With a variety of hooks to lure in and retain customers, Tata Group’s much touted ‘super app’ presents an interesting opportunity for customers and the conglomerate.
Launched by the company’s digital arm in early April, the Tata Neu app offers access to major brands like BigBasket, 1mg, Tata CLiQ, Croma, IHCL hotels, UPI payment, and also provides users the ability to book flight tickets.
The “super app” offers discounts, often through its NeuPass and NeuCoins. NeuPass lets customers get items delivered for free, and NeuCoins gives them access to a reward-based point system.
During its launch a month an half ago, the app created quite a buzz. It currently has over 5 million downloads on Google Play Store and ranks 9 in the shopping category on iOS.
But the high downloads number don’t tell the full story. Ratings on respective app stores paint a different story, but more of that later.
A ‘super app’?
First let’s look at what a ‘super app’ means and where Tata Neu fits in that universe.
Super apps are not a new phenomenon, though their popularity and ability to capture the fancy of users has been somewhat difficult in the Indian market.
WeChat, a popular super app used in China, started off as a messaging app and later allowed customers to make payments, find a cab, shop, and order food. This super app is yet to emerge with a strong presence in the Indian market.
But, there is a similar Indian app. Paytm became one such go to app with its rewards, payments and mall for shopping features. And the all-in-one application did not have a successful ride in the country.
Tata Neu, like other super app contenders, offers several services, but they are limited to Tata Group’s brands. The app does bring to users the ability to purchase onions while booking flight tickets at the same time, but again the big miss is the lack of options to choose the provider of the services or the products.
So, If you are looking for an app that lets you shop, book tickets, order food or make payments at a non-Tata brand, you will have to wait a little longer. Until then, if you want all things Tata, Neu is the app for you.
App’s user experience
While the services and products may be limited, the app does a good job on user experience. It has an entire section of videos explaining how to use point-based reward system, avail offers, manage gifting and a lot more.
The video explainers under the stories section make it easier for new users to understand and adopt different features. However, the smooth experience comes with a slight lag as the app struggles to load different sections from time to time on the iOS platform. This issue could possibly be fixed with software updates.
While there are many aspects of the app that provide an interesting opportunity to users, there can be no clear answer to the question of whether you should be rushing to download the app or not. For instance, if you are looking to book or even check air fares, the app exclusively shows results for Air Asia, interestingly it even omits results that include flights from Vistara and Air India.
And while Neupass does bring in offers that are hard to ignore, the limitation of using it with limited options may not be something every user is comfortable with. As for the UPI payments, users will have to wait till its adoption reaches levels which other apps like Paytm, Google pay, and PhonePe enjoy to be able to use it without having to ask their peers and merchants to adopt the app. Until then the only way to ensure a smooth payment is via the scanned codes.
Users’ reaction
Despite being a fresh addition to the app stores both on Android and iOS devices, there is no dearth of reviews for Tata Neu on both the platforms. And the ratings are not upbeat, as iOS users gave a 2.8, and Android customers a 3.4 rating.
A majority reviews, regardless of the platform, consist of complaints about bugs within the app, poor customer service experience and even complaints of lack of better integration with BigBasket and Westside. These brands appeared as webviews at the time of writing this review.
Another sore point that users have complained about is the inability to transfer points of other Tata apps like those of Westside to the Neu app.
For now, Tata Neu’s branding, interface and assimilation of the conglomerate’s products and services fails to impress as a “super app”.
