An APP for an APP makes the mobile eye blind!

It’s been a while since my last blog and I confess honestly that I was busy at work, not because I was fiddling with my phone! That said, my fingers have certainly had more exercise working the touchscreen and navigating through those myriad apps – my 7 year old contributing a good bit – more than ever in the last few years of possessing a smart phone. I am not going to waste Linked-in real-estate to explain how mobiles have become the new personal computers and how life is far easier now with all those apps – I know many of you may be reading this on your mobile!

My deliberation in this article is more about how some start-ups and businesses view the need for an ‘APP’ as almost a very critical strategic move, one that definitely guarantees easy customer on-boarding that would eventually lead to a luscious revenue waterfall. I beg to differ and here is why!

A dear friend once told me in the context of my company raising the next round – “Do you have an app? In whatever shape or form?  Having an APP is a critical tick mark to getting even a side glance from investors!” He perhaps spoke from experience. And to corroborate his view, I know many fellow entrepreneurs working their hard earned capital launching an app at an ambitiously low time. Some of those have truly kicked-ass, while the others? Lesser said the better – the darn thing is so poorly designed & executed that I think it may reduce the credibility of their web-app/base product, which may have been pretty decent to start with!

My point is that building an APP is very often an incidental decision and is a mere reflection of the intelligence of the base product itself and the problem one is trying to solve. For a company with a kick-ass product solving a real problem, building a mobile app could be a logical extension to reach and engage with more customers (I am largely generalizing without getting into specifics on target audience). But, in my considered view, an APP – just its existence – is not going to solve core problems or drive one to non-linear goals – IT IS ONLY THE PRODUCT THAT CAN and that’s where the focus has to be. For those whose product is launched as a mobile APP to begin with, again it is the underlying need and the manner in which the ‘problem’ is tackled that is core – substance vs form 101 argument! All of us like the outfit on the mannequin, but we do want the fit and tailoring to work out right?

For a company, allocation of capital is of foremost importance especially when in shortfall.This I am talking out of experience! So you can build a minimum viable APP for a few lakhs or even a crore depending on your allocation strategy. However, when I look through the prism of sustainability, any additional customer access point I build – a mobile APP included – will be done only if I can sustain the follow on need to promote it aggressively and increase quality of user experience. My point is an APP needs to be sustained and that requires capital, sustained product dev efforts and a lot of pitching! An APP must solve the real problem one set-out to solve except through a different medium and that’s how I would look at it. Substance along with form is the goal.

From a customer perspective, think about it – we have perhaps 2 core apps under every genre? Cab booking, retail purchasing, food, healthcare, travel and of course social media & games – perhaps throw in news & stocks for the initiated? The finiteness of the screen will demand us to traffic regulate & clean up our phones periodically and what apps do you think will be kicked out?

If you are wondering if we at Vidyartha are going to build an APP, like I said that is an incidental decision and almost like stating the obvious. But the timing, the capital and sustained effort to make it solve the need, just better, will be a calculated call. We will aim never to be bummed off in the mobile clean up spree by our customer!

Question: “Do you have an APP?”

Answer: “We have a kick-ass product!”