dads, you would probably relate to this. We increasingly look to online to seek out answers, informations. We are befriending a virtual tribe of mom friends or dad friends to help us make product and purchasing decisions.

So, we’re not only really shifting to online to make purchasing decisions, but we’re very comfortable even sharing our own journey, our own problems, our own sort of stories in the field of parenting with each other. So, recognizing both the consumption potential as well as the contribution potential of parents, we set out to build at edamama.

So this is a quick overview of what our platform looks like. We’re really trying to reimagine online shopping from the perspective of mothers, so that meant we had to really take away all of the assumptions we had about what it means to build an e-commerce business that is truly customer focused.

So we wanted to build something firstly that was not very cluttered. We wanted to focus on safe, reliable, authentic products only so much so that every brand that we onboard on the platform today is personally vetted by our merchandizing team. The philosophy for us is if we wouldn’t use it on our own children, we won’t sell it on the platform.

We have a lot of focus on curation and personalization. So from the time you create a profile on the app, you see a personalized feed for product recommendations. We really believe in the power of personalization and I’m gonna come back to talk about this point in particular and how we’re actually using a platform like MoEngage to actually serve that purpose.

A lot of innovations on the platform that were first for us in the Philippines – we were the first to launch diaper subscription in this country. We also have a gift registry feature, we have a rewards and loyalty program. So it’s really a very customer driven approach to product development, recognizing what it is that our customers are really looking for in their browsing experience.

So this is a quick overview of our traction. As I mentioned, we went live in May of 2020, we’re now a toddler in the market. On the back of the pandemic, we were able to really grow our business a hundred X in top line growth. Since we launched, we have over 60,000 products today on the platform.

We’ve delivered 2 million products across doorsteps in the Philippines and counting. We continue to grow very strong. We’ve seen no slowdown in demand, even though the pandemic has subsided and we’re very excited to continue to bring our value added services to our community of mothers.

So hundreds of thousands of mothers across the country today have come to trust and love our personalized shopping experience, supported by our strong focus on content and community. My background is actually in digital marketing. So prior to doing edamama, I was the founder and CEO of AdSpark Philippines.

I don’t know if some of you have heard of AdSpark. So I got to ride that wave when the Philippines was just starting to adopt digital marketing spending. A lot of marketers in the room, you will remember that around 2011, 2012 is when a lot of ad budgets started shifting towards digital.

And I think we all recognize the pandemic has made paid marketing even more expensive. It is still an essential part of building a brand, acquiring customers and building loyalty. But we have come to recognize that for our platform, content and community are more powerful tools that we can use to really drive that discovery led approach to shopping that I was talking about, as well as building trust and loyalty and retention in our business and I’ll talk a little bit more about how we’re doing that.

12:55 – The Power of Personalization

So I want to come back to what I was mentioning earlier about the power of personalization. This is so important, to show our customers that beyond saying hello Saurabh, as he was talking about earlier, we have understood what they’re looking for, what their history is, what they might be interested in next.

And if we are to stay true to our mission to help mothers simplify decision making, then personalization is a very key aspect of that. So this is just a quick overview of how we personalize both from a product standpoint as well as from a merchandizing content and community standpoint.

We make personalization the heart of a lot of decision making that we do, as a business, both from a product standpoint as well as how do we build out our CRM, our merchandizing, as well as the content that we’re serving to our community. This is so important because it’s a lot more cost effective in the long run to invest in personalization than it will be to just constantly focus and depend on paid marketing as a strategy to retain customers. Because at the core of personalization is going to be very strong retention in your business. It’s a lot more cost effective to retain a customer than it is to acquire one. So if you’re thinking about personalization, our experience with it is that it’s really powerful.

We’re only getting started, we’re scratching the surface ourselves in terms of how deep we want to go with this. We’re really excited about leveraging tools like MoEngage to really drive that home for us.

The second part, which I was mentioning earlier, is content and community.

14:36 – Investing in Content and Community Pillars

We really believe that parenting is a discovery led experience to shopping and so we have been investing a lot in not just doing promos and discounts and sales and focusing on just the shopping aspects of our platform. But if you have the edamama app, you will notice we really invested in content and community pillars.

So it looks like a one stop platform for mothers to not just find products and services, but also to be informed, to be educated, to be inspired through content and community experiences. We have a private social network now on our app. We’ve launched it just a couple of months ago. We’re already seeing incredibly high engagement, within that of moms seeking and helping each other out.

Going back to my point about moms being very powerful storytellers, there’s a lot of sharing in this network that we find is really helping us build our brand and our loyalty. We also have a very strong focus on content. We have a lot of articles, videos that we create on a daily basis to help moms at every stage of parenting. Not just pregnancy, actually all the way up to even preteen years.

And we are also investing a lot in user generated content. Every mother has a story to share and is keen to build journals or keepsakes where they can record stories from their parenting journey. And so we’re actually also building out a pregnancy tracking feature and a journal which will allow our users to really document all aspects of their journey.

So these are really about investing in tech and product, features that allow for the flow of information, ideas and inspiration for your community. And I think for any customer facing brand, this is not just for us. I would say for any brand in the room that is focused on being consumer focused, invest in content, invest in community and that will really pay off in the long run. Think of the SEO potential if you’re really invested in content and on the community side, one of the really interesting aspects of building this out is it really serves even as a customer support channel for you.

It allows you to experience network effects in your business. So really, a lot of reasons to go deep in content and community as well.

16:56 – Partnership with MoEngage

Moving on to MoEngage, we recognized when we started out that we definitely were investing in personalization, we were investing in different marketing tools.

I really want to talk firstly about all the things that we tried before we got to MoEngage. I’m truly up here because I genuinely feel we have found a partner to work with that really understands the importance we place on personalization and driving a very analytics driven approach to marketing that has a very robust solution.

We tried out, I would say two to three platforms and we were quite frustrated with that process. We felt like we had fully utilized the offering of that platform and we were still not finished in terms of what we were looking for. To reach and better connect and communicate and retain our customers.

And so what MoEngage has really allowed us to do is firstly bring all our data together. Because e-commerce, for us at least, is a very data metrics driven business. At the heart of what we do is being able to execute on the data that we have about what it is that people are looking for.

So I think consolidation of data and then being able to analyze it and then customize marketing messages from there was a really key aspect of what we set out to do. What makes it really convenient for us is that all of these different channels and outlets are possible through one platform. So we don’t have to work with multiple vendors to integrate everything for us.

We sort of have this one stop solution for the business. We hope that MoEngage will give us Messenger as a platform soon, because WhatsApp is not so big in this market. Viber and Messenger are two things that we’d love to see on the platform for us. So we came on board maybe I’d say about three to four months ago.

We’re quite new to the partnership, but we’re already seeing really great traction. We’ve done about 250 campaigns already on MoEngage and we’re already seeing really strong uplifts in terms of traction. So over 100,000 new active users on the platform, a 27% increase in engagement on our platform and a 70% increase in new customer growth.

And we’re really only getting started. The thing about this platform is that we’re still learning so much. We’re still scratching the tip of the iceberg. We’re actually having to educate ourselves on the full scale and potential. That’s how deep really, the extent and depth of the platform really is for us.

Just to summarize, as we think about making personalization at the core of what we do and given our focus on driving discovery led shopping experiences for our business, we’re really excited to be able to partner with a company that really understands that.

So, that’s it. I hope that was helpful in whatever way and I’ll be happy to answer any questions. Thank you.

Building the Right Team to Enable Growth at Different Stages of Scale

#GROWTH Masterclass: Improving Push Notification Deliverability

Turning the Tide: Digital Innovation in Banking and Fintech

From Lebanon to Nasdaq – the Region’s BIG Growth Story

Keynote Presentation by Mohammed Ogaily, VP – Product, Anghami

Mohammed Ogaily: Good Morning, everyone! My name is Mohammed Ogaily, VP of Product at Anghami and I am here to tell you our story and to give you some tips on what helped us make it there.

So ten years ago when we started, our dream was just to give everyone access to music everywhere across the MENA region. Today, we’re leading the music industry in MENA and just recently as you just heard we became the first Arab tech company to launch on NASDAQ in New York. We currently have 70M registered users worldwide, more than 18M active users spread around all the GCC region, North Africa and even elsewhere in the world and this journey included many firsts if you want.

1:14 – Anghami’s Journey From 2012 Onwards

Mohammed Ogaily: In 2012, we were the first legal music platform in the MENA region before any other platform existed in the region. In 2013, we were the first to launch with Telco operators and do mobile payment with Telco operators when payment online was extremely hard and today we have more than 30 Telco operators integrated with us. In 2015, we introduced music videos. We were the first to introduce music videos. We were the first to introduce social features like chats and stories and live radio. More on that later on. In 2018, we hit 30M users, it was the first in the region and finally, just a few months ago in 2022, we hit the first Arab tech company on NASDAQ. It was a very steady challenging path in growth to reach these points and of course, there’s a lot still to do.

2:22 – Elements Behind Anghami’s Success

So I’m not here just to brag about what we’ve done. I don’t think you’re here to listen to that. I’m here to tell you how we’ve done it. There are many aspects, many elements to this. I don’t think we have time to cover all of them now. Between the product and everything you need to do in your own product to actually get users to engage and grow from there.

All the partnerships and the Telco operators and all the partners in the region that help you grow or the content or all the licences that we got from the different music labels in MENA and the international music labels in convincing them to actually work with that small company based in Beirut or the team we are able to build across the years between the five different countries we have offices in. All that building of skills and knowledge in an area where we didn’t have lots of people that already had all that accumulated knowledge in the music industry. All the branding was done to actually push the brand and build top-of-mind awareness and simply to be fair.

We happened to be lucky and luck is part of many different journeys of many successful companies but today I want to focus on the part I know more of and the part that I think is more relevant to this summit which is the product part.

3:54 – What Is Product-led Growth?

What the product does is actually it gives you product-led growth. I know most of you have probably heard a lot about the product that grows. You’re probably going to hear that statement 20, 30, 50 times today which is great because we don’t talk about product-led growth.

Sometimes we just say it out loud and nobody understands. Okay, product-led growth, what does that mean? It means that you would build a user-centric, a data-driven, a unique product, and that product on its own sells itself and gets you the users you want. Marketing alone is not enough. If you don’t have a good product, you will not grow. So what does it mean? What does it mean to be user-centric, data-driven, and unique?

4:46 – What Does It Mean To Be User-Centric?

Mohammed Ogaily: First, what does it mean to be user-centric? So, when you’re user-centric you need to think local. Your edge, your advantage against most of your competitors is that you’re here, you’re in your market, and you’re special. What you’re building, you’re building for those people who are in this market with you while your competitor is sitting somewhere in San Francisco thinking about globally and your user is different, they are definitely different. Even if you think they’re similar, they’re very different and if you start thinking of them and what they need, things will change drastically.

Two, you need to keep listening and talking to your users. Data is great and we’ll talk about data but data will only give you questions to ask. Data will not give you answers. Data will guide you towards where you should be asking the questions but to answer the questions, there’s one simple way to do it – just go ahead and ask.

Go to your user, go to your customer and ask the question. Ask them what they like about you, what they don’t like about you, and what drives your most engaged user to actually engage with your product. What makes them love your product? Find those who are obsessed with your product. Figure out what they need more, fix it and then bring everyone else who is “Meh” about your product or “just fine” with your product. Bring them to love your product. Read the feedback on the play store or in the customer reviews or in the emails or just go out and actually talk to people. All that feedback is trusted and even if your team is telling you this is not a priority because the numbers are low or this is not a priority because it requires so much effort. If two users are complaining about a small thing that you have, there are two thousand users behind them that have that problem and are silent and if you fix that problem, a lot would change.

Number 3, focus or even obsess with your customer, not with your competitor. When competition entered the market here in MENA, it was very challenging but at the same time it was one of the best things that happened to Anghami and the reason is that competition helps you, challenges you to do better and pushes you to actually try to win better and to achieve more. But if you obsess with the competition, you can end up doing exactly like them. When you’re going to focus on the business and the different features that they’re building and you’re going to do like them and do the same marketing campaigns like them. What you end up having is just the same exact product and you have no edge. There’s nothing special about you.

In the music streaming industry, between all the different competitors, if you go check them out, you’ll see that most of them are actually the same. You find music, you play. It doesn’t matter which platform you use. This functionality is the same. Even the music player actually. If you want a different product, it is almost exactly the same because it is a simple thing but if you obsess with those competitors, you have nothing special and your users will not come to you. Instead, obsess about the user you have, it is about their needs. Your user is different from your competitor’s users even if they’re in the same market, even if they have the same background. You need to look into your users and push yourself to do what they need and what they’re asking you to do.

8:31 – What Does It Mean To Be Data-Driven?

With being user-centric, we need to also still be data-driven. What does it mean to be data-driven? Data is also what you’re going to hear 100 times today. It’s worth it. Data is tricky. Lots of people interact with the different data they have every day but when you wanna be data-driven, data needs to actually drive your actions and decisions and for that, you need to start, you need to take a step back and start from somewhere else.

Define what data you need to be looking at, and define what matters. Not all the metrics matter, you need to define the goal you need to reach and after you define it, you need to force yourself to think of how you’re going to track it or measure it. It is not very easy to track all those numbers. If you’re going to need three data scientists and engineers to get you how many users you have, you’re screwed. You won’t get anywhere. You need to automate stuff. You need to invest in actually getting all the different platforms that help you measure and track your different metrics. To make it simple for the junior marketing person or the product manager to look at all the numbers first thing in the morning and know the metrics they define, they wanna know how it is doing right now without the help of anyone. This is crucial for growth.

After you track it, you get to the fun part – impact it. Keep doing and doing and doing and doing until you see that metric moving. The day you go to the office and you see that metric move by 2% is the day you know you are data-driven. You looked at the metric, you did things and then these things impacted your metric. You’re done. Do it again and again. 80% of the time, it’s not going to work out. You’re going to lose stuff and the metric will not move. Sometimes, you’re going to come to the office and you’re going to see the metric drop by 10%. You’re going to spend the day looking at why. You might, might not figure it out and that’s fine. And another day, it’s going to jump 10% and you’re not even going to figure it out but you will be happy about it. Some other days, you’re going to be impacting it and it’s very hard to switch from whatever thinking or methods you have to work with to switch to being data-driven. You’re going to get a lot of pushback from your team and think you’re a bit slower but for the long term, it’s worth it because once you’re data-driven, you start more and more looking at outcomes, not outputs.

If at the end of the quarter, you’re like, we released five new features, we did this and this and this. Okay. How are your numbers? You’re not achieving growth, you’re just building up your features and that’s not good. Instead, at the end of the quarter, it doesn’t matter what features you build and didn’t build. How are your numbers? Those metrics you define, how well are they doing?

11:48 – How Do You Build a Unique Product?

Now, the third question is how do you build a unique product? How do you ensure that your product is different than anyone else in the market? In music streaming, they all look the same.

In our case, the number one thing we did is standing for our beliefs. We believe that listening to music is a social behaviour. You listen to music with your friends, you share songs with your loved ones, you try to know what your friends are playing, you play at parties, you play in the car with each other, you sing together. It’s a social activity and we believe that social activity needs to happen on a music platform, not somewhere else. That’s why we took a leap of faith and actually started adding many different social aspects to our music streaming platform. We got a lot of people saying but what are you doing, why are you doing this? This is just for music. Then we added musical stories where people can share snippets of songs with friends. Then we allowed users to actually share songs with their friends through the platform itself. Instead of taking that song, sharing it on WhatsApp or somewhere else. Why should you do that? It’s just more convenient to share it on the platform itself. Then a couple of years ago we launched live radio which is a place where you can listen to music together with others, at the same time chat and even talk through audio together and have conversations over the music.

We had a lot of people questioning what are you doing there. Why would you do that? Look at others, how they’re doing just the music and the podcast, why are you doing this? Eventually, it proved itself that it works. Now, our most engaged users or most obsessed users with Anghami are the users who are using those features. Even if their percentage is not high, those users who use this aspect are users who never want to leave and obsess about live radio, for example, because we gave them something special, something they can’t find somewhere else, it took some time, and sometimes it didn’t work directly. Once in 2016, we built a feature that had an opportunity to be just like TikTok but it didn’t work out at the time. It wasn’t the right time, it wasn’t the right tech, it wasn’t the right marketing, and it didn’t work out. We dropped it and it was the right decision to drop it at the time but we tried it again and we figured out something else and that worked.

Number 2, you need to be creative. It’s fine to be creative, it’s fine to go wild. Take the engineer out of the room so that they don’t freak out about all the stuff that you’re dreaming of. Then bring them in because they are going to need to be creative too and think about what can be done even if it does not make sense right now. Keep thinking and thinking and thinking. In our case, for example, every single Tuesday we sit for an hour in a room and just throw a problem and think of it together and just throw different solutions for it and you’ll be surprised where the different solutions come from. In many companies were used to going to our marketing and creative teams to think of ideas but sometimes you’ll be surprised how your customer support team, engineering team, your product team, or different teams across the company that have ideas actually do work out. You will reach somewhere and you will reach somewhere very different than where your competitors are reaching and that again will give you an edge.

Then, of course, the thing you need to do also is that you need to iterate. One mistake many people do is go big or go home. They plan something big, they spend six months and a year working on it and then they release one big thing. That one thing fails. Now you have wasted a year, wasted money and effort and you need to do something else. Instead, after being creative and building your dreams and putting all those goals, chunk it into pieces until they are small enough for you to actually get some results.

With iteration, there’s one very important and crucial thing. You should always try to iterate on quantity but never on quality. Do not release something that is “ehhh” on quality just because you want to finish right on time. Your early adopters are going to hate that product and are going to drop out. And if they hate it, good luck convincing them that it’s better now. We had that problem. Our search two years ago was horrible because we iterated on quality. We just used a third party and did simple stuff. And the quality of the search was not good. Our users back then used to search, not find the stuff they want. Anghami is bad at search. They leave. We invested a lot and a lot and a lot in search and our search are now really good. But good luck convincing that guy that they should come back and give you another chance to try your search. That’s extremely hard. Always try to find ways to keep the quality high but the quantity of the stuff you release and the number of features you have there and the number of detailed nitpicking you have always end up with a high-quality limited iteration and that will get you to places.

At Anghami, we have built a lot of different features, a lot of different products and it’s insane. With time, you realise that there is no recipe for success. It’s different for industry, for company, for everything but when you step back and look at it, you see a lot of learnings that apply to many other industries. I think today, we’re going to be seeing people from very different industries between telcos, e-commerce, music and everything else and you’re going to realise it’s the same learnings that apply from here to there. It’s the same thing. You just need to take it and see how it is in your case and you’ll get somewhere. That’s it, thank you!

Blending High-tech and High-touch Approaches in Financial Services

Moderator: Oussama Yousfi, Sales Lead – Middle East & Africa, Branch

Speakers:

Yasmine Mohamed Youssef, Co-founder & Chief Commercial Officer, Sympl

Jayanth Ananthakrishnan, Mashreq Bank

Harris Khan, Group Vice President of Growth, Rain

1:55 – Creating a Smooth Onboarding Experience for the Users

Moderator: We are in a digital-first fintech world, wherein you may not be the primary banking service provider for the customer. In that context, the initial stickiness or building that relation of habits inside the customer becomes very necessary. Keeping that in mind, how do you put or rate the user’s onboarding experience — the day one versus the day 30 experience?

Yasmine Mohamed Youssef: Okay, to start with day one, I believe it’s the first impression the user makes about your app or your platform. So, speaking about my first job, we were a very popular telecom. So, people are already using the service. However, when we started building an app and interacting with the user, real funnels segmenting the users through CVM activities, we started seeing massive growth in specific segments where we wanted to increase revenue. So, when we tried to push math segments to become high-mid and high-value customers, we started seeing the right offering and interaction from day one, making a significant impact.

Moving on to my second job, we launched an app for the first time in Egypt. This was the first time a digital onboarding of a financial service to a customer happened in Egypt. So, we onboard the customer end-to-end, replicating the credit card process. Having it all on a digital app and interacting with the user on the app makes the onboarding process easy, making the first transaction easy and the actual communication with the segment relevant to what he or she likes. This made the funnel grow day by day. So, even when the base grew, we started segmenting the people. Through a growth platform like MoEngage, we started seeing much impact when we segmented the users based on behavior, preferences, and geographies.

All of this impacted the experience. So, from day one to day 30, I believe that day one is the most important day. It’s the first interaction that you make with the consumer. In this interaction, if you build the right impressions, every single interaction then will make the user not turn so he will not, and you will find him interacting with you without you having to push him every single day to go through your funnel.

Harris Khan: Yeah, so maybe I can share some of my experiences. I think, day one to day 30, that probably varies a lot from business to business.

For example, in a cryptocurrency trading platform, day one is the user’s start of the interaction with that person in your business. Over time, you probably have to engage with that customer to build trust and reliability because that person is about to invest his money into your platform. This is unlike any other consumer-based platforms, like e-commerce, where people were coming primarily for the transaction. However, in the investments, they are trying to learn and understand. Once they have a certain level of comfort, only then do they start to invest.

So, the key here for us, as a crypto trading platform, is that the first 30 days are not just about having a bright experience and a smooth product. It is about educating customers on the best things to do, how to use that platform, and how to work in the crypto ecosystem. Keep them informed with the industry update and insights so they get some knowledge within themselves to make the right investment decision.

6:16 – User Onboarding for Banks

Moderator: Those are great insights. Jayanth, do you want to add something to that?

Jayanth Ananthakrishnan: I fully agree with what my colleagues said here. In banks, maybe 30 days are a little too early. What we measure are the first 90 days. The first 90 days make or break.

Even though we have a bank account opening journey, which is relatively seamless, it only takes two-three minutes — it is a big decision for the customer to open a bank account. So, even though the journey is smooth, the customer must have done some research before committing to open a bank account and parking some funds with us.

We must keep up with the trust and ensure that the first 90 days are as engaging as possible. We try to ensure that customers do their first activities with us, like park at least 100 Dirhams in funds as their first amount. So, that’s what we always target. However, we know that the moment a customer makes a commitment of at least one thousand Dirhams in the bank account and starts using our services, we have the customer for at least the next five to seven years. Typically, customers don’t change advanced accounts. So, that’s what we’ve seen. If you are a transacting customer in the first 90 days, on average, we know that customer is sticking with us for the next seven years. So, we put a lot of emphasis on ensuring that customers are engaged and transact in the first 90 days.

7:48 – Metrics that Influence Retention

Moderator: That’s a great point, Jayanth, which gives me a beautiful segue into my next question.

In a typical banking system, an end user would not be looking at changing their apps or primary banking account regularly. So, as you mentioned, in the first 90 days, if the consumer is making a transaction of 1000 AED, then apart from it, are there any other metrics or factors that you look for in retention specifically?

Jayanth Ananthakrishnan: Yeah, so, especially in the bank account world, if you see, you can have as many bank accounts as possible. Nothing stops you, but you can have only one bank account where your salary comes in. So, the moment you decide to switch your salary to that account, it means that you value this account and value the service of this bank and chose this as your primary bank account. We have seen that customers who transfer their salary to Mashreq neo and keep that as the primary account are the most profitable customers for the bank. They are also the happiest customers of our service as we provide them with the best possible experience. We are trying to keep them as much engaged and comfortable as possible.

To return to the question, yes, in the first 90 days, we see many customers deciding to transfer salary in month two or month three because in month one definitely, nobody makes the decision. They play around with the system. They play around to see if their items are accessible, to see if they can deposit cash. If they are comfortable, then definitely in month two to month three, they start transferring their salary to us, and that’s when it becomes a long-term relationship. We also know that customers take the time, and we don’t bombard customers on day one to transfer their salary or earn cashback. We don’t do that. We try to give the customer the time and the free space to experience our services for the first 30 days. Then, we slowly make them take baby steps, like first depositing a thousand Dirhams, then using our ATMs, and finally, we start talking about transferring salaries and other things. That’s like a gradual step-by-step process.

10:02 – Early Retention vs. Stagnant Retention Strategy

Moderator: Haris, Yasmine, do you guys also relate to the same? Do you emphasize more on retention for, let’s say, 30 or 90 days, or do you guys have a stagnant retention strategy?

Yasmine Mohamed Youssef: Yeah, so definitely, it’s not stagnant. In Egypt, specifically, because I work in Egypt, the market is very competitive and dynamic. So, each consumer segment needs a specific way of retention.

Whether you’re going to retain with a value given to the customer, whether it’s an offer or whether you’re going to retain by giving them value-added services that are embedded like an experience — you provide the user both ways.

It’s a very competitive market, so we adjust the retention strategy and how we approach the customers. You can say that the retention strategy can change every quarter, and this is not because it’s that dynamic. It’s because it is competitive. In Egypt, it’s very competitive, and as I have been studying other markets like Saudi, the financial services market has become very competitive. Every day you find different strategies for retention and acquisition. So, I think it’s much slower for banks to change the retention strategy, but with fintech, I see it as very fast. If you don’t act fast, you lose the customer on the spot because he’ll go to the other option, as there are many different options for the customer.

Harris Khan: Yeah, absolutely. I think I completely agree, especially on the fintech and, to be more specific, the crypto ecosystem. A lot is based on market dynamics. So, there’s a bull run and a bear market. The bull run means the prices are skyrocketing and bear when the market is just going down, which is these days if you follow crypto. So, the retention strategies within these two are very different. Whenever there’s a bull run, your conversion funnel would be great. You’ll see many people jumping into the trading, but when there is a bear market, people hesitate to listen because the prices are generally dipping. This industry has evolved so much.

Before joining Rain, I was doing spot trading, simply buying and selling. And that is pretty much impacted if it’s a bull or bear market. Now there are a few other products like, for example, staking. You stake your money for about 12 months or six months. Irrespective of the market dynamics, you’ll just get some fixed percentage increment. People make 15 to 20 percent yearly if they stake their money. So, that’s the kind of product for a bear market, while spot trading is for a bull market, which is very active.

13:15 – How can Local Players Grow in a Competitive Crypto Market

Moderator: That’s insightful, Haris. Since you mentioned the entire bull and bear market, I, for some reason, happen to be the buyer in the bull market and then the seller in the bear market, constantly losing money. Since you’ve mentioned the crypto world and the significant influx we have seen in the last year or two, the number of traders has increased. The entire crypto world has immense competition in itself. So, what exactly is your metric and the strategy you follow for growth and retention?

Harris Khan: If you even see the existing numbers and some research reports, you’ll see that some global prayers still hold a considerable market share. Now they are planning to build their setup and start to take this region seriously. Especially the MENA region, but I think we have two excellent examples from this region. One is Noon.com, an e-commerce player that was head-to-head with Amazon, and they just managed to grow. The other good example is Kareem, head-to-head with another big global player like Uber, who managed to succeed.

The key in these two examples is being just local and very homegrown. Try to understand this region much better than the global players, and I think that can be the key for local crypto exchanges other than Rain as well versus the global players. So, that can be like a region-specific homegrown understanding. This region being local can be one great strength that you see versus other players that we have globally operating here. There are a couple of other things that I can share as an example. This region, especially MENA, is in the very early stages of cryptocurrencies and needs a lot of education.

Suppose you see the search volumes of cryptocurrency like people are looking for what cryptocurrency is, how to buy, and how to sell. In that case, roughly 14 million searches are happening monthly in the MENA region in Arabic and English. So, that’s another pillar that we are using. Just educate the customers because that’s precisely what they’re looking for. So, the way we see from the growth perspective, primarily acquisition, is at the very top funnel: to educate this region and the customer. And when it comes to acquiring, there are different growth hacks and growth loops that you can use, like referral acquisition planning and all these things, specifically on retention. It’s a big topic in itself.

For example, the 12-month retention that we see is roughly 10; when I say retention, it’s a broad definition. Retention can be seen as a person just coming to your platform, or attention can be seen as someone coming and making a trade. You’ll be surprised to know that the customers that quit 12 months back, like 70-80 percent, are regularly coming to the platform to check the price of the cryptocurrencies, see how the market is moving, and see how the market is driving the news. Over time, the market dynamics define when a customer is investing versus the customer will be holding on. So, you cannot pressurize, or you cannot force anyone actually to get into a trade or to buy or sell.

For us, the key that we are following is to serve the customers by educating them, and the market will also shape its form to bring up higher retention and higher acquisition in this industry.

16:47 – Using Multiple Channels to Reach Your Customer

Moderator: Yeah, that’s a great point that we should not push the customer so that it seems like spamming them.

I would like you, Yasmine, to elaborate on what you said. You touched on it a little, but what exactly are you leveraging in terms of your app or other marketing channels to reach your customer? How do you educate them about the different product offerings and products that you have so that you can not only upsell the customer but also cross-sell the customer in your organization?

Yasmine Mohamed Youssef: Sure, as my colleague mentioned, it’s about the customer’s journey from the top of the funnel to the end. We learned through the past years about how you use your growth hacking tools and your performance to deliver.

So, through performance marketing, not only through growth tools, you can reach customers. Whenever we start, the customer enters our platform. For example, what we do is we start profiling this user, and we start putting him in the proper funnel that he should go through. Then, we start doing automated actions based on whether this customer took action or not, moving him to the next stage, and so forth.

While doing this, we identify this user; we start using performance marketing on different digital channels like google display networks, Facebook, and many mobile advertising tools. Not only this, we start seeing which group this customer belongs to regarding responsive responsiveness to communication. So, if this user is the type of user that responds to notifications, we start pushing him towards this type or this medium of communication. If this user responds more to the performance and Facebook ads and digital media, we begin introducing those mediums to the user. Not only this, we start seeing which users get turned off from some medium. We know many users turn off the notifications because they get disturbed by the content. Maybe it’s irrelevant. Relevance is also critical. When you group the user in the right funnel, you display to him across all channels the right content that he needs to see. So, this is on selling.

On cross-selling, we start on our platform after grouping the segments. We start seeing because we are a buy now pay later service, so our core model depends on what you buy or purchase.

So, we will see what you use. For example, if you take a gym subscription, we start showing you sportswear across all the platforms. We start analyzing what you as a user are interested in and use all the channels. We do this through MoEngage. Whether in email, WhatsApp for business, SMS, Digital advertising — everything. So, having a 360 view of the customer and knowing exactly which cluster they belong to is the right approach to use and to choose the suitable medium.

20:13 – Importance of User Education in the Banking Sector

Jayanth Ananthakrishnan: Yasmine mentioned a great point here. In a sense, we try to leverage all our types of channels to communicate with customers, and we also use a lot of cohorts and filters, which pretty much everybody does today in the banking world. But one key difference, which we probably try to use, is the point that Haris said, educating customers is an excellent opportunity to engage with them, especially if you see the UAE market. Many customers are new to the UAE and don’t know how banks operate in these markets.

So, even though banking is a bit of a debt product, wherever you go across the globe, if you are entering a new country, you always think there is something different here. Something changes. So, whenever we talk to customers we know are new to UAE, we try to use that hook and educate them about what’s different in the UAE market, what’s this sharia-compliant product, what’s an Islamic product. So, we take that opportunity to talk to and engage with them, which is great. It also shows our results whenever we try to use that line of communication. They give much better results. The second point, which Yasmine also pointed out, is that as a bank, we have several products to discuss, unlike a fintech where there is just one product.

As a bank, I am sure you must have experienced this in your personal life as well. There is a separate team that talks about selling credit cards to you, and there’s a different team that talks about selling loans to you. So it’s always competition within the bank, saying who will send the first communication and who will get the better response. So, what we try to do is, rather than product-based advertising, we first segment the customers based on their level of engagement. For the first 90 days, we ensure that only one team sends the communication to customers for the first 90 days. We also have an engagement score for customers whose engagements are a little less if they are not engaging with us frequently or not maintaining balances. For them, there is a separate team that tries to send communication to them. We make sure that nobody else tries to communicate with them, and we talk about one single thing to that specific cohort and make sure they start engaging more with us.

Customers who are highly engaged already do enough with us, so we try to cross-sell the other products only to those customers. We try not to spam customers too much because email read rates are less than five percent at the end of the day. As more fintech comes in, the relevance of push notifications is also dropping. You get tons of notifications on your app, and there is a need to channel our communication which is what we try to do. We again use education as a great hook and the other segmentation techniques that my colleagues mentioned here.

Moderator: That was a very interesting first point that you mentioned there, Jayanth, that the banking rules or even the rules or regulations change with every region you operate in.

23:26 – How do Market Regulations Impact User Acquisition

What are some of the limitations or challenges you have faced with the new regulations? How do you plan to navigate those hindrances in user engagement and acquisition or growing your user base? Maybe, Haris, you want to start with that because yours would be the most controversial or most regulated?

Harris Khan: Yeah, and I agree! I think we would probably be the ones who were craving those regulations because for this business to run, the most important thing that this company should have is a bank account. Millions and billions of dollars are going from the huge base of customers. So with that being said, you cannot get a bank account unless and until you are in a regulated exchange. No bank will give you a bank account, and Bahrain’s central bank regulates Rain. We are talking to a few other countries as well, so this is something that we are pushing. So, just to give you another quick note on the regulation — three years back, Rain co-founders were working very closely with the central bank of Bahrain to help them with these regulatory legislations. That is pretty much active. We are already working very closely with Pakistan. That’s the next market that we are looking at. We are also talking to the capital market authority in Saudi.

So, we are the ones who are just trying to help them understand because, generally, with regulators, their understanding and knowledge of crypto are minimal, and it’s something that we have to help them understand and convince them. We should regulate this because it also comes up with a considerable upside. The government can have more control and transparency if you regulate it. Otherwise, many things are happening in the crypto ecosystem, and the government will not be aware, so we are the advocate of these regulations.

Jayanth Ananthakrishnan: Yeah, I think on the regulation side, I have worked across several geographies, and I feel that the regulator in this country is progressive, especially on the banking side. At Mashreq neo, we collaborated with our regulators so that you can open a bank account with your Emirates ID and a selfie without having to give any other documentation or biometrics or anything of the chart. So, we have partnered with the regulator because they are very open to new ideas and partnerships with fintech, which I see as a very progressive step in this country.

However, banking is a regulated industry, and so are fintech and the allied industries. We must navigate these regulations from time to time, but I would rather say we are in a much better place than several other countries with progressive regulators.

Yasmine Mohamed Youssef: Egypt is one of them. So, when we first launched the consumer finance company in Egypt, there was no regulation for such activities. The law was 25 years old and outdated, so we had to do a legal workaround to launch. After we launched two years down the road, the regulation came up, and we were part of it. So, we launched with the financial regulatory authority in Egypt. The consumer finance law and then with my fellow co-founders, we’re launching buy now pay later, which is not regulated in Egypt. So, we’re doing the same and speaking to the regulator now. The fintech law is coming up to the regulator, and Egypt is starting to understand that many fintech startups are coming up. They’re starting to be more responsive, which has completely changed since the covid has hit us. They understand that fintech is the future and that we need to have a regulated framework for fintech.

27:27 – Banks, Crypto Exchanges, Buy-Now, Pay-Later – Partners or Competitors?

Moderator: Indeed. That’s the case with most countries, and before we wrap things up and open the floor for questions from the audience, I have one final question, which may be a bit controversial. From a traditional bank to a buy now pay later to an entire crypto world — do you guys see each other as partners or competition?

Harris Khan: Of course, when it comes to at least crypto, banks are the very needed partners that the crypto exchanges need, and I think when it comes to partnerships, they’re a massive opportunity that you see. At least in UAE, we know that Mr properties at mark properties started to accept crypto to sell the property, so that’s an aspect of payment. Using crypto as a currency is also happening now. So, I think payments and banking are part of one cohort.

Jayanth Ananthakrishnan: Oh yeah, absolutely, partners.

Yasmine Mohamed Youssef: Partners! Actually, we’re working with a bank in Egypt on a partnership between us, and because we work on debit cards, we work with the bank to increase the activation and activity rate on their cards. We are a solution for banks.

With crypto, Egypt is still very, I can’t say primitive, but it’s still very on the lowkey. So, I can’t say we have found synergies yet, but we see ourselves as partners with banks. And banks, in the beginning, saw consumer finance as a competition. They started launching consumer finance companies, but now they see them as partners.

Jayanth Ananthakrishnan: Yeah! I agree with both of them. Banks have had several successful partnerships with fintech. For example, master recently partnered with cashew; another buy-now, pay-later platform for instant post transactions. That’s just one example. We have several successful examples where we have partnered with fintech companies and collaborated, and both businesses have grown. It’s not that one winner takes all. So, naturally, there is an area of collaboration, and banking is a regulated industry. That’s the only catch. Whenever there is any collaboration, we must comply with all the regulations. The cost of compliance is extremely high, so that is one thing we see when we try to partner with fintech because they always come up with these radical ideas and always want to go fast, but banks are generally slow. Not because they want to be slow but because the cost of compliance is so high that it takes a little bit of time to get the momentum in the wavelength simultaneously. Once that happens, it’s a great partnership.

Moderator: That’s great because I think it’s amazing that there’s a great strategy where all three of you think that you are in partnership and not competition. The last point you mentioned is that it’s just a bit more regulations because there is a lot at stake for their customer, so having those regulations is also good.

Building the Right Team for Growth at Different Stages

Moderated By – Patrick Tang, Associate Director – Inside Sales, MoEngage

Speakers –

Joel Leong, Co-founder, ShopBack
Race Wong, Co-founder & CPO, Ohmyhome
Agnes Lie, Founder, Stealth Startup
Julian Tan, Founder & CEO, FastJobs

6:28 – Striking Balance Between Working From Home and Office

Moderator – Right, thanks Julian and thanks to all the founders. I am going to pose the first question for this afternoon session. As we transition right to a new normal, how do you make that right balance with your teams between working from home and working from the office? What are the positive and not so positive experiences you have encountered in the process? Perhaps I can call Agnes to take a step at answering the question before I can call the rest of the panelists to answer this question.

Agnes Lie – Thanks Patrick. I think, for us, we have signed up to all work from home for now. I think the primary reason is that everybody knows that the traffic is probably the worst. One of them we saw as a benefit or two to three hours from the time, although still to maintain productivity every morning just to make sure everyone is accountable, everyone supposed to do, or actually as, I guess the negative side of things, most probably to maintain the work-life balance.

I think I’m sure it’s not uncommon to find someone sitting in front of their laptop and they realize it’s actually nightlife. So I think one thing that was useful for us was to use the meeting options in detail on Google calendar. We just five minutes to 10 minutes earlier, depending on the schedule. And that’s before meeting them. But I think it’s important to acknowledge that this is not real in this issue, especially when we’re just at home working.

Moderator – Thank you. Anyone want to go next?

Julian Tan – I guess I can go next. We have adopted a hybrid approach. I think as a lot of the staff, I receive a lot of time, family, and you can spend the time better with your families. But at the same time, we felt that it was also good to spend some time together. And I think over the last two years it was very difficult for newcomers to come and work from the property.

You know, you’ll come and join the company, but they don’t actually get to meet people face to face. They don’t interact as much as possible. So we decided on a reason to get everyone to come back at least twice a week. So they get the best of all. I think they can organize their time to work from home, but yet at the same time, they’re able to increase interaction, and actually get to talk to people, get to know each other better and meet in the office.

Moderator – All right, thanks, Julian. Raise your thoughts on the topic.

Race Wong – I think the last two years have been very challenging for most business leaders, from this complete lockdown where we are all like on Zoom and Google Meet to transitioning and then the government says like 50% and then it’s like 80%.

And we have to be very careful with our workforce. Especially in the startups, a lot of tech guys, tech guys are like, super right, don’t like you, they just go to another place. I think it has helped us also learn to have more empathy towards what actually works best for everyone.

So as founders, I think for us, we all have the same goal. We wanted everyone to be productive. To achieve the goals together. Our goal is not to make you come to the office, right? If you come to the office and you’re wasting time, it doesn’t make sense for us either. So I think there’s this balance that we’re trying.

So currently for work at my home, it’s mostly like four days at the office, one day at home officially. But we have to go work from home maybe like three days a week and a couple teams we have to go working from home more often because of the traffic. So now as bosses, we take it into consideration. The rise in traveling costs and the time it takes to get to the office. So they can spend like three hours getting back and forth, four hours back and forth and I would rather that they get home.

Moderator – Yeah. Thanks, Race. Joel, any last thoughts?

Joel Leong – I think what’s happening is that we have to measure things a bit more precisely. Before COVID, everyone measured KPIs differently, right? When they were in office for eight hours, there was this assumption that they had been working continuously. However, I think that with hybrid work here to stay and I think there’s a shift towards being a bit more measurable, looking at it in a more measurable way. For example, let’s say how many expectations are solved by a customer service agent?

What are the inputs that from and that I think makes the old company more, I don’t know whether by choice or my circumstances, but generally I think it’s a shiftless step because you have to, because if you are and can certain market still even opening up, then actually the only way that you can direct and work together is how you measure things in a certain way that both sides agree and then if they’re able to work with that. So I think that that was a big shift in recruitment.

12:17 – Building a Dynamic Team In a Fast Paced Economy

Moderator – Thanks, Joel. I’m glad you mentioned the word metrics because that helps me to create a question specifically to Julian. Julian, at FastJobs, you have the past of seven years, right? Starting off with just six employees, you have built this team by 10x, right? To 60 employees that span across three countries. You definitely have a world of experience building success with teams and helping other companies to do so. I wanna get your thoughts right on progressive methods, employers using progressive methods and metrics instead of the conventional ones to build a future and dynamic team in a fast paced economy. I wanna get yours on.

Julian Tan: Yeah, so for us, so conventional methods are more focused on skill sets and they see how well you perform. Looking at your CV, how you perform at interviews. Test your skills or your knowledge for certain things. But I think in today’s world, we need to go beyond that. I think we need to start hiring, or rather, we’ve been looking at a couple of characteristics, if you are very, very important.

So one is actually hiring compassion. I think gone are the days where you just hired a developer who would just come in and code from nine to five and then go home after that. For us, not only does a developer need to have good skill sets, he needs to be able to also have a passion for the vision of the company and for that our developers, not only developers but everyone in the company should have that vision. Every role that you hire for, you want everyone to be involved in the vision of the company.

So the vision for FastJobs is to create equal access and job opportunities for everyone. So what does that mean? So we need our people to really understand and empathize with job seekers. So, for example, when we have organized a job fair or when we have shows, we have to get everyone down, you know, on ground to actually interact with the job seekers, to interact with the employers to actually understand the needs of both sides.

So even though we were not able to do this for a while now, recently, in Malaysia we managed to get all job seekers to find out how we can do better in helping them to look for jobs. So that’s the first thing – passion. The second thing which I feel is very important as well is the team dynamics and hiring people who can work as a team and not the individual contributor. So for us, what we do is that as part of the whole interview process, we will actually get the candidate to be involved in a workshop with the rest of the prospective team members.

So for example, we’re hiring for a developer, we would throw the person into a workshop together with a product team. So the product manager would be there, the developers would be there as well as the designer. We throw them a problem to solve and we would then see how the candidate interacts with the rest of the team to see whether you know the person has good back thinking as well as also to see whether the person knows how to work with the rest of the team.

So Chemistry is also something that is very very important because you can hire the best coder in the world but if he can’t work with others then I think he won’t be able to create the kind of products that we want. And finally, the other important thing is the cultural feat. So for startups especially, if you’re looking for people with not even passion, but also someone who’s very adaptable because I think everyone feels involved in that. There’s still a lot of messiness, a lot of things that, yeah. We have to be very very flexible and dynamic as we go along.

So for me personally, I would think about myself to actually interview every single hire that you recruit to ensure that the person is the right cultural fit for the company.

17:17 – Enabling Teams To Drive Growth

Moderator – All right! Thanks Julian. I’m gonna move on very quickly to Race. You’re the co-founder as well as the chief Product Officer of Ohmyhome, so what does the current team structure look like?

Which are the teams within your company that are responsible for driving growth and how do you enable the teams, those teams and the people within those teams to succeed in that role?

Race Wong – Currently the team structure, definitely we have, you know, from front to back, which is, our sales team, the operations team, marketing team, and then the tech team.

So for every single country that we’re in, we’ll have the sales, marketing and operations, which are separate. And then the tech team is like, it covers all territories and of course like every single department, they have their own team guys to meet, capacity model. So for example, for our sales team, to give you some context, like we have 30,000 agents in Singapore, but every single year there are only about 40,000 transactions for sale.

So that means every single agent will only have 1.2 deals per year. So when we first started out per agent, they were closing like 10 deals a year and 30 deals, 60 deals, and now it’s 82 deals per year. So we have a really small team of eleven agents in Singapore and each agent is closing 82.

So this model is actually unseen, of course, because of technology or how we improve this efficiency. So that’s an example of how every single team has their growth target to reach. But I think that the other way that is very effective for us is, is more like a top down approach where we look at up goal.

So as staff always teach you faster, 2025, we wanna be there. And to get us there, there are like four ways to get there, right? Firstly, platform traffic. Secondly, in more markets, thirdly, customer lifetime value, how do you have this customer come back again and again, spend on different things? And then lastly, how can we better, you know, engage and ensure that our products and services are of higher customer satisfaction.

So with these in mind, then we have these product managers that are really driving the growth. You know you can have a lot of these town halls where you share about what the company’s doing. But really it’s always down to the products that’s able to drive growth and then the product manager must be the one that’s always reporting and chasing everyone.

Moderator – Yeah, right. Thank you, Race. Not sure if any of the panelists would like to add into what Race has shared. Agnes, anything to add in?

Agnes Lie: I guess it is quite different for us because I, being a new operator, am just trying to get from zero to one, and I, I do agree with phrases to us to just setting the vision. The second vision, this is the world that we’re supposed to achieve, but for us, this growth is not over product, and group isn’t really a function for us, but rather mindset, everyone have to work toward and deliver. I guess there’s some similarities, but some differences as well.

Moderator – Okay. Joel, anything to add?

Joel Leong – I think once everyone gets together as a team, it helps a lot. I think outside that we try to use it from the vision to the execution somewhere like sometimes there.

And like the times where we were 15 men, that was like the best time because we would just walk over and say. “Hey, sorry, you know what, what you mention just now and then agree or not and then move forward and now it’s like eight and you across different markets. And then, and that makes it much harder, right?”

I think what we are trying to do is like bring up some estimation points that you know like “Hey, we want resources here. So there’s this gap, like what I’m gonna do to fill this gap.” And I noticed that with that mechanism that helped us reach the goal, all I needed.

22:15 – Evolution Of Team At ShopBack

Moderator – Okay, good. Can I just follow up with what you just said and connect our question to you. Right. As a cofounder of ShopBack. From the early days to today, how has the team evolved? As long as the company grows, there’s a lot of expectations on efficiency and streamlining. How did the team change to adapt to it?

Joel Leong – I think like when we were a new startup, like when we could change things very quickly from zero to one, it was easy. And then in between we would try out things and then fail and then we took them out along the way. So that was how it started, right?

As the team got bigger and there were different countries added on. Then I think what happened is that we now started to cover processes and things to make it more streamlined, more efficient, and make less mistakes. So that’s good, right? As you expand, you make sure to make less mistakes, you have been sharing some best practices and then how you can replicate it in different ways.

But one thing when we had the trade off was actually the early period of the zero to one, whereby we were bringing things and then doing things differently. Because there is SOP now. There are things to do and things not to do, and it’s not colorful, why are we doing this? Or why are we not doing this?

Right. So then I think one thing that we try to do to manage trade off is that, as important as a process is, make sure that there are always points and ways that you can get things done in a scalable fashion. But then I think we try to, what we try to do is do things. One is we try to have a leeway for experimentation, meaning that if you feel that, that’s fine. So when we evaluate somebody, uh, about someone when we look at it, if the person is doing his role well and he’s able to do 20% of things that are out of his region and fails and lose money and that, that’s totally okay.

So then I think it allows people to be able to experiment and do things differently. You always just want to, right? And then if you always want SOP and do what you’re supposed to do then mathematically you should be on the same type of, right? You get the uplift that you gotta do something differently. And to do that something differently, then it’s about making sure that they’re allowed to fail. And, what we try to do is either localize it, that local countries can make decisions without regional teams and the second is that if you can do your job well and, if you hit like 80% of what you are supposed to do so that’s totally fine.

And then now you can do other experiments that you don’t have to buy from us and you can do it and you can get us when you’re successful and when you feel less of the cost. That makes it much easier for things to be able to move forward and have a balance it still as well as the entrepreneurs to still have.

25:27 – Building a Business From Zero to One

Moderator – I’ll say, and by the way, I’m returned to ask you and Agnes about Zero to One. Apparently, it’s also a book, the detailed, you call it Zero to one as well. So the next question has a little bit to do with Zero to one. From the time you were running growth versus growing your business down from ground zero. As to, you know, is there any difference in terms of the growth team? Right? How does it impact the structure of the team as well?

Agnes Lie – Yeah. So like I was saying earlier, it’s completely different, so to answer your question, the factor is completely different when we are zero to one, like I mentioned, it’s all the product we are building and point of which is so important, is trying to understand what value to your users. Because if you have a product and nobody uses it, there is no point there.

So I think to get that understanding of the value of our product, I personally speak to teenagers and parents every week with users and non-users, but we are just trying to find out what exactly is the point and how can we solve it and after finding those insights, who is then testing out like we were.

So I think the goal really is for small companies to just get things off that. Try and fail quickly if you have to. And then that’s iterated from there. So it is completely different to when I was four, which is a new car, which will probably have different markets but sustainable tax and growth for both companies on both sides that we will see.

Getting things and knowing while making them more efficient we can be about, but way more efficient and of course missing some of the tools that provide organizations to do optimization for the customer journeys with software like MoEngage. All those are more incremental as they start to lose something totally outside of option.

And companies, their technical, like a good growth consist of, and each of their specific, each growth area product growth would be run. Just try to optimize the, our. Growth. They probably focus more on optimizing and the other folks will focus more. We define metrics and that, so that the leadership, my organization, will be able to focus on particular metrics that actually matter.

28:33 – Learnings From Creating a Hyper Growth Organization

Moderator – Right. Well said, thank you so much. And this question is going to all candidates, right? In general from creating a team in a hyper growth organization, what are your learnings and what are the potential to take shared audiences? Why don’t I get Julian to start with?

Julian Tan – Okay. So the first one is to not settle for second best. So I think a lot of us when we are recruiting, there’s time pressure to actually hire as quickly as possible to do care better, a replacement or new hire. So sometimes when we are in such a situation, we may not be able to find the right person, but because we form a walk body is better than that.

So we say, okay, we just manage our expectations and hire that. But I think this always comes back to haunt us. So I think it’s better to wait for the right person, the right candidate, and to not settle for the second best. So that’s the first lesson. I feel like you’re speaking to me.

I think we need to cut the process. So if a person is not working out for whatever reason, I think it is maybe best and even fair to go to parties rather than to try the issue as that can have a negative impact on the rest of the team.

So if after a couple of months you realize that this working relationship is not working out as planned and I think we should just cut the process and move on.

Moderator – Thanks. Agnes, do you wanna chime in?

Agnes Lie – I guess I do have one point to share. From my time starting up teams in large organizations or a company on my own. I think, probably one of the biggest things that I always do is that I have a plan. I think it’s common to fall into the pitfall of not having a plan and not having enough time because of the lack of this data.

I do think forcing yourself to just say and what are the potential issues that might come about, like helps you come up with a contingency plan. So it also helps tell them where we say that they’re working towards and it will all walk us the same direction and figure out this is not us.

Moderator – Right, thank you. Race?

Race Wong – When it comes to building teams, so just now I was talking about like we have like different teams and then inside the tech team you have like the iOS and Android and back then what team and what I learned about driving both is that there must be the cross-functional team of the collaboration.

So that the tech team understands the pain point of the ops team and the sales team because like the tech team, they’ll never, ever really see the customer. They can check all they want, but they don’t understand the customer like the front line guys. So the Crossman home team really helped us improve on our product and on the other point, on product, because I’m the cheaper officer, we’re always looking and thinking about new products to build.

But one major pitfall is that I didn’t invest enough time in one page. That’s why I’m here because initially I told them I’m not getting enough support but actually really it’s because like we really focus on it. So if you were to focus on the customer journey and to engage your customer, then you would not be spending so much money to acquire new customers.

Yeah. So I think this one, everyone can achieve that digitally. You know, a better customer journey. Yeah.

Moderator – Joel, do you have something to say?

Joel Leong – So just three points. So I think we pointed right just on, I think we gave separate types of shots that we’re looking up for. Right? So the first one would be, is that a senior role or it’s a more level role? So like if I have an entry level role, I get you, you really just need somebody that is very passionate to learn.

Then you’d be able to teach them and get them up, right? Then the other one that you think about is like a senior role that is managing groups of people, or managers. One part that I say very well would be they have done that before, so it’s less of like having to do that, but they have done that before and that makes it much easier.

Like when teams are working under them, then they expect to be guided. Right? And if you really did it before, I think the direction you can give is gonna be much more expected. Mistakes are gonna be lesser, right? Rather than a really smart person who has never done it before. They might not know, even though they’re really smart and pretty good.

So that’s the first one we gave a second tech job that you’re trying to hire for? Second one is that I think COVID has changed many types of profiles you’re looking out for, right? I think one thing I’m looking out a lot is really the state power that can be as well. State power, meaning like if you look at the past, right? Me as a person and that’s it.
Most attendees with a new role or new job every year actually like it for me minus someone, right? You hire someone, get a speed two to six months, and then that’s it quick as a two three. This period.

So actually if you, if the person here with you for a year, then actually you have the person for you to trade now for six months, work with you for some time, and then the last two months window period, right? So six plus two, that’s eight. So you get four months out a year, you get four months of that person after trading that.

So one part you look at is like really what’s the state power of that candidate, and it’s not like, like we are not saying that, let’s say someone from the past five jobs. A one year stay and then maybe faster can stay very long. That’s also possible. But I mean, we are very customers, so it’s a game.

I think there’s nothing wrong. It’s just that for us, like we wanna invest in them and have that actually, it’s not that, that’s their full right to do. So it’s just that for us, we’re trying to build a team, right? And trying to reduce stability. So actually for someone that actually might be.

Mostly power actually might at some points. So what is the magic number looking at as far as 10 years? So what is considered visible in context years, I think it’s also looking at the track record. He should, because like sometimes it’s true, you go to a job and it doesn’t make sense for you. It’s better just that if you have done three, five times then you know it’s either all the companies by probability have a problem or like, could you penalize a candidate if this candidate stays forever in one single company?

I think there’s no penalty. There’s no penalty there. More like you look at the job store, right? Let’s say you need, that let’s say it’s gonna take one year to build a product like, and then it’s gonna leave, it’s gonna be quite hard to because somehow coming here trying to understand, trying to review that.

Yeah. So I think any penalty or you stay for a long time, I think that’s fine. We’re not trying to see who stays on the floor or that within the period of time. That will be able to build a team that I think would be the second one. And last one, this. Optimism versus realism? Part of the learning from me over the years is more like, let’s say sometimes you have to do some of what we think, right?

So we say this here, but maybe you before we do, and that’s actually possible. Like we’ve seen candidates do that, but based on probability, like we cannot always. Based on that, right? So being able to be realistic on what possible also sets that up for success. Because if you’re thinking that’s gonna be, but they’re actually here, they actually, you say, no, it’s not for failure because you are really putting them on a stretch of what they can do, right?

So being able to be realistic of what you expect from them helps you. I think, maybe trying to get at the same time, also managing expectations is important. For them when they come in, don’t have unrealistic expectations of them. I think that helps you much better.

Moderator – Thank you for a very insightful sharing.