The Startup Growth Masterclass is part of PayUmoney India Growth Drivers. PayUmoney is on a mission to build India's largest growth ecosystem for Startups and SMEs. The Startup Growth Masterclass Chennai was presented by TheWorks@, 50K Ventures, IEEE Madras Young Professionals and IIT Madras

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The Startup
Growth Masterclass
#GrowChennai | @PayUmoneyIGD

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PayUmoney India Growth Drivers
“PayUmoney is more than an online payments
solution. We are partners in your venture
growth”
Offline:
High impact
workshops/ Events
Online:
IGD Platform

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Agenda
1. How do you grow at an idea stage
1. Content marketing
2. Community building
2. How do you grow at the MVP stage
1. Its not the BIG that beats the small, it’s the fast that
eat the slow
2. Build an MEP instead of an MVP
3. How do you grow at the product LIVE stage?
1. Be awesome & trustworthy
2. Hack Free PR

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HomeBrewed Growth Stories
How 3 emerging companies are hacking growth by creating
value and spending $0 on marketing.
Key:
1. Solve a relevant problem
2. Build a powerful value proposition
3. Partner a large brand by creating a win-win value for all
stakeholders

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HomeBrewed Growth Stories
• Lendingkart
Built Lendingkart GROW with PayUmoney
• Twikster
Built Twikster WIN for women entrepreneurs with
PayUmoney
• Shoptimize
Built Shoptimize Grow with PayUmoney

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What’s unique about this
pricing page?

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How FoodAbhi scaled to 30+ vendors,
15K delivered orders?
FoodAbhi is an online tiffin service provider.
1. Partnered with Ecommerce24 (end to end e-com service
provider).
2. The logic was to reduce risk at an early stage –
Understand the business & customer better
3. Move fast & fail cheap

10. #GrowChennai @PayUmoneyIGD
How do you grow at the
idea stage?
1. Content Marketing (tell powerful, moving stories)
1. Language is everything!
2. Audience segmenting + Community building
3. Imagination and the ‘what if’ landing page
4. Build mindshare, reduce friction

11. #GrowChennai @PayUmoneyIGD
Remove the imaginary wall that
you create when you call a
human on the other end ‘your
customer’. He’s as much a
human as you!
Now build your story & your venture!
Download the e-book: Do You Collide With Your
Customers from Amazon!

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Ask for help!
The most genuine way to do it is “if
you believe someone can actually add
value to what you’re building, tell
them. Then invite them over and
simply talk about your mission”
Leave it right here. Wait for the inspired one’s to revert.

13. #GrowChennai @PayUmoneyIGD
Content = powerful, moving
stories!
Remember the good old days, when your grandma used to
tell you stories of kings, queens, super heroes may be!
Stories involve. Stories ignite imagination. Stories
drive action. Stories make people share!

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A personal Email nails it.
This is the beginning of a relationship and not a
‘transactional customer-business engagement’

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Powerful stories work.
The proof:
FirstRound, a highly admired venture capital firm creates
high quality content which shares ‘key learnings’.
PayUmoney, the online payments company from India uses
content to help Startups and SMEs get massive visibility and
get their growth challenges discovered by the one’s who can
solve them!

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Meet, Neetzan Zimmerman!
In November 2013, Zimmerman, was
responsible for more traffic to Gawker
than all of the rest 20 writers combined.
Source: https://medium.com/@morganb/what-does-this-guy-know-about-virality-that-no-one-else-does-
955e1efc17f9

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Now you know what to do
with your Emails + Blogs!
But what’s the real key here?

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Language is the key.
Look around, everyone’s looking to create a door for
opportunities to knock.
Help them create those doors in your language. Your
positive communication will create a VIRAL impact.
The hack: ask this question from everyone you meet:
how can I help you?

21. #GrowChennai @PayUmoneyIGD
Audience Segmenting
Build a clear ‘archetype’ of your audience.
1. Age
2. Income group
3. Geographical location
4. Needs
5. Choices
6. Is he/ she married?
And every possible piece of information which helps you
‘know the person personally’.

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Build a passion community!
Its magical!
There’s nothing more powerful than getting like minded
people together around a certain context.
Its does NOT have to be about your venture at all!

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$5.5K worth of
word spread
for $0

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Imagination and the ‘what if’
landing page
Imagine if every startup attending this Startup Growth
Masterclass today, looking to raise money, gets discovered
on “PayUmoney India Growth Drivers” platform?
Imagination is a powerful tool to engage humans. The
critical caveat is: be honest. Don’t sell.
Create a world where this “imaginative solution”
that you propose, solves the real world problem
and see the receivers reaction.

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Build mindshare between the
problem and ‘you’
You can’t control when people see great opportunities. But
you can make sure that they think of you first.
At an idea stage, ensure that you meet people like a
problem solver. They must appreciate your value in their
life.

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Top Takeaways:
1. Start building content even when you are at an idea
stage
2. Ask: how can I help you?
3. With your language: build a door of opportunity for
everyone around
4. Build mindshare between the problem and ‘you’

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How do you grow at the
MVP stage?
1. Build an MEP instead : the minimum
experiential product!
2. Figure out the top 3 distribution channels –
track them as funnels
3. Emails are magical : if done right!!

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When you are invited to be part of
something far bigger than your
normal life,
you buy into the much
bigger vision, satiating
your-self.
*BTW, your users are like you!

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Build an MEP, not a MVP:
Build a personal
entertainment system in
under $50.
This should make your customers “imagine” and “experience” your
solution and believe that they will pay you for the future of personal
entertainment.

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A product will not grow by
itself. It needs distribution.
Figure out the top 3 distribution channels and treat them
like funnels.
Across these funnels track the following:
1. Customer acquisition cost
2. Retention rate & what does it take to increase it?
3. Are users inspired at this stage to spread the word?
Revenue matters but is NOT the top priority at this stage.

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Here’s what you must track
across all channels/ funnels
(things to measure and improve upon)
1. Acquisition
2. Activation
3. Retention
4. Referral
5. Revenue
6. Churn

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Ask users:
What are the 2 technologies/ products
that you find easiest to use?
This is how PayUmoney SMS invoice,
Email Invoice and the Button came into
existence!
Every SME wants to adopt technology of which they
already know: Email and SMS.
All we did, was build over these existing tech layers!

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1. Email Invoice
2. SMS Invoice
3. PayUmoney Button

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How Watsi got people to
donate with a wildly
successful Email campaign?
What we ended up with was an email that reads like a real-
life introduction to a person, like, ‘This is Chanda. He’s a 14-
year-old student in Cambodia who needs surgery to use his
hands again after severe burns, and is really happy to
connect with you to get the treatment he needs,’”
Source: http://firstround.com/review/what-startups-can-learn-from-watsis-
wildly-successful-email-campaign/

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Top Takeaways:
1. Build an MEP and NOT an MVP
2. At the MEP stage, be ready with the top 3 most easy to
execute and build distribution channels. Remember
what’s critical here is SCALE.
3. Emails are very valuable at this stage. Emotions work
magic.

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How do you grow once the
product/ service is LIVE?
1. Be awesome and Be Trustworthy
Build on human nature!
2. Be Discoverable
3. Hack FREE PR!
4. Don’t be where your customers most expect
you to be!

39. #GrowChennai @PayUmoneyIGD
How @PayUmoney’s Buyer
Protection Guarantee
increased transaction
volumes for SMEs?
Its not about a ‘transaction’. Its about ‘how safely can I
transact’, ‘what will happen if the transaction gets stuck
somewhere’, ‘who will protect my rights as a consumer’?
The BPG is the simplest and the most powerful answer for
small businesses and it worked!

40. #GrowChennai @PayUmoneyIGD
Medium does it beautifully well!
If I liked Oguz’s story that I read it till the
end, it pulls me to read more of him. And
that’s perfectly how it should be!

41. #GrowChennai @PayUmoneyIGD
The Karma Hotspot!
Every time a
new user finds
your hotspot
and logs onto it,
you’re rewarded
with 100
megabytes of
extra data

42. #GrowChennai @PayUmoneyIGD
Google: usage of calendar!
Logic: expecting a user to add events to a Google
calendar was not always the most optimal
fashion of making every Gmail user actively use
Google Calendar.
Google added ‘add to calendar’ call to action within your
Email. So now when you get an Email like “call tomorrow”
Google automatically asks if you would like to add it to your
Google calendar!

43. #GrowChennai @PayUmoneyIGD
But how do you build
distribution as part of your
product?
1. Define your product’s core value, the key atomic unit. Eg:
1. Medium: post
2. Dropbox: file
3. Twitter: tweet
4. Instagram: picture
Linkedin uses this beautifully well when it suggests
“Who’s viewed your profile”.

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image via source 6
Airbnb photography program was launched in 2010. Hosts
could schedule a professional photographer. The service
became an instant hit
Source: TC

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How to get great PR, without
spending a bomb!!
HARO/ HASO: most startups keep looking for PR. The trick
to get great PR is to add value to a story which a reporter is
doing.
Use HARO/ HASO lists to add value to stories that journalists
around the world are doing. You might get published in the
Huffington World tomorrow!

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Be where your customer are.
BUT, don’t be where they
most expect you to be!
*Tissue papers by hike app!
*Flipkart and Citibank ATMs (as seen in June May 2015 at a
Citibank ATM)

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Retention is always more
important
Hashtaag.com : pushing notifications to facebook increased
daily active user base by 70% compared to the previous
month.
*The venture is now closed

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What internal factors affect
growth?
1. Team
2. Common sense!

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Team!

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Just ensure, no BS!
1. Keep it very very lean
1. Let go of the one’s who don’t match up to the
speed of growth that the venture requires.

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Who should look after
growth in your team?
Everyone in your team must have understanding of these
analytics and every week everyone must know how the
market is growing!
Hire the head of growth after the first 1000 users

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The biggest growth hack:
Common sense!
You could be data driven and that’s exactly where the
fault lines lie. In early days of growth data is always to
be inspired by NOT be driven by.

53. #GrowChennai @PayUmoneyIGD
Paritosh Sharma
Head Channel Partnerships
PayUmoney, PayUbiz
Email: paritosh.sharma@payu.in
Thanks!