Do Super Apps Work? The Opportunities and Complexities of Building at Scale

Participants:

• Neehar Venugopal (Former SVP, Paytm; CTO, Insider.in)
• Prateek Mehta (Founding Partner, South Park Commons India)

Leverage major events and trends to scale

• Super apps thrive by aligning with cultural moments and market shifts. For instance, during the pandemic, platforms used existing APIs to launch tools like vaccination booking, addressing immediate user needs and increasing engagement.
• Similarly, events like demonetization highlighted the importance of agility. Apps that adapted quickly through strategic advertising and seamless user experiences captured significant market share.
• The ability to respond to cultural zeitgeists and world events ensures continued relevance and growth.

Experimentation is vital for building at scale

• Experimentation is essential to refine features and enhance user satisfaction. Running thousands of weekly experiments allows super apps to learn rapidly and adapt to diverse user behaviors.
• Even small-scale tests can yield transformative insights that contribute to the app’s scalability and user retention.

Can AI redefine user interactions within a super app?

• While AI excels in discovery workflows, replacing habit-based interactions with AI-driven processes can face resistance.
• Successful super apps balance AI innovation with existing user habits to maintain trust and usability, especially in transactional workflows.

How do super apps attract and retain top talent?

• Providing meaningful challenges and rapid impact opportunities is key. For example, enabling new hires to contribute to widely used features within weeks fosters motivation and a sense of achievement.