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Imagine a world where building a consumer internet business is like assembling a Lego set – accessible components readily available, snapping together to form something exciting and new. The rise of open-source software and hosted pay-as-you-go business solutions have brought us closer to that reality. However, in the high-stakes game of consumer internet, success isn’t just about having the building blocks, it’s about building them strong enough to handle a tidal wave of users.

At PhonePe, we’ve always believed in strategic, long-term thinking. This philosophy has led us to create not just a consumer payments app, but a robust ecosystem of central SaaS tools. These platforms have become the backbone of our growth, allowing us to leverage the repository of solutions built to rapidly launch newer consumer apps like Pincode, Share.Market, and Indus Appstore.

Genesis of central platforms and the journey so far

From very early days, our goal was to solve a wide range of problems across a host of domains like payments, credit, and wealth management. While each of these domains presented deep functional complexities, we recognised a common thread: the need for scalable and flexible solutions that can be applied across multiple products and services. This realization paved the way for our decision to build an array of tools that would be reused across a variety of these domains.

As we set out on this journey, we identified the typical journey of setting up and running a software business across various domains. Below is a set of problems we realized would find repeatability and hence any software we built for these problem areas would see reusability when we spawned off new businesses/apps:

Here are a few solutions we have built in order to drive key customer problems as part of

Onboarding Customers

• A centralized platform that solves for identification, authentication and lifecycle management of all the users through a plug-and-play SDK.
• A comprehensive document verification tool with the ability to set up flexible user journeys to solve for KYC needs in various financial services products

Setting up digital stores

• A large searchable catalog to document details of products and services we are selling.
• A layouting framework to build flexible app/web pages for easier discovery by customers.

Promoting products/services

• An intelligent CRM system to ensure we are speaking with customers topically at the right moments, both on and off app.
• A topical recommendation suite to help users find what they need.

Processing Transactions

• A scalable checkout and transaction processing system that ensures transactions are initiated smoothly.
• A transaction store that provides visibility to various stakeholders on various stages of a transaction.

Monetizing app traffic

• A fully scalable and tenanted ad server that helps apps build incremental revenue models using advertising.

Contextual Support

• Digital and Voice support channels that are highly automated to help customers resolve majority of their issues in a self-serve manner thereby scaling customer support, reducing costs, and reserving human support for critical moments.
• A ticketing/CRM system that integrates with support channels to record, and track customer issues with the ability to resolve majority of them in an automated and timebound manner to help in high operational efficiency.
• A knowledge management system that is a centralized repository of help articles and SOPs that can be manifested externally to customers, as well as internally for agents to refer to while resolving support issues.
• Workforce management and Agent-QA tools, to efficiently manage agent schedules, and review customer-agent interactions to ensure quality support and high levels of customer satisfaction.
• A dispute and arbitration system for transactions that need closure with various parties.

Managing books and money flows

• A flexible pricing engine to accommodate various kinds of pricing scenarios across the ecosystem.
• A consistent collections and payouts module to manage money flows seamlessly across various parties.
• A multiparty reconciliation platform to drive high confidence in the completeness and accuracy of information needed for book closure.

Ensuring security product flows for customers

• Risk Operating Platform that combines models and algorithms with high precision and recall to safeguard customers.
• Continuously monitor customer and merchant behavior to identify and mitigate potential threats in real-time.

Powering horizontal capabilities

Our core platforms provide foundational capabilities that are essential to all products and businesses within the PhonePe Group.

We’ve strategically invested in building dozens of in-house SaaS platforms, such as the “Login using PhonePe” service that powers user authentication and profile management across our group apps. These mature, ready-to-deploy plug-ins enable us to launch new products and applications much faster than others, reducing costs and time to market.

Many of our SaaS capabilities have the potential to be externalized for the market. For example, “Guardian by PhonePe”, our in-house risk and fraud detection platform, conducts over 40 crore evaluations daily and is now being offered as a licensed product to global markets.

Key principles of platform building

1. Ease of use: Our platforms are designed to be intuitive and user-friendly, with minimal setup requirements and straightforward workflows. Our recently launched ecommerce app, Pincode, for example demonstrates this principle in action. By leveraging our ecosystem of services, Pincode was able to rapidly implement complex features without building them from scratch, allowing us to launch the app to the market at a faster rate.
2. Cost effectiveness: We prioritize efficiency and optimization to keep operational costs low, ensuring that our platforms are a valuable investment for businesses of all sizes. All our consumer apps exemplify this by utilizing multiple PhonePe services – from user management to growth solutions – without the need to develop these capabilities internally.
3. Flexibility and customization: Our platforms offer a high degree of customization, allowing businesses to tailor them to their specific needs and integrate them seamlessly into their existing infrastructure. The Pincode app showcases this flexibility through our growth solutions, which enable:

• Rapid experimentation with different offer constructs
• Customized offer strategies for new versus repeat users
• Geographical targeting of promotions
• Quick implementation of referral programs

A platform ecosystem in action: Pincode’s journey

Pincode’s development illustrates the power of our platform approach. From day one, the app leveraged multiple PhonePe services:

• User service: Handling user management, login, and creation
• Atlas: Providing location services
• Growth solutions: Managing cashback and discounting
• CRM services: Enabling precise user targeting
• FRA (Fraud Risk Assessment): Detecting offer abuse
• Primus: Facilitating SFTP-based merchant inventory integration

The platform’s maturity allowed Pincode to:

• Easily deploy different growth strategies to new users versus repeat users, or switch it to a logic on user geographies depending on the need of the hour.
• Implement referral mechanisms very quickly, with users being able spread the word and get their friends and family to place orders.
• Ensure robust offer disbursement, even during system downtime which was necessary for ticket resolution flows.

Most importantly, these platform services allowed Pincode to focus on its core business logic while leveraging battle-tested, scalable solutions for critical backend functionalities while the nature of business strengthened from one change to the next.

Building a comprehensive platform ecosystem

To create a truly valuable ecosystem, we focus on three key areas:

1. Single-stop solutions: We provide a comprehensive suite of tools and services to address the diverse needs of various stakeholders within a business. This includes solutions for finance, marketing, and other key functions.

Indus Appstore exemplifies the depth of our platform solutions, leveraging multiple sophisticated services across its ecosystem:

• Developer verification powered by advanced KYC modules.
• Comprehensive login services for both developer and consumer platforms with the highest levels of security and safety.
• Robust CRM capabilities to reach out to users and developers of Indus Appstore in an efficient and automated fashion.
• Advanced data warehousing and analytics infrastructure.

By providing such comprehensive, ready-to-deploy services, we enable businesses like Indus Appstore to focus on their core value proposition rather than building complex backend infrastructure from scratch. Each platform service is designed with multiple layers of functionality, allowing businesses to tap into deep, enterprise-grade capabilities with minimal setup and customization.

1. Depth of solutions: Our platforms offer a deep level of functionality, eliminating the need for extensive customization. This ensures that businesses can benefit from our solutions out of the box. For instance, PhonePe Verified, integrated by Share.Market, Pincode and Indus Appstore, exemplifies this approach by offering a complete onboarding and KYC solution that integrates seamlessly with our analytics and location services, providing businesses with everything they need to manage customer verification and compliance.
2. Modularity and flexibility: We design our platforms to be modular and adaptable, allowing businesses to choose individual components or opt for a complete solution based on their requirements. This is demonstrated in how Share.Market leverages specific components of our ecosystem – from PhonePe Verified for onboarding to Atlas for location-based services – while maintaining the flexibility to customize each component to their specific needs.

Real-World Impact: Share.Market Case Study

To illustrate how these principles come together in practice, let’s look at how Share.Market leverages our platform ecosystem. By utilizing PhonePe Verified, Share.Market was able to:

• Rapidly implement a compliant KYC process without building it from scratch.
• Gain valuable marketing insights through our central analytics and eventing platform.
• Meet regulatory requirements efficiently using Atlas, our location service.
• Save significant engineering bandwidth to focus on their core business logic.

This integration showcases how our platform components work together as a cohesive system while remaining flexible enough to adapt to specific business needs.

Our discovery process

To ensure that our platforms meet the evolving needs of our customers, we employ a two-pronged discovery process:

• Functional discovery: We conduct in-depth research into domains by working closely with the business, operations, and finance counterparts of the vertical businesses we support to identify key pain points and opportunities.
• Customer-side discovery: We collaborate closely with our customers’ product and technology teams to gain insights into their specific challenges and requirements.

By combining these approaches, we can continuously refine our platforms and ensure that they remain relevant and valuable to our customers.

Our platform-based approach has proven to be a strategic advantage for PhonePe, enabling us to rapidly scale and launch new products. By focusing on ease of use, cost-effectiveness, and flexibility, we’ve created a powerful ecosystem that empowers businesses to innovate and succeed.

Rahul Chari is the Co-founder and CTO of PhonePe.

(Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of YourStory.)