There are two types of consumer facing businesses in this world –

a) Those who have XXX eyeballs and

b) Those  who are trying to get there.

If you are in category b), your product needs to have very clearly communicated differentiators to start generating interest. This is where, I suspect, most startups trip up.  Being first to market with something good and useful is not easy these days, given the noise levels. Being able to communicate these to your audience and striking a chord is even more difficult.

Infact, a lot of times, what you imagine as the USP of the product and what customers actually love about your product could be entirely different things. Sounds strange , isn’t it?

One of our team members personally speaks to many customers every week to get a sense of how we are doing. A couple of conversations last week brought home the point that folks absolutely love the fact that they can manage multiple mobile numbers from the same account. A gentleman from Pune was actually “grateful” that he could recharge his relatives’ West Bengal number and his wife’s Pune number from his MobiKwik account.

And to imagine , we had almost not implemented this feature because we thought its not that “important”. Now we are waking up to actually advertising this feature properly to first time customers.

The power of personalised and customer feedback is astounding. It can tell you more about your “PULL” factor than any market research or survey or VC guru.