MapMyIndia IPO

To be a defacto technology superpower, India needs a 1000 MapMyIndias!

MapmyIndia goes public today… this is a big day not only for the company, but also for India’s tech ecosystem. Here’s why

  • This is a “defacto” tech product company that started making digitalmaps in 1995 (before Google was even born) #NotMeToo
  • I emphasize the word “defacto”, because this isn’t a technology enabled play like ecommerce, nor a foreign market focused Indian SAAS startup… it’s a technology platform company that was born/bred in and for India [this is my earlier essay on how India lacks platform companies]
  • It’s a clear market leader in India’s B2B mapping space, as opposed to B2C where Googlemaps is the default choice
  • I also think going forward (on a decadal timeframe), given the emerging geopolitical landscape around big tech dominance, security, privacy, sovereign data protection laws et al, this is one space among others, where foreign players will be at a disadvantage and gradually the ball may start tilting towards Indian players

Incidentally, I wrote about MapmyIndia (15 yrs ago!) way back in 2007 when this blog Webyantra had a diff avatar and was amongst the most widely read blogs about Indian internet & tech. I had forgotten about it, but Rohan’s tweet brought back distant memories!

The stock market pundits will have endless commentary about the IPO – valuation, pricing, low free float, OFS, growth/profitability prospects given Googlemaps etc. But none of that should take us away from the bigger tech picture here – this is the IPO of a homegrown, India originated, #NotMeToo, India centric technology product company.

Congrats to Rohan and his parents for painstakingly building MMI out over the years… they saw this coming 26 years ago! Here’s hoping a thousand MMIs bloom in India… if we want our nation to be a technology super-power! #ProductNation

(Pic credit https://twitter.com/BSEIndia/status/1473139794238578691)

Growth Hacking Video Links: The Call-To-Action that gets you best Click-Through Rates!

I recently got this email from someone – they wanted me to check out a couple of videos and had put the video duration next to the YouTube link. Made me smile – I know this is a psychological trick to get better click-through (or open) rates.

How do I know? Because I have tried this out myself, did some informal A/B testing, and it works!. The open rates were significantly higher than what they would be without the duration cue! Sharing examples below

So – If you’re emailing a video link to someone, or sharing on social media – just add a small text with its duration.

But how does the psychology of this hack work? I’d imagine this is what happens –

When you share the video link, you have 3 segments of possible user responses

A – the people who’ll anyway click the link
B – the people who are “maybe/maybe-not” fence sitters
C – the folks who’ll definitely not click

By putting the duration next to the link, you’re building up the right user expectancy. In the short attention span world of today, you’ve given them an advance warning – the “outer limit to the time investment” they have to make in the video. And this cue is enough to make some of the folks in “B” click (which they would not have otherwise!). This is the incremental click-through rate that accrues to you and shows up in the overall metric.

I write this post for a couple of reasons. The first (obvious) one is to share the productivity hack, so others can benefit from it. But the second (and more imp) reason is to point out how small, seemingly silly (or innocuous) details in how the product is designed & built has a disproportionate impact on the key metrics. Attention to (the minutest) details was one of Steve Job’s superpowers!