The Alt Newsletter #2

A weird startup story. A long awaited launch. A cool ATL experiment and more!

Finally🔥

After a long long wait, we have finally pushed the first version of the new alt website! DNS propagation can take up to 48 hours so if you want to see what it looks use this link.

Special thanks to Memuna and Hassaan for making this happen.

alt is also on Twitter now. Follow us @altventurespk

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Other updates for this issue include:

• Qabil’s progress

• A few learnings and updates:

  • A cool ATL experiment

  • Trikl alpha launch

  • Comparison of WhatsApp business API providers

  • Personalized PNs

• Some interesting reads with a super weird one.

• A sneak-peek into next week’s issue.

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Venture in Focus - Qabil 🔍

We have defined a quick three months plan for Qabil. Enroll 200+ students & place 50+ students without burning any money while staying gross margin positive. Learn more about targets here.

The first course on Data Analytics was launched last week. A quick snapshot:

• The course was designed by instructors, the Qabil team, and the alt team. The pricing was set at PKR 48,000 (for three months).

• A course-specific landing page and creatives were designed.

• We marketed the course through two channels,

  • Sharing in different Facebook and WhatsApp groups

  • Facebook Lead Generation Ads

• The call to action (CTA) for the leads was this airtable form.

• We generated a total of 312 leads (90% via FB ads by spending $58)

• We called the leads, validated interest, and scheduled interviews with the instructors. The instructor screened candidates to ensure that they have the ability to drive value out of this course and we can actually make them job-ready.

• 20 candidates paid ($4500+ in revenue) for the course and are currently enrolled. A big shout out to Fatimah Zafar for making this happen🙏

• The focus is now on upskilling these paid students and finding placement opportunities for them.

Next, we will talk about:

• using a webinar to drive low-touch sales.

• how we are handling the course operations and content.

• the launch of the computer science course.

Learnings and Updates 📁

Rickshaw Branding (Taraki, Growth)

A cool and unique experiment conducted by the Taraki team, led by Ali Abdul Rab.

• This banner was placed on 32 rikshaws.

• It is a relatively low-cost ATL experiment with an initial ~PKR 11K for setup and PKR 200 per month per rikshaw recurring fees.

• Attribution for these experiments is tough but the Taraki team will closely monitor the organic rate to see if we can see a measurable impact.

• Learn more about it here.

Trikl Alpha Launch (Trikl, Product)

We built and tested our KYC signup flow by sending an apk file to a cohort of 30 internal testers and collaborators.

We used it to identify bugs and get user feedback on how we can optimize the initial KYC user flow and backend operations.

Some of our learnings are shared in this small case study. It covers how “reassurance and education” are key to fintech onboarding.

Whatsapp Business API (Tech, R&D)

The CreditBook growth team kicked off WhatsApp Business API testing this cycle with a demo account shared with us. We had two contenders; Infobip and yellow.ai. Testing is almost done by our product guy (details can be found here) and hopefully, we will come to a decision in the next sprint.

Airship Personalization (CreditBook, Growth)

Personalization and Communication are part of our commitments for NR1 and we have been trying to find a workaround for a long time. One blocker was the implementation of MoEngage (a user engagement platform we are shifting to) but that is delayed till August and another one was a pain-in-the-arse process of doing this Airship (another user engagement platform from which we are shifting).

But after brainstorming and multiple smoke breaks, our team cracked this and launched our first experiment with personalization. A cohort of 200 Super/Power Users was selected that churned after Eid; 50% will get a generic copy while the remaining 50% will have their user_name mentioned in the PN, as follows:

This experiment is in progress and we want to evaluate if adding personalization to existing Push Notification will increase user engagement.

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Some interesting reads

• In its ambition to buy a bank, has Pakistan’s fintech poster-child killed itself?

• The New Hot Startups Will Be Camels, Not Unicorns? We're entering the dessert. What would you rather be?

• The FIRE movement 🔥

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What to expect in the next issues?

• Deep dive into how we built Deal Cart (with the squad)

• A late-stage venture in focus, starting with CreditBook.

• Updates on the bus hailing challenge.

• Thought leadership with Saad Fazil. What’s next?

• How can we enable people to become the best at what they do?

• Sad news from one of our ventures!