Ankur Singla, CEO and Founder of Tapzo, an integrated platform of more than 35 apps cutting across categories such as cab booking, food delivery, news, etc, talks to IMPACT about its value proposition and advertising potential
In November last year, India saw the launch of its first all-in-one app, Tapzo, an integrated platform of more than 35 apps across multiple categories comprising cab booking, food delivery, news, etc. The launch of Tapzo was preceded by a consumer redressal portal that went by the name ‘HelpChat’. The transition to Tapzo from HelpChat has been followed by a big-budget advertising campaign including three TVCs featuring Internet sensations such Bhuvan Bam of ‘BB Ki Vines’, Navin Kasturia of TVF Pitchers and Amol Parashar of TVF Tripling. Ankur Singla, CEO and founder of Tapzo, talks to IMPACT
WHY TAPPING IS BETTER THAN CHATTING
Be it Tapzo now or HelpChat then, the idea was always to develop a one-stop station that would help users with different requirements. After some time into the business, chat encountered major impediments, hindering productivity. Citing the problems with the chat model, Singla says, “The complexity of chat started hurting business because users had to continuously alternate between tabs, and the discovery was poor, which means the user only sees a blank window that does not tell him what is to be done. Another problem was that of unidirectional communication, which did not leave the user with much choice.” The intuitive layout of Tapzo allows the user to go about business without having to chat about all and sundry.
NUMBERS NEGATE THE COMPETITION
“India has one of the highest app uninstall rates in the world,” says Singla emphasizing on the need to have one app that can integrate the services of many as a solution to uninstalls. In an age where most apps are competing for space with the likes of heavier multimedia apps such as WhatsApp and Instagram that take up most of the storage on a user’s smartphone, Tapzo might just be the perfect option. However, how comfortable are service providers, especially the likes of food delivery and cab booking apps, to have their competition listed alongside on a single aggregator app? “As long our partners are getting transaction numbers, it doesn’t harm their cause to have immediate competition on the same platform,” says Singla. “Our partner apps don’t have to pay us until they get business. They only pay us when they get transactions, making our relationship symbiotic.” He also points out that Tapzo allows users to exploit the dozen discounts offered by its partner apps on their respective platforms, thus keeping their marketing efforts sacrosanct.
FACES THAT ARE FAMILIAR TO THE YOUTH
Setting aside a budget of Rs 21 crore for advertising, Tapzo went big from hiring BBH India as its creative unit, to casting some the country’s biggest YouTube stars in its TVCs. “Our target audience is between the age groups 18-35 years, and being the biggest consumers of digital content, they would be familiar with ‘BB Ki Vines’ and TVF. Bhuvan has an insane number of followers on his YouTube channel, and that’s when it struck us that why not get the TVF guys as well. That’s how Navin and Amol came on board,” says an excited Singla. The 360-degree ad campaign created for Tapzo communicates the value proposition of an all-in-one app rather than a storage-saving messiah which is another key insight behind its conceptualization.
AD MONETIZATION IS AN OPTION
The biggest source of revenue for Tapzo currently is through the commission earned via transactions of the listed apps. Though Tapzo hasn’t yet started leveraging its platform for third party advertising, Singla says that the option is always available, and they are open to exploration. “We are a transactional app; therefore right now, we want the user’s attention to be solely on executing transactions, rather than seeing advertisements. We also have the advantage of hosting content on our app like news, live scores, horoscope, etc. Having said that, ad monetization is still a very real option that we will explore in the future,” Singla states.
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