Thread by @pacificleo

This thread bought back a lot of memories for me. Virtual Gifting is one of the untapped opportunities in the Indian Ecosystem. It's a case study on How we ignore the leading indicator of TAM. Storytime 🧵

https://twitter.com/_bpst/status/1374696311681806338

In 2011-12 I was working with Spice. We had 20 App portfolio with 50M+ download, 0.5M Unique generating 1.5-2.0M PV in aggregate, 2k-4k $ daily revenue approx . We needed to increase revenue. We were considering Virtual Goods and Gifting.

We presented to management .They were intriuged but There was this one dude, An ex googler turned inhouse Bean counter of spice was totally dismissive and needlessly harsh of potential. "Who in India use this shit? Show me some data about TAM "

This was around the same time when Zynga and Farmville were on the peak. I checked on the uptake of virtual goods. My friend in Zynga told me that they sell 50-80K $ in Virtual goods every month from India.

Another friend from mig33 ( a popular IM of the past ) told me that they have healthy businesses selling virtual stuff and VOIP cards. Healthy enough to be one of the sponsor of IPL that year

There were supporting data poitns from other companies too. small but rapidly growing number of users were spending money on Virtual goods.

But my AHa! moment was when I realized that the biggest proxy for TAM of virtual goods was stairing at me right there in the face. My parent company was making shitload of money on it . It was none other than "Caller Ring Back Tone "AKA CRBT.

Think about it. CRBT is virtual. There is no physical stuff involved. It is a gift, for it's consumed by someone else. One who pays for it never gets to hear it. That's the definition of a "Gift"

Behavioral markers for preference and acceptance were there. I was elated on my discovery and put it in deck.

The next day was educational, to say the least. I was ridiculed and laughed at. They dismissed the hypothesis and went ad hominem in their criticism. That ex googler was getting a cathratic joy in shaming me and my team.

His last words before we moved on to next item on agenda were " Even if your user wants to pay for this virtual shit . They wont be able to do it given the lack of e payment in India. Thats not changing anytime soon.

what makes his comment more interesting is the fact that when he was in google he was leading Google Wallet. Yet he didn't saw the future. Little did he knew that few km away from his office, folks at @Paytm were working to change that.

But wait this gets interesting: Years later I meet someone who was in the Marketing Team of Hello Tune : CRBT of Airtel. I told him this story He laughed and said you know we made the same mistake

When Airtel launched CRBT they targeted it to SECA-type users. Their logic It's music, Indian love piracy they won't be paying for it, and music which you don't hear? forget it . They run the initial TVC on English News and Lifestyle channels. it was supposed to be a tiny thing.

Next thing they know everyone from Mulltiplexe goer to Rickshaw pullers to farmers were using it . Then
CRBT of Kajrare broke all records and debate was settled. Much like the debate on TAM of Payment was settled after demonotization .

When we are estimating the TAM of a new kind of product we rarely find supporting data points from direct examples of use cases. What we get is an adjacent use case that can serve as a good proxy. With the right product and distribution, TAM can expand big time.

There is a bit of extrapolation involved but most excel heads are not good at this extrapolation. They see these data points like a drunk man see a lamp post on street. Something to be used for peeing not for illumination.

In the hindsight, these extrapolations, these leap of faith seems like an obvious thing to do. But like they say Hindsight is 2020.

So I appreciate what @_bpst is doing by sharing these data points. I hope @_frndapp is able to make the leap which we failed to do a decade ago. Good luck and God speed guys .