Gaming+: some games are companies but all companies need to up their game

Rajinder Balaraman
MANAGING DIRECTOR
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In this episode, we explore the concept of “gamification” and the impact it has on user growth & retention at the early stages, tune in to know more.

Rajinder:

Hi and welcome to Matrix Moments. Avnish, it’s great to do this with you again. Today’s podcast is titled Gaming+ with an added footnote to founders that some games are companies but all companies need to up their game!

I thought that was a very creative title, Avnish, and it’s a very unusual topic especially for someone of your vintage/age haha, but it also sounds very similar to this older podcast that I’d heard which is “every company will be a fin tech company one day.“

Avnish:

Yeah.

Rajinder:

So what gives and what got you excited about doing a podcast on this topic?

Avnish:

So great to be back. Actually you and I have been doing this, Salonie has been helping us with all of this. I think now we’re going to the deep end. First all out on a limb and I would acknowledge the founders who keep sending positive feedback including the latest one was Naveen Tiwari, which kind of makes one want to take more risk.

The topic is inspired at two levels by a16z. I have the utmost respect for them and Andrew Chen in particular I follow and read almost everything he does. So it is that every company is a fin tech somewhere embedded finance, right.

And then we read Social Plus and this idea was somewhere coming in my mind and we’ll talk about it, that’s where it came from. That really every company needs to have an embedded game. And I think it has gotten me really excited because it’s also a topic I knew nothing about and which will show up as we talk but also because it is I think a little bit new there is this content is not really out there I think we’ll over index on examples.

I think you and I are doing two today between this and Profit Pools we’ll over index on examples. I’ll tell you the trigger and it’s not in as logical an order but part of it was obviously Covid. You know people started playing on House Party, people started playing games across Zoom, I have played poker on Zoom. So Zoom is on and I’m playing poker separately on an app.

Then there was a deep dive you and I did Social Commerce, Commerce N.O together for which I was reading up on PDD and there used to be this concept of gamification for demand aggregation because PDD is a group buying concept and as we go through this, you’ll realize all of these are gamification concepts. Group buying is a gamification concept. So there was that trigger. And then the ultimate trigger has been my kids, it’s actually parenting because they believe I’m a very bad investor because all the products they use we have not invested in so always trying to get them to use our consumer products and this and that and then I wondered whether are you pounding a square peg in a round hole or should it be the other way round.

So I think the fact that they’re on games, the only thing I don’t have to motivate them for is Roblox, lately Among Us, they’re on Discord. Suddenly because of this Covid time where screen time was allowed a bit more it just became they were just obsessed.

So that was the trigger, then there was this Bank of America report which actually really hit me which was around Gen Z and I think we’re missing a trick there. And then you and I spoke about video. When you bring this altogether I think there is something big happening around us not among us but around us or maybe among us, which I don’t think we’re understanding that there is the why which we just discussed about gaming and it becoming everybody knowing about gaming and gaming kind of pervading our lives. And then the why now, I don’t know if you watch that documentary Social Dilemma which talked about – it looks like if we don’t know about gaming we’re the ones being played. And a lot of those triggers that they show in that movie are actually gamification. So I think that all came together it became a topic of interest and then asked for you guys to help with the research and then dove deep into it.

Rajinder:

No, I think Covid clearly has been a trigger in multiple industries and I think you’ve spoken about how video and gaming have both exploded but why now because in some ways those behaviors kind of existed before as well, it’s not necessarily just Covid linked.

Avnish:

Yeah. So some of it is coming together now though, right, and I have this view in general about Maslow’s Hierarchy which defines human behavior applies across geographies and across people. It’s just sometimes we’ll say Indians are different from Chinese, we’re different from Americans, we’re not. Just our buying power and economic stage is different. What is the first spend people start doing as they become more wealthy?

Rajinder:

You want to look better.

Avnish:

Okay. What is the second one, what is the third? And you skipped food which is fine because that is a necessary spend- for people who don’t know Rajinder is our foodie of the house who has three lunches at different times? haha

It’s entertainment, it’s travel and I think gaming kind of brings into it. So like I said all of this is coming together. Video, we spoke about in Commerce N.0 that people want Social Plus from a16z talks about entertainment plus shopping. So I think the why now really is all of these things coming together, it’s not necessary and like if you just look at the market cap of Roblox it’s gone from 7 billion to 30 billion in the last four months.

Discord I think is at 16 billion, I mean these things are exploding. So I don’t know if there’s a real buy now but I do know that there’s a lot happening and this was more stop, step back, think and put something around it.

Rajinder:

So I’ll start with the basics then, so again all of us have grown up on games and all of us relate to it at some level but what really is gamification like again we’ve heard of it in the context of social apps, the Social Dilemma I think brought it out well. But when you’re talking about Gaming+ it seems like you’re talking about something broader, is it about game design and how to apply those learnings to different industries like what’s the framework?

Avnish:

Little bit of that but I would say it’s human psychology more than anything else. And the biggest learning I will talk about this guy, but there’s a guy called Yu-kai Chou, I don’t know if he was at Google or somewhere, he was somewhere, he has done this work; we should be including the links. In fact there is a course that he runs on Udemy on gamification. I just think it’s brilliant, I think companies that are not doing this are missing out but let’s step back, what is this? This is not – the best way to describe it is human focused design, gamification is human focused design because we have certain behaviors intrinsics, extrinsics which if you tap into it can be very powerful.

One definitely that I saw that I like is it’s game design so you mentioned, but dynamics like what happens so there’s design and then what happens within the game, plus behavioral economics, what are the incentive systems and you can talk about things like Robinhood in that context. Motivational psychology, user interface and user experience and believe it or not neurobiology which is the triggers that we get, the emotional triggers. That’s what it is and then you wrap it in technology for a business. So if I had to give the long definition that is what it is but each word in that tells you that this is more powerful than we think it is. And of course ultimately human focus design.

Let’s switch to this Yu-kai’s framework which I really liked, it’s an Octalysis framework which just means eight elements to it, octagon plus analysis ideas. And this is where I think as we go through this hopefully we’ll all wake up with almost a start and say wow, these are elements of gamification. Now I don’t think the companies who have done it actually thought of it like that but I think the companies of the future must think like that, hence every company needs to up their game.

So l number one is as he calls it meaning/largely meaning, like what is the meaning intrinsic motivation. You know, he talks about this Apple’s think different ad, that’s gamification. Apple is making you think that you are – and it talks about if you are this type of person, if you want to be different, Apple’s first 1984 ad where the hammer is thrown at IBM, was that. Now look at Pepsi, what is it selling? Sugared water. Should there be any meaning to it, no. But what was the ad that really took off. “Yeh, dil mange more”. So suddenly you’re adding meaning to it and we’ll come up with some other examples of this.

Then the most simple that we’re used to is accomplishments. These are called PBLs which are leader boards, points, badges, the classic technique which is used a lot.

Very important element- creativity there has to be some creativity in it. If there is no creativity it doesn’t tend to engage you as much. Best example I got and again it’s around you, in Sweden there’s a piano staircase and it has actually become an exercise tool because when you’re walking up and depending on the note the music changes. It actually makes people run up and down in different ways so that they don’t realize they’re exercising because they’re trying to be creative and trying to change the notes.

So there’s that, kids interestingly you ask a kid to learn a periodic table they’re going to probably shoot you. However, if you look at kids cards games lot of them are memory based but because they’re enjoying it they know every damn card. So actually you’ll see now think about this flash cards, periodic table on cards with some game around it suddenly you’ll see kids master periodic tables. This was the third.

Fourth, you have to own it and we’ll give some examples. So personalization on these websites, your avatars, these are very important elements, you have to be invested in it. Very important it will come up often, social influence. We’re all social animals, the first games if you remember that took off were something called MMORPGs, , massively multi player online role playing games. The group buying comes in there and remember that an average person thinks they’re above average. And you can really, really play to that by using social influence well and you’ll – Facebooks, LinkedIns we can see a lot of that.

Scarcity, very important. FOMO, you have to play on FOMO, so Farmvilles a lot of these games they have a scarcity value and we’ll again give examples of that. Unpredictability curiosity. Remember when Pokemon came out. People were walking around randomly all over because of unpredictably. if they knew that with the next move this will happen the interest goes off, something random has to happen. Lots of games, it’s the Forest Gump, you know, life is like a box of chocolate so when you open you don’t know what comes out, chance is critical. And we’ll talk about using this in credit cards, you know, Chase used this in a credit card where you swipe the card and randomly your meal is free. Will you swipe that card more than the other card you have.

Rajinder:

For sure.

Avnish:

Gamification. And finally it’s a negative influence which is loss avoidance. So FarmVille used to do that where you’re mining and stuff like that and you don’t come back at a certain time you will lose. Now I will come to later why that’s not a very good idea of gamification, but that is an example, loss avoidance. So we’ve gone through eight. Just to summarize meaning accomplishment creativity/empowerment, ownership, social influence, scarcity, unpredictability and loss avoidance.

When we go through example you will see how they’re structured differently. So that’s one. I asked my kids since they were the motivation of this, right, I said why do you guys play games? So they said, well, dad, it’s fun. So I said let’s peel that back a little bit more, what does fun really mean and what it means is very interestingly you can do in games but you can’t do in real life. Okay, there is a creativity empowerment, there was definitely accomplishment, you can play against others and win. Beat other people, competition, so stuff like that. So again you’re seeing that a theme will start emerging when you go down this path.

Rajinder:

Teamwork is also something that is --

Avnish:

Teamwork or opposite, right, so – but we’ll come to that because teams are a very core part of sport and sport is a game. So just putting this framework eight, now you can cut this eight in three different ways, intrinsic motivators versus extrinsic and I think it’s extremely important so you speak about intrinsic a lot, what of these eight that we discussed what appealed to you as for a greater good versus a personal good.

Rajinder:

For a greater good definitely I mean social influences.

Avnish:

Social influence, meaning, empowerment, you know, what we would normally call fluffy terms but these are intrinsic versus extrinsic, accomplishments, scarcity value, so mercenary versus missionary. Missionary triggers are much stickier and last longer, Games like FarmVille, why do you have hits and misses? They’re very focused on extrinsic. They’re focused on that scarcity value, all these mercenary kind of things very important thing to remember. Left brain versus right brain, okay, right brain tends to be stickier which then translates into the techniques you use which are black hat-white hat.

White hat is again empowerment, intrinsic, right brain and so this I think is critical because when you analyze the history of gaming and you see some of these things you realize if you look at Discord it’s giving you social influence, it’s giving you probably meaning because it’s all around these communities. It is not as much what did I win today, I think it might be sticky. So I think those are – so now let’s summarize what is gamification, it is what would I – we’ll talk about how we apply but it is essentially wrapping a user’s journey. First of all you’d have to segment your users and then wrapping that journey, journey could be discovery, onboarding engagement and then finally what is required for the businesses. Wrapping these journeys by applying these principles and we’ll try to -- it sounds a little bit too complicated.

Rajinder:

Yeah, I was just going to say that, this esoteric and I’m sure there are multiple examples we can speak of both around us in our portfolio, in personal life. Which ones come to mind first as saying you know what, like that was an experience which was --

Avnish:

You tell me just starting very basic, right, we’ve discussed this framework. We all hear about rewards programs. How much of this framework does it apply?

Rajinder:

Honestly very little if you ask me.

Avnish:

It’s accomplishment some points, badges.

Rajinder:

You know, frankly like beyond a point it’s a way to give cashbacks.

Avnish:

And how the minute you get a better reward wouldn’t you switch.

Rajinder:

Yeah, exactly, it’s just monetary.

Avnish:

So I think it’s very lazy, so I think those are the most basic but those are everywhere, airlines, Starbucks, everything. Next level think about things that are naturally maybe add a little bit more meaning, fitness apps. You’re getting compared to somebody else maybe it creates a little bit more motivation.

Rajinder:

Yeah, and you do it in groups, you know, you and you’re motivating your friend to get fitter, they’re motivating you to get fitter. So, yeah.

Avnish:

Now let’s take the examples from social dilemma type of things, that’s where it starts getting into a little bit of scary territory and we know all that stuff that’s going on with privacy right now. Facebook, let’s contrast Facebook and LinkedIn, so go on the social parameter how are they different. We won’t go through each of these but just as an example.

Rajinder:

I mean fundamentally like the business models are very different.

Avnish:

Yeah. But where is their more intrinsic motivation of influence, that what is your status?

Rajinder:

LinkedIn is for sure much more like it’s --

Avnish:

Facebook is social pressure, LinkedIn in social influence. So if you had to draw this out and hopefully people will read his book, Facebook will show narrow in social influence because it’s actually sometimes a little bit negative. You almost feel like keeping up with the Joneses and --

Rajinder:

Posting holiday pictures online.

Avnish:

Where is empowerment and creativity more between the two?

Rajinder:

Actually it’s a mixed bag. I can see like Facebook for sure because the product lends itself to you know –

Avnish:

Photo albums, showing off wherever you – any time you go to a nice place let’s get a Patel point and put it up. So we can go through each of them, where is unpredictability high versus low.

Rajinder:

I think for me like LinkedIn is perhaps also because I just engage with the product more but you never know when an opportunity business or otherwise will show up.

Avnish:

You could say but I would say it’s fairly predictable because it’s all professionals, whereas Facebook anything can show up on your feed like random stuff can show up on your feed. So we can go through all of them, do either of them give you a lot of meaning.

Rajinder:

I think LinkedIn gives me a little bit more meaning.

Avnish:

Yeah. But it’s not overall very high.

Rajinder:

Not very high.

Avnish:

So how has Facebook been doing in the last few years now I hope this doesn’t get to them.

Rajinder:

I guess the narrative is not that positive.

Avnish:

And how has Instagram been doing?

Rajinder:

For a while much more positive and now–

Avnish:

Because more self expression.

Rajinder:

Yeah.

Avnish:

So apply these frameworks and I think you’ll end up with some – look, this is not about answers, this is about asking the right questions.

This is about thinking through the right questions specifically in the context of your users. Facebook missed two generations, millennials and I guess GenZ after that so probably. Now I think about millennials, we all talk about millennials a lot, we say they’re different. Actually you can apply Octalysis to it -- they want more meaning in everything, they want more empowerment. To some extent accomplishment but accomplishment was much more with the older generations, the baby boomers, we have to do something, we have to win all of that stuff.

Now imagine you’ve a product which spikes on certain dimensions of octalysis and you’re wondering why millennials are not adopting it, therein lies your answer. The spikes they seek are not the spikes you provide.

So let’s take the most mundane example that I thought where it was very interesting. Waze, the traffic app, so it was a user generated traffic app. They created meaning and this is how you can take an absolutely basic product and wrap gamification. They created meaning by saying we are fighting the traffic problem together. Guess what happened, Waze would take you to the wrong location and the user would not get upset, the user would go and spend time fixing that location in that app because it’s user generated because we’re solving the traffic problem together. It is just brilliance at some level in thinking through. That’s how you brought meaning and ownership because you’re putting in the directions for that place and you have meaning because we’re solving it together. In the app there’s a monster that shows up which is the traffic, it doesn’t show red, green like Google but this will show up as a monster, so you’re fighting the monster.

Now the latest one I just did a chat with Prabh of Bewakoof and I’ve taken his permission to talk about it. So Bewakoof is this consumer product, you and I met ten years ago I think, started with T-shirts, now multiple categories. I think he’s applied a ton of gamification. And I told him, I said this sounds like something – so he said, well, I have been reading and I have applied it consciously. For a D2C company and I think a D2C founder should really study this, for a D2C company he has lifetime of I think some 20 million downloads of an app, it’s 83 percent of the sales come through the app. Use Bewakoof positioning to essentially create a community with meaning of people who are irrelevant, “hum toh bewakoof hi hai” for example. That’s a lighthearted fun poking community, 2.5 million MAUs, 25 percent WAUs to MAUs, that’s like a content site.

Rajinder:

That’s content, yeah.

Avnish:

That’s a content site. 83 percent of sales coming through there. Now let me tell you gamification examples. Meaning we talk about Funlite, in the app he would have a color of the day which would just come at 3pm. And it would have sale of products of that color for a limited period of time, now apply the gamification principles - unpredictability, scarcity wrapped into meaning. So I just think it is outstanding what has been done. But it can go to the extreme, Tinder it’s the ultimate gamified app, you don’t know, unpredictability, curiosity, meaning to some extent but again it’s playing a little bit to the black hat stuff but these are all the things.

Rajinder:

No, I think the insights is actually now it’s got into thinking about other industries but before we get there there are actually it sounds like the reason the first generation of apps well not the gaming apps but basic principles of gamification applied to social apps and some others the main reason would have likely been retention and just engagement. Is that the same way to think about the next generation?

Avnish:

For sure. I think engagement for sure, but I think it’s more powerful than that. You know, if you think about Roblox, Among Us, Discord, have you seen an ad for any of them anywhere?

Rajinder:

No.

Avnish:

So I think it’s that. I think it is almost a cultish, gaming people will come to communities but they’ve always been cults. Can you create a cult, I would argue that some companies without applying some of these principles have that cultish appeal as a – The Whole Truth seems to have a cult around it. I’m going to speak to Shashank about this later but I think he can take it. So you have to start with that a little bit but I think it is more than just retention and engagement. Of course, you should measure MOTS, cohorts, how many people are sharing but I think the ultimate one is virality and organic growth and the other big difference which people miss about games versus other types of engagement platforms is the concurrent nature. I haven’t fully figured this out, but I think there is something powerful there that can you take the concurrent element of a game and apply it now. What is PDD, what is group buying?

Rajinder:

You are basically sharing offers with concurrent.

Avnish:

Except it is asynchronous content because you can’t expect all of them there at the same time. But think about it and by the way now as you’re thinking about this you see booking.com it will say so many people are --

Rajinder:

700 people are looking at this at the same time.

Avnish:

We are being gamed all the time. So only one left, scarcity. So just every time kind of applied it becomes a little bit nerdy but it’s a lot of fun.

Rajinder:

Yeah. No the positive examples are very inspiring but the negative examples make you worry-

Avnish:

By the way waiting list, classic, scarcity value. So when you start applying it, it becomes fascinating, I think you can apply it to every business. But let’s take a more kind of little bit more macro view so you have typically whether it is your naturally competitive apps. By the way I could argue personal finance is somewhat naturally competitive, you want to do better than the others.

Or you compete against yourself and but remember this monkey is throwing darts at the stock board versus experts. So there is a easy – certain things lend themselves to gamification very easily, wellness, fitness, personal finance, I could argue education. But if the results, the accomplishment is measured on these PBLs or PLBs whatever they were points, leaderboards, badges, stuff like that --

Rajinder:

Not sustainable.

Avnish:

I think it’s very easy to replicate and I think that’s where most people fall or fail. And maybe that’s where you do full stack like Peloton and stuff like that. But I think it can be beyond that, let’s take an example of credit cards. And we spoke about going through the different stages of a person’s journey and let’s try to be white hat about it. So discovery, what is the most famous ad on MasterCard?

Rajinder:

Actually I remember when I was growing there’s this ad of like basically people showing up and like really parts of the world and --

Avnish:

For everything else there’s MasterCard”” meaning it is trying to appeal to your higher self, classic gamification of discovery. American Express?

Rajinder:

“never leave home without it”

Avnish:

You remember it. These are all appealing to a higher sense. So that’s the discovery. Then the engagement, we had that Chase example, what do you want, you want the person to use it a lot more. Put in unpredictability, these rewards are so predictable. I spend 1000 rupees I’ll get 10 rupees of rewards.

I swipe and it says guess what, it’s free for you. Or you’ve spent the most this month in this category or something like that. I think there is a lot that can be done, just pay that bill, something like that. So I think there are lots of things possible, I will tell you the core idea. I think the core idea is it has to be your product, your community and your currency, you know, stuff like that. I’ll give you bad examples of gamification other than the black hat, I’m not talking about black hat, just applying the principles wrong. When IPL was going on how many companies have you seen advertising on television with some linkage to something in IPL, some contest, go to xyz.com fill in this, if your team wins. How is that in any way related to your – that’s not gamification, that’s random association. So just because IPL is a game and you start some random association with IPL doesn’t mean you have gamified your experience, it has to be your product, your community, what is your engagement, what do you need and can you build a game through that.

Rajinder:

Now I think the community point is interesting and we’ve spoken about it in a previous podcast but I’m trying to think about how it matters here. In some ways I guess communities started off originally with eBay and e-commerce something that you would be very familiar with when you started Baazee I’m sure the community was something which was incredibly important to the company. But as I think about like companies today how does gamification fit with community for the business like I’m thinking through this credit card example and I’m thinking how does community fit with gamification for credit card or frankly for any of the examples we’ve discussed.

Avnish:

Yeah. To me this is a big idea. I think there are communities and there are games which is the tightest community out there. Okay, I don’t know how to get to that answer but it’s team sports.

Rajinder:

Sure.

Avnish:

In sports you have a team or in team sports you have a team. So they’re so – look at the cricket fans in India, so I think the big idea is how do you knit your community together through gamification but not by saying I’m a credit card business but I’ll do it with cricket. I’m a credit card business and I’ll do it through my credit card business. How do I stitch it together, how do you build that level of loyalty around it.

And you know, gamification sounds esoteric, community sounds esoteric. We tell all our businesses to do it, this is the first time that when I was doing it I’m like wow, this is the way to do it. And the way to do it is to stitch it together, stitch the community together by gamifying it, but for that you need to start with the community. Now how do you start with the community, we’ve had a earlier podcast where we have spoken about customer obsession delight. Communities has to start with first people loving your product and this is where I think a lot of our D2C brands have a big edge. But what happens is they stop there, they don’t even realize that it has more. You know, I just did the DaMENSCH board meeting I’m chatting with them, they have ultimate customer feedback, I think it’s a community waiting to be tapped.

So to me it suddenly became in my head at least a scaleable, repeatable flywheel saying delight your customer with the products, delight enough customers with the products.

There is a community forming around them, tap into that community by introducing elements of gamification, that is what will bring them closely together. It could be and we can take examples but it could really be leaderboards, meaning for example in a lot of brands are now “better for you”. That’s a meaning, right, so stitch it together and bring in elements of gamification with all of those eight, see how many of those. And focus more on the intrinsic than the extrinsic with white hat stuff but try to build a community together.

Once you have that community stitched together with the glue of your product you will start getting more feedback on your product. Now the flywheel is turning, you’re getting more feedback on your product, go improve your product and send it back to the community. I think you have the ultimate flywheel and moat, if you imagine this thing is just turning and every time it’s becoming better and better. And then the community is growing larger and larger and they’ll be the ultimate moat and I think it’s the most deterministic way that I’ve thought of in this context. Let’s just step back definitionally for a second, the communities that we know about are Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, they all have different either form factors or core value prop, they’re generally around a social graph or a professional graph or some graph. I’m saying make it your product graph, your business graph. The thing that binds them together is your product, your business whatever and then you stitch it.

Avnish:

You know, coming back to the eBay one just for a second and we’ve spoken, I don’t know if we spoke about Aman of BoAt last time but he calls his community BoAtheads. Now maybe he’s also analyzed all of this the way Prab, but he said what he did was he started hosting events where they would be invited. He started writing personal notes to them accomplishment from the founder you’re getting a note. They started getting extra rewards when they’re buying, this meaning that we’re boAtheads, boAtheads are the sophisticated value conscious high quality audio or whatever you want to describe it as sense of community, so it’s pretty powerful.

Rajinder:

Now I think very exciting. I’m actually going to – I’ve decided that I’m going to throw a googly in now, as I was thinking through different examples I was thinking now which --

Avnish:

I’ve put my papers down so this is truly extempore and not rehearsed and I think I’m going to get in trouble.

Rajinder:

Now so I was thinking I can think of all those examples you were saying fitness, personal finance, like all of those I can somewhere now if I really start thinking I can apply this framework. Then I was thinking how am I ever going to apply these principles to an industry like lending for example. Or how would I apply these learnings to an industry like just not consumer brands but like just traditional commerce kind of models like pick a category like electronics or footwear which I’m just – I’m not able to --

Avnish:

No, but let’s take those examples. Thank you, those are relatively easy I think. Electronics we just had the example of boAtheads. But footwear Allbirds is a community, it has become a cult so – which was the first one you said other than these two?

Rajinder:

Lending.

Avnish:

Microfinance. Joint lending groups, empowerment, we’re trying to improve our life. I think you can and but I think it starts with – I think lending is harder, I think products are easier because with products let’s take Allbird’s as an example I don’t know how much of this they do but they have been a rage because of a cult. Now are they applying, there you go. So therein lies the answer. So it is – I don’t know how much of these other principles they’ve applied but I can tell you that they have a very solid foundation and building block. Is it better for –

Rajinder:

Better for the environment, more comfortable.

Avnish:

There you go. So I could say now with work from home coming and all of that stuff so very easy to build a community around this and then apply all the gamification principles.

Avnish:

And then start getting free shoes as -- each of those could be applicable here. electronics probably still can because I mean look at why we buy Apple products, the gross margins are crazy.

Lending one would have to think a little bit harder. Microfinance is easier. I think lending around expense is harder because it’s black hat, it is more extrinsic. Lending around improving lives which if you look at Five Star, in our portfolio, or OfBusiness I can tell you at eBay we used to do this stuff which is x person’s income has gone from Ola, Uber model. This person’s income has gone from x to y I think if it is income generation and if you ask me based on this I would only do an income supplementation or increasing earnings type of lending business. I wouldn’t start an expense type of lending business if I were to start again because I think this framework applies and when you start realizing that this framework can create an ultimate moat you would probably choose a business where you can apply this framework rather than the other way around, have a business and then say how do I apply it. I would actually it would become my business selection criteria because if you remember we spoke about millennials and what all they want. If I’m starting a business for GenZ or millennials or whoever I’m starting a business for we’ve discussed gamification is human psychology. Ultimately any business there’s a buyer, buyer is a human. If I can cater to their intrinsic motivation and psychology and the drivers I could build a great business. So I would first try to understand that within this framework and say can my business cater to that.

Rajinder:

Super. Avi, thank you, this has been really interesting.

Avnish:

It was actually a lot of fun for me.

Rajinder:

--reading about this topic that this would be a really creative discussion and I think it’s actually surpassed all expectations. So, thank you, excellent, good fun.

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