Tata Neu: game changer or just another kid in the block?

Recently Tata group launched their Super App, Tata Neu amidst a lot of IPL fanfare. From what I have come to experience the app, this app looks like it is meant to be a single home for numerous Tata group’s consumer brands and aims to connect the dots for an otherwise fickle Indian customer.

Will this turn the tide in Tata’s favour or will it meet the fate of other Super Apps before it?

Let’s try to understand this from the First Time User experience of me as Neu’s user.

Neu App: Home screen

I think the App has a good overall experience and UI design. It’s not too cluttered and still somehow manages to hold the numerous categories and offers together. And yes, since the App is recently launched and hence in the true spirit of an MVP, it does have some bugs and feature corrections for the PMs to look after.

Let’s get into a bit of specifics now.

1. Onboarding: This is the screen where I am required to enter the OTP and it has an incorrect welcome message for a first time user. It greets me by saying Nice to see you again, when I am logging in for the very first time.

2. Profile section : The profile section is standard but a thing worth mentioning is that there is an option to easily change communication preferences here. This will help both the users opt out/in from relevant communications and also make it easy for Neu to store this data.

Profile section

3. NeuPass: NeuPass may well be the reason this app may succeed or fail. The proposition that Neu offers is that customers can earn NeuCoins on transactions on the app (other than for Starbucks, Tata Play and bill payments), and then redeem it on anything else on the app.

While this is clever, Neu should have awarded me some NeuCoins after Sign up. This may have encouraged me to do the first transaction on Neu and get the game rolling.

The good thing is that this reward program is not rewarding bill payments from day 1 and hence not playing the game some of its predecessors did.

4. Categories: The categories have the same journeys as the individual brands they endorse. This is understandable.

Jakob’s Law of UX states that users who spend a lot of time on other sites expect your site to work the same way as those.

But there are still some bugs which need to be fixed before the app starts getting a lot of visitors.

Like if I am logged into Neu, I should either automatically login to 1mg or it should be a 1-click process asking me if i want to continue using the same mobile number to login or change it.

5. Tata Pay: Tata has entered the digital payments space with Tata Pay. Users can pay bills, transfer money via UPI, add cards etc. What remains to be seen is that in a space already overcrowded with players like Google Pay, PhonePe, Paytm etc. what will make users switch or new users to adopt?

What are the challenges ahead for Tata Neu?

The biggest challenge may well be the fact that Neu does not have anything exclusive on the App. All Tata brands on Neu have their own Apps/ websites. So what is the proposition for a user to use Neu and not use them? Reward coins may pull them for a while but Rewards are not a product by themselves. If the financial upside of the Reward coins is not substantial, users may not come back to use them. But if it is indeed substantial, does the unit economics make sense at an aggregate level? I mean that if a majority of Neu’s user base consists of customers who would have shopped on the individual Tata brands anyways but are now doing on Neu to maximise savings, then isn’t it a loss making proposition for the Tata group?

So, I think the following metrics may prove to be important for Neu’s success:

1. Number of New (to Tata group) customers
2. Retention rate of the customer cohort 1. above
3. Cross sell within Neu categories
4. Margins (after paying for Rewards and Offers)

So, it remains to be seen how Indian customers will react to and adopt the App.

The trust of the Tata group may play a big factor as well.

And at a strategic level, this project may be important to continue Tata group’s foray into digital product solutions which will have leverage and cash flows in the future.

So, lets wait and watch :)

Note: The views expressed above are purely personal views of the author as a new user of the app and do not in anyway aim to endorse/ criticise any app or brand.