Customisation key for products aimed at female consumers, say panellists at News Corp VCCircle summit

Customisation, functionality and relevance are critical for success of products targeted largely at female consumers, said panellists at News Corp VCCircle Mobile Forum 2016.

"For a product to have an impact, it should be relevant. For example, if someone is getting married, it makes sense to push content related to booking closer to the chosen dates, rather than before," said Sanna Vohra, co-founder of The Wedding Brigade, while participating in a discussion on 'Women and Mobile:

Aligning consumer behaviour with monetisation strategies' at the summit held at The Westin, Gurgaon on Thursday.

"From our experience, stereotypes for women do not hold true anymore. There is no one-size-fits-all, which is the new challenge for any consumer facing business," said Suchita Salwan, founder and CEO of Little Black Book, adding firms running content-based businesses should also experiment with innovative formats for presentation.

Another key factor is segmentation. "At TrulyMadly, we realise that women of different age groups would come to the app for different needs—while the young girls would come for just meeting others, women over 25 will be looking at a more serious engagement," said TrulyMadly founder Sachin Bhatia.

Giving an example of product customisation, Bhatia explained how TrulyMadly is piloted a chat-based relationship advice feature, as it realised that women were more comfortable in sharing content related to relationships, rather than recommending the app on social media.

"Mobile is the most efficient way to communicate, and providing women, especially underprivileged women, with information translates to empowering the entire family," said Aparna Hegde, founder of Armman India.

"Women are driving a lot of decision-making these days, for themselves as well as their communities. So it is an important demographic to target," said Salwan.

"Women try our products at third-party marketplaces, and then come back to us for higher priced products. This is because we are solving an important need for them," said Nidhi Agarwal, founder and CEO of KAARYAH, explaining how a company can build its brand loyalty through relevant products and customer experience.

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