Tata Neu has rolled out a new version of its app to make it more appealing to the users. The new version has several features like anonymous browsing, personalised navigation, simplified payment system, and a ledger system for loyalty points, etc.
“This is a marked improvement on the earlier version,” says Sunil Padmanabh, former research director at Gartner and digital strategist. “But there are few things that are missing in the app. For instance, it didn’t recognise me when I logged in and made some transactions. Seems the app doesn’t recognise my past relationship with the group. I am a customer of Croma, Titan and Tata Motors. The app should have known my preferences and taken me to the pages concerned,” he said.
Padmanabh said that the new version of the app has covered many functionalities and the landing page has also been made significantly attractive in terms of colour and design.
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While a lot of categories have been added, a significant one is the beauty as category from BigBasket that has been added. Smaller additions like a more detailed “My Order” section, a ledger system for NeuPass to clearly show NeuCoins earned and spent, have also been added.
Tata Neu is also leveraging content for commerce. There is a section named “Stories” that hosts content on topics ranging across categories such as travel, food, fashion and consumer technology. There are shopping links embedded in the content, which allows users to click and make direct purchases. For example, when a user reads a biryani recipe that he / she likes, and clicks on the shopping link, all the relevant ingredients of the biryani will be added to the user’s shopping cart.
There are also features like scan and pay, UPI, loans, insurance, bill payments and others.
According to a source in the know, Tata Digital is also planning to introduce international merchant payments soon.
Tata Neu has over 50 million neu pass users.
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The app has also simplified the process of payments to billers – electricity, mobile bills, etc. One can select all his / her bills and make all the payments in one go – this completely takes away the hassle of making individual bill payments like on other apps.
However, for some analysts, the positioning of the app is not very clear. Retail and consumer business analyst, and former senior analyst at Forrester, Satish Meena, said, “Tata Neu’s positioning is not clear to customers as to why they should come to it. One goes to Amazon for faster delivery, to Flipkart for variety and fashion, and Urban Ladder for furniture. That kind of positioning is not there for Tata Neu. That’s the reason I believe the number of downloads hasn’t increased,” he said.
