Paytm’s Lucky Lifafa Lets Users Send Random Amounts Of Money To Friends And Family On Diwali

OfficeChai Team

Paytm has turned a Diwali tradition into a clever growth hack.

The company today launched Lucky Lifafa, which would allow users to send random amounts of money to friends and family. Users can choose which amount they wish to distribute, and can then create a link. This link can be shared among friends and family, and people clicking on it will get random amounts from the total amount chosen. Paytm says this is its way of reinventing Shagun.

 

 

Earlier this year, Paytm had launched Postcards, which would let users send money to their friends with a nice message. The company had to change the name of its product after a complaint from, of all places, the Postal Department, which said that it owned the rights to the usage of the word Postcard. Paytm had then rebranded the service as Lifafa.

The idea of payment companies having products to send gift amounts isn’t new. In China, WeChat has an enormously popular feature called Red Envelope, using which users can send ceremonial amounts to friends and family during special occasions. Indian companies too have tried to copy the feature — Hike had earlier launched its own version, which it rather uimaginatively called Blue Envelope, and Paytm has its Lifafa.

But Paytm is trying to promote its Lifafa service at an opportune time — Diwali. Diwali is a time when elders give shagun to their younger relatives, and Paytm is trying to cash in. Lucky Lifafa makes sending cash hassle free, and the random amounts add some gamification to the product that could help drive usage. The number of lifafas each link gives out is limited — the amount is distributed until it runs out — which incentivizes users to grab their lifafas as fast as possible. It’s possible that the feature becomes popular, and is links are shared on family WhatsApp groups and the like.

And Paytm is trying hard to promote the feature. CEO Vijay Shekhar Sharma started things out by distributing Rs. 2000 among his Twitter followers, and other Paytm executives have been tweeting out links too. Popular Twitter influencers are also tweeting about the feature, hoping to drive usage.

It remains to be seen if Lifafa will catch on, but it’s a clever idea. Unlike cashbacks, Paytm doesn’t spend any of its own money on the feature, but only gets users to send their own money to other users. People who receive the link on their WhatsApp and don’t have the app (Lucky Lifafa is app only) could be incentivized to download it, and people who already have the app will end up with some money in the Paytm accounts, which they can spend on Paytm’s many services. The feature might be copied from WeChat, but Paytm sure is doing a good job of promoting it to an Indian audience.