Himanshu Khandelwal

According to available data, the average Indian users spend approximately 21 hours per month on WhatsApp, significantly more than their time on SMS and email. This trend indicates a higher engagement level with WhatsApp conversations. However, leveraging WhatsApp for digital marketing campaigns presents challenges in terms of cost and sustainability for millions of users. One suggested approach is the creation of a "Make in India - WhatsApp" alternative by our India Startup. Alternatively, if individuals have discovered efficient, cost-effective, and productive solutions to harness the existing WhatsApp usage of millions of users, your insights are valuable. Kindly share the same. #DigitalMarketing #WhatsApp #MakeInIndia #Fintech

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🚄IRCTC has received RBI’s in-principle approval for its payments arm to operate as a Payment Aggregator - a big leap beyond ticketing. 📌 𝐂𝐮𝐫𝐫𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐬𝐜𝐚𝐥𝐞 & 𝐫𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐧𝐮𝐞: - Handles 14.3 lakh tickets daily with 52+ crore bookings per year - FY25 total revenue: ₹4,675 crore - Internet ticketing contributes ₹1,426 crore (~31% of total revenue) - i-Pay gateway processes payments worth ₹114.5 crore annually already - Catering & hospitality generate around ₹2,125 crore (~45% of revenue) - Tourism segment earns about ₹744 crore - Rail Neer packaged water adds ₹394 crore annually - Daily active users: 8+ crore registered users with capacity to handle 2.25 lakh transactions per minute 💡 𝐏𝐫𝐨𝐣𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐠𝐫𝐨𝐰𝐭𝐡 & 𝐢𝐦𝐩𝐚𝐜𝐭: - Payment aggregator business to internalize payment flows, boosting revenue and margins - Expected to process ₹4,000+ crore in ticketing payments alone digitally per year - Potential to expand payment services to government & PSU-linked verticals such as utilities, freight, tourism - pushing total processed transactions beyond ₹10,000 crore annually This transformation positions IRCTC as a government-backed fintech giant, leveraging its massive captive volumes and multi-sector ecosystem. With all this scale, maybe it’s time the IRCTC app catches up to the promise - no more bugs, please! #IRCTC #FinTech #India #Payments #RBI

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PhonePe vs Google Pay: Who’s winning India’s UPI game? In FY25, UPI clocked over 185 billion transactions — and 80%+ of that went to just two players: 📍 PhonePe – Owning the offline merchant network, strong on-ground GTM, and now heading for an IPO. 📍 Google Pay – Lean, trusted, and deeply embedded in the Android ecosystem. Paytm, once a frontrunner, now holds single-digit share — but still innovating with new lending & merchant tools. Meanwhile, players like CRED, Slice, and Jupiter are targeting high-value UPI transfers with newer GTMs. As India goes cashless, UPI isn’t just a payment method — it’s the new battleground for fintech dominance. Who’s got your tap? #UPI #PhonePe #GooglePay #Paytm #FintechIndia #GTM #DigitalPayments #Cred #Slice #GrowthBattle

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The way India watches content is changing. Reality shows like Bigg Boss, KBC, and Indian Idol are pulling massive viewership not just in metros but deep into Tier 2 and 3 cities. With increasing digital penetration and rising time spent across TV and OTT, audiences are engaging more than ever. These shows create a sense of connection, making them a preferred choice for appointment viewing. For brands, this shift is significant. Higher viewership means premium FCT rates, and with engaged audiences, ad placements deliver better impact. Product integrations feel less intrusive, and brand storytelling finds a natural fit within the content. The digital extensions of these shows further amplify reach, turning reality TV into a high-value playground for advertisers. #MediaTrend #DigitalGrowth #ConsumerBehavior

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 I have made 100s of Voxpop Ads, and here's all my learning. I ran a poll, asking which performance ad format should I decode, and you picked Voxpop. So here’s the breakdown: How to crack Voxpop for performance ads — what works, what fails. Why Voxpop Works???? It feels raw, real, and relatable. People trust people, not brands. When it looks like a real street convo, it skips the "this-is-an-ad" alert in your head. How to Make Voxpop Actually Work 1. Don’t hire an actor, Yes you heard it right. Hire a real host. Actors perform. Hosts connect. You need someone who’s comfortable talking to strangers, reading body language, and pulling real reactions — without a script. 2. Cut the fluff. This is performance content. 20 seconds on intro & outro = 20 seconds wasted. Hook them, hit the insight, land the product. ( Kisi ko nahi janna- " Hi aaj Hum aae hain CP me aur chalo logo se puchte hai") 3. Ask questions that hit home. Generic questions won’t work. Instead of: “Aap apni salary kaise use karte ho?” Why this doesn’t work:No emotional pull, Sounds like a boring survey, Won’t trigger an expressive or honest reaction Try: “Aapki salary bhi ‘Limited Edition’ hai kya? Jaldi khatam ho jaati hai?” This works because: It’s specific , It taps into a common pain point ,It feels like a real-life conversation Questions should sound like real-life problems. 4. Don’t jump to the product — make them ask for it. This is the secret sauce. Let the person talk about their pain point. Then the host connects the dots and introduces the product as a solution. Let the audience feel: “Ohh, that makes sense.” 5. Show. The. Product. I can’t say this enough: If I don’t see it, I won’t buy it. Hold it close to the camera. Show details. Make it real. Don’t assume description is enough. This isn’t radio. 6. CTA = Test Ground Should you mention price? Offer? Order online. → Don’t guess. A/B test it. Every brand behaves differently. Cheat Codes (That Actually Work) 1. Carry free samples — opens people up for better reactions. 2. Start the convo without the camera — camera-shy people vanish fast.  3. Props or quirky lines help lighten the mood — “Free ice cream or free fame?” Bottom Line: Voxpop may look casual — but it only works when planned smartly. It’s not about randomness. It’s about realness. And real needs strategy.

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India just banned a ₹27,438 Cr industry overnight. Not just Dream11, MPL, WinZO or Zupee. An entire ecosystem collapsed in 48 hours. • Payment gateways lost a major revenue stream. • Ad-tech firms & media houses lost big advertisers. • Esports platforms, talent agencies, cloud providers, small vendors—all disrupted. • Even Team India’s jersey sponsor (Dream11) is now in limbo. 📉 The industry was projected to touch $9B by 2029, with 1,900+ companies, 130,000+ professionals, and global investors betting big on India’s digital economy. But the Promotion & Regulation of Online Gaming Act, 2025—passed and signed into law within 72 hours—wiped it out. Penalties? Jail up to 3 years, fines up to ₹1 Cr for facilitators. Yes, protecting people from addiction matters. Reports say 450M gamers lost ₹20,000+ Cr in recent years. The concern is real. But the way it happened raises a bigger question— 👉 If years of jobs, investments, and innovation can vanish with one policy move, what does that signal to global investors betting on India’s digital future? India must find a balance: curb misuse without killing innovation. Otherwise, the cost of abrupt shocks may far outweigh the harm they aim to prevent. #Gaming #Law #India

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By every rule of e-commerce, Meesho should be dead. Yet the’ve been the most downloaded shopping app in India every single month since their consumer launch in 2021. They handle the highest daily order volume of any e-commerce platform in India. Meesho inverted every received idea about how Indian e-commerce “should” be built. I see my mother placing 2-3 orders on Meesho every month. Not Amazon. Not Flipkart. This didn’t happen by accident. It’s the result of systematic contrarian thinking embedded deep into their DNA. Three organizational characteristics that stand out to me: > 𝗕𝗲𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗯𝗹𝗲𝗺-𝗳𝗶𝗿𝘀𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝗻 𝘀𝗼𝗹𝘂𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻-𝗳𝗶𝗿𝘀𝘁  When Vidit & Sanjeev started Fashnear in 2015, nobody actually had the problem they thought they were solving (local online shopping). They had been asking leading questions ("Would you like to sell online?") designed to get the answers they wanted to hear. When they pivoted from Fashnear, they literally sat in shops for days just watching what shopkeepers did. This observation led them to discover the WhatsApp commerce behavior that became their early breakthrough. Meesho institutionalized their early failure into a cultural mantra. Teams are told to never assume a solution but to go with a curious mindset to discover problems. > 𝗥𝗶𝗴𝗶𝗱 𝗶𝗻 𝗺𝗶𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗳𝗹𝗲𝘅𝗶𝗯𝗹𝗲 𝗶𝗻 𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘆𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗲𝗹𝘀𝗲 Meesho has maintained an unwavering mission (democratizing internet commerce for Bharat) while being radically flexible about how to achieve it. They've pivoted from local marketplace → ‘Shopify’ for WhatsApp → reseller platform for homemakers → horizontal consumer e-commerce, all serving the same North Star. Meesho launched its consumer app after killing its highly successful reseller mode that grew to 10 million WhatsApp groups. Why? Post Jio, Indians started downloading ecomm apps and the pandemic accelerated online shopping. Staying mission-consistent allowed Meesho to make bold pivots that others would find impossible. > 𝗖𝗵𝗼𝗼𝘀𝗲 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗰𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗺𝗲𝗿, 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗻 𝗰𝗵𝗼𝗼𝘀𝗲 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 ���𝗼𝗻𝘀𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗶𝗻𝘁𝘀 Meesho gets faster every year, but never at the expense of becoming unaffordable for their core customer. They discovered that cost was the true barrier to their mission. They pioneered the disruptive zero commission model driven by the insight that small businesses have very low gross margins & cannot afford high costs of doing business online. They then built revenue through ads and value-added services. The same philosophy created Valmo, a marketplace of small, local logistics providers. It was structurally impossible to get the lowest cost from 3PL providers serving speed-obsessed ecomm platforms. Cost reduction would unlock significantly more customers than marginal speed improvements. PS: I would highly recommend listening to Vidit’s interview on The Ken First Principles. Also very glad that they brought back the podcast!

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"Dropped our performance marketing spends from ₹18 crore to ₹2 crore per month. No impact on Revenues.” We've all seen such viral posts: "Massive budget cuts, zero revenue impact!" (Remember Unacademy, Uber ?) They're intriguing, right? Marketing is a huge cost center, and these claims naturally make us wonder if our money is being wasted. But these posts, while attention-grabbing, often highlight a bigger, more subtle problem: the over-reliance on attribution. We get so caught up in attribution – which click led to which sale – that we completely miss the bigger picture: incrementality. Did this marketing actually drive new revenue, or was it just taking credit for sales that were already happening? Think about it: Ad platforms (Google, Meta etc.) algorithms are designed to maximise attributed conversions. They're incentivised to show their impact, even if it's just cannibalising existing traffic.  Plus, with Performance Max, ASC, and ACi, we have less visibility than ever. Facebook CMO recently said: Present last-click attribution to your CFO without incrementality testing, and you'll be laughed out of the room. Even the platforms themselves know attribution isn't the whole story. So, what's the alternative? We need a strategic shift in our approach towards marketing measurement. We need to move from attribution to incrementality. It's not a quick fix. It means unlearning some ingrained habits. But it's the only way to truly understand the ROI of our marketing spend. Over the next few posts, I'll share practical, accessible strategies to help you assess incrementality without requiring a massive investment. These insights could potentially save your company significant sums of money. Stay tuned. And let's chat – what are your biggest marketing measurement challenges? 

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Loantap secures $6.2 million in fresh funding from July Ventures and existing investors 📌 Pune-based digital lending platform LoanTap Financial Technologies has raised $6.2 million in fresh equity funding led by July Ventures. Existing investors 3one4 Capital, Avaana Capital, Kae Capital and the Swapurna Family Office also participated in the round. 📌 With this, the total capital raised by the company stands at around $26 million. The company has also raised another $2.3 million in venture debt as a part of this round. Story By: Pratik Bhakta Read more at: https://lnkd.in/gZu76KYr

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📢 Big News: PhonePe Gets RBI Nod as a Full-Fledged Online Payment Aggregator! India’s fintech powerhouse PhonePe has officially received authorization from the Reserve Bank of India to operate as a full-fledged online payment aggregator. This is a landmark moment for the company—and a pivotal milestone for India’s digital payments ecosystem. Here’s what this means: 💡 For MSMEs: With 45 million merchant outlets in its network, PhonePe can now onboard more small and medium businesses, bringing millions into the digital payments fold. 📈 For the Industry: PhonePe’s scale—650M+ users and 360M+ daily transactions—sets a new benchmark. Competitors will now need to innovate faster, scale smarter, and tighten compliance to stay in the game. 🌍 For Financial Inclusion: This move accelerates India’s mission to bring underserved businesses into the digital economy, improving access to credit, payments infrastructure, and growth opportunities. ⚖️ Competitive Ripple Effect: Existing and emerging fintechs—from UPI players to neobanks—face pressure to enhance merchant onboarding, transaction security, and value-added services. The fintech race just got real. 🔥 Bottom Line: PhonePe’s RBI approval isn’t just an achievement—it’s a call-to-action for India’s fintech ecosystem to innovate, scale, and drive digital payments adoption nationwide. #PhonePe #RBI #DigitalPayments #FintechIndia #MSME #FinancialInclusion #BankingInnovation #PaymentsRevolution #StartupEcosystem #TechForGood #Neobanks #UPI #FintechInnovation #PaymentGateway #FinancialTechnology #IndianEconomy #DigitalIndia #Entrepreneurship #SMEFinancing #FutureOfBanking

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