A lot has been happening at Paytm – apart from business impact due to RBI regulation to restructuring (2 prominent CBOs / earlier CEO of PPBL have quit).
But that’s regular business. The bigger opportunity is this👇🏼.
Paytm is one of the few desi apps which has not just great daily usage, but also better UX (and design philosophy) than most of them.
Unlike others like Swiggy/Zomato which are mainly centered around 1 major use-case (food delivery), Paytm caters to many use-cases – which makes it easier for users to relate it with more (non-transactional) usecases.
IMO, the bigger opportunity for Paytm is in going beyond fintech and transactional opportunities. Let me explain in simpler steps.
- India is changing. In the next 5 years, Indian consumers will be using a lot of AI products and services.
- Most consumer tech companies struggle to get distribution (read my lessons from shutting down 2 consumer products)
- Paytm has distribution…so logically speaking, why not enable developers to utilize this (instead of doing it all on its own)?
- Well. the earlier attempt to launch an app store was a massive failure (btw, any idea how IndusOS is doing?)
So what’s the NextBigWhat for Paytm now?
Use your distribution and launch non-fintech products (think opportunities at the intersection of India and Gen AI opportunity).
A huge opportunity awaits and if not for Paytm, somebody will surely do this – and create a massively high-margin business.
But..isn’t Paytm a Fintech company? Well, Spotify is getting into devops tool, MS is launching copilots..Paytm needs to get back to its startup roots and rebuild the consumer love.
What’s your take?
