Quick Insights: How Jar App🪙Scaled 5 Mn+ Users With Product-Led Growth

What comes to your mind when you hear the word “Jar?”

I remember my childhood when I used to save my pocket money into a Jar shaped Piggy bank 😃

My father used to give me Re. 1, 5, and 10 so I save and spend on stuff I wanted to get on my next birthday.

This nostalgic experience taught me the importance of saving small sums and using them whenever required.

And that’s what the Jar app is trying to help Indians: Making it easier to build saving habits using Digital Gold.

Now, you may ask Why they choose Gold over MF and Stock Market? Here are some pointers:

• Cultural significance: Gold is more than an investment. It is a culturally significant metal for Indians. Passing Gold from one generation to another helps people save money on Gold, avoiding ever-rising gold prices in India.

• Status Symbol: Gold is considered a status symbol in India, dating back to the rule of kings, continuing to the British and independent India.

• The more gold one has, the more power one possesses, indicating their ability to purchase gold despite rising gold rates.

• Ease of Liquidity: Gold offers easy liquidity & can always be used to generate cash during financial difficulties.

Since the majority of Indians don’t clearly understand financial instruments such as Stock Market and Mutual funds, Jar is making gold accessible on a large scale.

The app allows you to buy Gold in small sachets for a fraction of the cost of physical gold, which requires large purchases at a Jeweller.

You don’t have to pay any making costs while buying a piece of any digital gold from any portal. As a result, your total investment cost is reduced.

I spoke to around 6 Jar app users and asked them a few questions to understand their motivation behind using the app & levers that help the Jar app to grow quickly.

Let’s go through 4 levers that are primarily responsible for Jar’s product-led growth👇

1. Less user friction and quick onboarding

KYC Verification remains a “friction” for Indian fintech products. The verification process can prompt drop-offs when a user gets impatient waiting idly to be verified.

But Jar app reduces this friction by eliminating the KYC verification during onboarding. A user can start his investing journey on Jar within seconds by just single OPT Signup.

But does that mean the Jar app will ask for KYC verification?

Nope!

According to their website, it’s mandatory to do KYC verification on Jar if:

• You have bought gold for more than 30 grams of INR 1.5 Lakhs.

• You want to sell gold or withdraw your money.

• You want to transfer Jar Winnings to purchase gold.

You want to get gold delivered to your doorstep

Jar cleverly designed to users’ journey on its app enhancing the new user’s experience.

2. Building daily saving habits using Automatic deduction

Automatic savings can cure your forgetful habits of stashing money away for the tough days by automatically doing that as you are spending.

Jar app is programmed to make two types of auto-investment:

• It uses SMS to detect each spend of yours and rounds -off to the nearest whole number, investing away the “change” in Digital Gold.

• Or Users can also set a fixed amount to be deducted with the auto-pay feature and invested in digital Gold every day.

During the research calls, I noticed people opting for the second feature i.e Auto Pay an X amount because investing a “change” of Rs. 3, 4, or 5 doesn’t make any difference, so it's better to invest Rs.100 daily to make the compounding work.

For every successful transaction, the user wins 5 spins on the Wheel and gets a chance to win an exciting variable reward in the form of cashback.

These variable rewards seem to keep the brain occupied, removing distractions and providing an opportunity to plant the seeds of new habits within users.

That’s why the user craves more spins to search for the next reward, never satisfied.

3. Referrals and free gold tactic

Primarily, Referrals and word of mouth are driving user acquisition for the Jar app.

More than half of the users I talked to were acquired by unique referral links shared by their family or friends. Even, I too was getting to know about Jar using a Referral link sent to me.

Using a referral program allows Jar to allay any doubts new users might have, by routing them through friends they already trust.

But what makes the Jar referral program unique? Let’s understand…

Jar wisely chooses to incentivize referrals with cash that could be easily used to make the first transaction i.e Buy a piece of gold, on its platform.

This also activates new users to experience their first “Aha” moment without much friction. Smart move!

It is interesting to note the placement of Referral CTA inside the product.

Many products push their referral program the moment when a new user signs up for your product.

But I think it’s optimal to ask for referrals from your users once they’ve experienced the “core value” of the product.

And that’s what the Jar did.

Jar saves the referral for the best moment: Post the “spin the wheel” screen. At that moment, the user is already craving more rewards, So it’s easier for them to take one more step to collect extra Rewards (and spins).

Source

4. Strategic Partnerships

Well-crafted partnerships can be outstanding tools for acquisition.

Just quick research me helped to know that Jar has collaborated with several folks

who were building communities around the same TG Jar was catering!

For example, Stratzy offers Free Gold worth Rs 200 to its users on the Jar app.

When someone refers Stratzy…both referrer and referee get some coins that could be redeemed to win digital gold rewards on the Jar app.

I’m just assuming, but these kinds of partnerships also help Jar get access to customer data used for several purposes (such as running targeted marketing campaigns based on how much they invest).

One last thing…

If you see the journey of the product…it’s basically creating a loop for users that just keeps on continuing.

Here’s a demonstration of that 👇

That’s all on Jar!

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