Acquisition project | Leo1

​Leo1 (Formerly Financepeer) - Introduction

In 2017, with a vision to grow in the peer-to-peer lending segment, Financepeer was founded. Shortly after, they acquired a P2P NBFC license and partnered with a few organizations to generate leads that would meet both their demand and supply needs (peers). While the supply came in relatively easily, generating demand that was more trustworthy and could provide the returns the lenders (peers) were expecting soon became a road blocker. After experimenting with a few options and setting up the technical expertise required for a lending business, in 2019 Financepeer pivoted their USP product from being a P2P NBFC to being a company that provided education loans in the K12 (Kg to 12th i.e. school) segment.

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When they first started scoping the school lending segment, they realized that given the scale of demand, only relying on supply from the P2P NBFC channel would not help them scale. They initiated 2 different types of partnerships - Educational Institutes willing to partner (for the demand) and NBFCs/Banks willing to lend in this segment (for the supply). They run pilots in certain geographies where fees was on the higher side and people were willing to pay as they focused on the 'convenience based lending' rather than the 'need based lending' philosophy. With a successful PMF, they scaled operations and quickly conquered a lot of major cities across India, covid played a major role in boosting this. Educational Institutes and Parents both got a breathing space during covid for managing their finances better increasing the presence of need based loans as well.

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While this product grew to a large scale quickly, Financepeer, now Leo1, realized that it is a low on engagement and cyclic product and would need more products and features to grow with the core lying in Education + Payments business.

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Leo1 tried out quite a few POCs and dabbled into various kind of add-on credit options. That is when they decided to venture into the business of prepaid debit cards, using their existing network, technology and domain expertise to launch a product that has a longer LTV and increased DAV, MAV. Also, this product could get potential revenue from synergies with other products.

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For my acquisition project, I have chosen a specific line of product within Leo1 i.e. the Leo1 Cards for the following reasons:

1. Lending as a business has seen some saturation in the market due to the inflow of competitors (direct, indirect), less need based lending after the side-effects of covid have subsided, limitation in the number of students you can get onboard for taking a loan in each Institute, RBI regulations, hit that the Edtech sector has taken where lending has almost completely stopped, etc.
2. Cards is the most focused product i.e. USP for Leo1 right now with most innovation being done for this product and sales happening via this product.
3. There is no strong competitor directly competing head-to-head in this space and it has a tremendous growth potential in the long run.
4. Leo1 Cards is in acquisition mode right now and it would be the perfect product where I can introduce strategies where retention focus can be added right from the start.
5. I was the primary PM looking after this product for the longest time and have designed and defined the journeys for customers, educational Institutes, vendors, etc. from scratch. I also have been the primary POC for all stakeholders (internal & external) for this product for more than 1.5 years, so I have a higher awareness of the domain, challenges and strengths. Plus, a sense of attachment too.

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Leo1 (Cards Product) - Introduction​

Leo1 was close to many of the students, parents and Institute managements that helped them in deciphering what would be the product which can be a value add for all of these stakeholders while also scaling their business to great heights. That's when Leo1 Card was born.

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This numberless card acts as an identity card within the educational Institute's premises having Institute's branding, student's name & photo, and can be used in the library, canteen, classrooms, etc.

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Product sale for the Institutes is currently completely offline while the onboarding, activation and usage of the cards product is completely digital for both the Institutes & Students.

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It is a very unique B2B2C product with a that catch although the Institute mandates all students to register for the card, the KYC for the card is done by the students and hence primary users of the digital journey and products are the students. So the activation is not done by the entity paying for the product, it has to be by the entity using it. Hence, their feedback as users, given to Institutes who are buyers, on the card's performance and usability although important in retention, but not the primary driver for the Institute to be acquired.

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The card & related app is for the students and the Institute receives a portal with added features that encourages them to buy this product. Institutes receive a digital platform to onboard students, track their card applications, check balances, add their fee dues, send reminders for fee payments, etc., thereby digitizing their campus.

​Company Stage:

The product has achieved PMF and this was ascertained by speaking with both B2B and B2B2C users of the platform along with internal teams like sales & product. It has 5-7 active colleges/universities with more than 20000 students bringing in revenue in the INR 20 lakhs to INR 60 lakhs per college/university depending on strength. The aha moment for achieving PMF was when board members started pitching the product to other Institutes where they are board members as well, after seeing the product onboarding and synergies. While PMF is achieved, they are still trying to figure out the acquisition channels that would work best.

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Note: The numbers are ballpark and do not represent actual revenue numbers or students that Leo1 currently has for their cards product. These are estimates based on Institute student size, cost to print the cards and a mark up that Leo1 may apply.​

​Usage Frequency

Colleges have signed up for longer term deals extending a single academic year showing an interest in introducing the product for future batches as well. Being a B2B product, for renewing beyond 2 years, a strong assessment on performance and student feedback would be done by Institutes.

Willingness to Pay

Some educational Institutes have already paid advances for issuing cards for their students and rest would be paid upon deliveries or in a staggered manner. Certain Institutes are also considering pushing the card charges as an additional fee instead of  paying it by themselves.

Leo1 Card Benefits​

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Process to obtain the card / Onboarding (For Institutes):​

Once the agreements & legalities are completed, Institute provides certain details via their portal (uploading) to get started. This is either done by someone from the Institute or via a Sales team member of Leo1 after acquiring the required data from the Institute.

• Institute Name(s), Branch Names(s) - Multiple incase of University onboarding
• Logo, Short Name, Address and Contact Number - To be printed on the card
• Courses and Classes
• Student Details like Name, Contact Number, Email ID, Roll No, etc. - For KYC & Printing on the card
• Parent Details like Name, Contact Number, Email ID, etc. - For KYC (in case of minors) and record keeping for Institutes
• Additional details based on the specific Institute use-case. For ex. if Institute wants fee collection, they can upload fee data against course/class/student. If the Institute is opting to use the other products as well, they will have to set up an account integration with Leo1 for smooth fund transfer.

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Once these details are uploaded, student onboarding begins by sending specific communications to all students and parents by both Leo1 and the Institute. Help desks are also set-up on campus by the sales teams to support the students in their onboarding Journey.

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Process to obtain the card / Onboarding (For Students):​

Once a student receives the app download link, they can go ahead and install the app (Android & iOS). Following steps are followed after app install:

• They login with the registered number from the Institute. (Support ticket is raised if student's number has changed)
• They will see certain pre-filled - editable & non-editable fields like DOB, Name as per PAN Card, etc.
• Wherever pre-filling is not possible due to limited information with the Institute, student fills in the information manually
• A min KYC is completed using a primary document of the student or parent (in case of minors)
• After successful KYC, the virtual card is issued and visible with card number, date, CVV, option to add money, etc. on the app
• A physical card is printed parallelly by the printing vendors and bulk dispatch is done to the Institute, where the Institute nominated POC handles distribution of cards to the student.

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Once virtual card is issued, payments can immediately start for ecommerce mode of transactions. If a student is stuck at any of the steps, support ticket can be raised and the issue is solved by

Leo1/Bank/Switch partner.

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Objectives for an Early Scaling Product:​

1. Based on the user interviews, understand the ICPs for the product
2. Based on the ICP's needs, pain points & solutions, and the product placement, understand the core value proposition of the product
3. Understand the market size, target customers and competition for this product
4. Analyze all acquisition channels and understand which channels can or cannot work at this stage
5. Based on the 'can work' i.e. potential channels, ideate and elaborate on 3 experiments with detailed flow, as and where required

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User Interviews:​

Based on excerpts of user interviews done in the past, interviews with the implementation teams and a few recent short calls with the users, we derive the following types of Institutes who are interested in this product and have actively started implementing it.

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User 1 - Heads a technical (engineering) college as a Principal with 7 different streams like Computer Science, EXTC, Electronics, Mechanical, IT, etc., looking to increase admissions, looking to have a better ranking and perceived value. College has about 120 students in 5 streams, 60 in 2 streams, spread across 4 years, bringing the total to approximately 2800 students.

Unique characteristics - Less hierarchy in decision making, high fees = card fees paying capacity, faster implementation expectation, overall on the lower side of expected revenue from each Institute

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User 2 - Board of director at an esteemed university, with 12 different colleges related to commerce, science, arts, design, engineering, etc. and more than 10k students. They cater to bachelors, masters and some PhD students as well and each college has their own teams, principals and department heads.

Unique characteristics - More hierarchy in decision making, high fees = card fees paying capacity, slower implementation expectation with phase-wise roll outs, on the higher side of expected revenue, can influence in getting more big clients

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User 3 - Administrative officer at an open university with students of all age groups complete distance education, bachelors or masters, where the lectures are online and the exams offline.

Unique characteristics: Less hierarchy in decision making, more push needed to fill-in seats, low fees = low card fees paying capacity, have the ability to pass on the card fees to the students instead keeping it an optional one, cannot influence other universities or colleges.

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As a summary to the interviews that could be conducted, there is a very strong preference of top to bottom push for such implementations as they impact org-wide SOP modifications and certain additional implementation responsibilities on middle managers. And these middle managers responsible for implementation are key to actually getting the adoption in place i.e. they can be either huge influencers or blockers depending on whether the product makes their day-to-day work easy or complicated.

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​ICP Details & Selection:

There are multiple ICPs possible depending on the size, geography and offerings of the college/university as detailed below:

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ICP Prioritization:

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The 3 ICPs mentioned above cater to a different segment and size of educational Institute and while all of them can be customers at some point, we have to find the ones that are easier to convert and adopt.

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Influencers:

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The primary influencers for these ICPs are board of directors, Institute owners, accounts teams, student body heads, students and Institute media/PR teams because of the respective benefit or platform they receive with the card. They may research the company and product by themselves or hear about it on social media and may relate to the product to become Influencers.

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Blockers:

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​Blockers for the adoption of this product could be the Parents, Students, Finance teams (another platform to manage and high cost to be paid), Implementation teams (additional effort to ensure cards are delivered and distributed to students correctly) and ERP vendors who would see product cannibalization by some features that Leo1 offers. Parents and students can become the primary blockers due to the KYC that needs to be done to get the card which can add to their efforts and also, they may not be comfortable in doing this.

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Target & Pitch​

Core Value Proposition​

Leo1 Card gives a digital infrastructure to the educational Institute which in turn adds to the brand equity of the Institute, increasing admissions and placements. Institutes replace their traditional ID cards with Leo1 cards at a nominal fee per student and receive a plethora of digital products and platform in turn. Students receive cards as the final product and Institutes receive a platform that can be used to track card onboarding, KYC, balances, add fee dues, send fee reminders, add ad-hoc fees, check loans, etc. These are then visible on the student's app along with the card, which they can pay directly using the card or any other modes of payments thus digitizing many forms of collections for the Institute.

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Target Group

The target group is colleges with bachelors, diploma, masters, PhD or similar courses because students have to be above 18 years old to get the card (as of now). The colleges that want to become a digital campus and attract more students (brand equity) are the focus group where this value proposition is most attractive and also have that kind of fees that can pay for this product. Hence, colleges in Tier 1, Tier 2 and Tier 3 are considered.

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TAM

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Considering the value proposition, target segment, requirement of minimum 2k students (to be a viable proposition given the physical setup costs), and the goal being product roadmap prioritization, TAM is calculated using a bottom up approach. Since the company is already strongly working in Jaipur, this geography is chosen to come up with the TAM across India. 

Number of Colleges / Universities (catering to 18+) in Jaipur - 500

Number of Colleges / Universities that have more than 2k students across all branches & batches (This number is calculated by finding all colleges with 3-4 year courses with at least 5 streams that would lead to 2k+ students) - 200

Average revenue per college (Calculated by extrapolating current active colleges in Jaipur that would range from INR 20 lakhs to INR 1 crore in expected revenue, considering the number of colleges vs revenue as a parabolic curve) - INR 30 lakhs

Revenue from Jaipur against the number of colleges - 200 colleges with INR 30 lakhs average gives an estimated business of INR 60 crores

Now using this analysis to get TAM across India, let’s do the following:

Tier 1: Total number of cities - With 8 cities that have an average of 1200 colleges (Bangalore has much higher but is compensated by lower numbers in Kolkata & Ahmedabad) - Number of colleges in the 1200 that have a minimum 2k students is an average 900 per city - Average number of students is also observed to be double that of Jaipur i.e. 4000 which increases average revenue per college along a parabolic curve to INR 50 lakhs - The business estimate across 8 cities = 900 * 8 * 50 = INR 3600 crores

Using the same assumptions across Tier 2 (20 cities, avg 150 colleges with > 2k students per city, avg 30 lakhs revenue) and Tier 3 (20 cities, avg 40 colleges with > 2k students per city, avg 20 lakhs revenue) the final numbers are as follows:

Tier 1 - 7200 colleges, INR 3600 crores

Tier 2 - 3000 colleges, INR 900 crores

Tier 3 - 800 colleges, INR 160 crores

TAM = 11000 colleges, INR 4560 crores

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Note: This TAM only considers revenue that Leo1 earns by selling to Institutes i.e. the acquisition strategy’s focus. It does not consider revenue that comes from transaction volumes (% of earnings that Mastercard/Visa/Rupay and the banks earn is also shared with Leo1).

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SAM 

For SAM, we would look at the % of colleges that would be willing to pay for this product in lieu of getting a digital campus. This number would reduce as we go to lower tiers as the need to digitize or create a USP out of digitization is lower (as per user interviews - customer and sales team - who are trying to penetrate these markets). The understanding would be that while 50% of the Tier 1 colleges would be willing to pay for this product, the number would go down to 30% and 20% for Tier 2 and Tier 3 respectively. These percentages are a function of the number of colleges reached out in a city (by the sales team) of that Tier vs number of colleges where there was willingness to pay. 

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Tier 1 - 3600 colleges, INR 1800 crores

Tier 2 - 900 colleges, INR 270 crores

Tier 3 - 160 colleges, INR 32 crores

SAM = 4660 colleges, INR 2100 crores

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SOM

Since Leo1 already has some sales operations and implementation leads spread across western, central and southern India with a shortage of resources in Northern (except Delhi, Chandigarh) and Eastern (except for a few), there are certain cities in each tier where operationally it would take much longer to obtain customers.

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Tier 1 - ⅞ cities are obtainable - 3100 colleges, INR 1500 crores

Tier 2 - 14/18 cities are obtainable - 700 colleges, INR 210 crores

Tier 3 - 12/18 cities are obtainable - 120 colleges, INR 24 crores

SOM = Approximately 3900 colleges, INR 1700 crores​

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Note: The data for number of colleges in each city is obtained by individually checking for each city on Shiksha and Collegedunia for Tier 1. For Tier 2 and Tier 3, due to limited data availability online for some cities, approximations are made based on the city size and population against a few cities where data was available.​

Competition

Owing to the fact that Leo1 is doing something that no other company has done at this scale before and that it is the only company selling an open-loop prepaid debit card to Educational Institutes instead of directly students, there are no direct competitors in the market. There are certain indirect competitors that can take some market share from Leo1 or already have a market share in this category.

• Closest competitor -
• • YPay Card: YPay also dabbled in the B2B2C segment for cards with a few Institutes since 2019 / 2020 but could not scale the program much. They may have a few active Institutes but the focus has moved to B2C students or teenagers looking for a student oriented card option.
• Debit and Credit cards offered by Banks -
  Banks offer these cards to students based on some criteria, could be there score in some exams or taking a loan from the bank or a parent's salary account with the bank. Most of them are Forex or Travel cards available to students who take admission abroad.
• • SBI Student Plus Advantage Card: Issued to students who have an educational loan with SBI or open an FD with SBI
  • Axis Bank Insta Easy credit card
  • ICICI Bank Student Travel card
  • HDFC Bank’s ISIC Student ForexPlus card
• Other teen card companies (B2C) -
  They sell directly to teenagers with different features and perks of using the card. Some of them are only available to 18+ years of age users who have valid KYC documents including a PAN card while a few others take parents KYC in case the user is below 18 or is above 18 but does not have KYC documents or PAN Card available.
• • Fyp Money
  • Fampay
  • OneCard
  • Jupiter Money
  • UniCard
  • Niyo card
  • Junior
• Cash or Parent's card -
  Parents who are not keen on or not aware of these products, prefer giving their own cards, add-on cards or cash for the students to do transactions in and outside campus. This is again a B2C usecase and not direct competition but can be a blocker in adoption.

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​Acquisition Channels:

Let's first have a look at current acquisition channels and then analyze all 5 channels based on their current use-case vs prospective future use-case. Once this analysis is complete, we would move on to the selection framework and choose the channels for which we would design the experiments.

Current Acquisition Channels:

Direct sales (physical), investor/friends/family network, seminars / webinars / events, older clients (Lending product) / cross-selling, newspaper & TV ads, etc. are responsible for all the sales right now. The Business Development team takes ahead the closure of discussions and deals once these leads are identified. The primary reason for offline sales is that Institutes are not aware of or actively looking for such a solution. It is a value add rather than a direct solution for a pain point. Another reason is that decision makers for such big ticket changes in the Institute are better to come from top-down for thorough implementation and less blockers. And this can only happen if these folks are personally reached to explain your use-case. The expectation is that in a few quarters when other Institutes see the value add and there is a decent amount of WOM, there would be Institutes reaching out to understand the product offering.

Analyzing Potential Acquisition Channels:

As our focus is on the acquisition of B2B customers for the Leo1 cards product i.e. Educational Institutes, we would analyze each channel for feasibility: 

1. Organic:
   SEO Analysis: After analyzing keywords / statements that the users may use to search for this product (college ID, ID card, digital campus, etc.), we understand that the search volumes are very low, in certain cases less than 100. This proves that the buyer is not actively searching to solve this problem and there is a knowledge gap for most users on what this product could do also owing to lack of direct competitors. Also, the non-existent search intent and challenges in creating buying intent disregard this channel for current stage.
   
   
   
   
   Total traffic and engagement:
   Due to lack of competitors, it was difficult to get an Industry rank but we can see that there are about 1 lakh visitors every quarter, most coming in from the m-web journey. Bounce rate is relatively low compared to standard bounce rates, which signifies that the user does check out a few more pages and engages with the website before dropping off.
   
   
   Most of the organic traffic is coming in from users where the initial acquisition discussion has already begun or completed via offline channels. As stakeholders look to know more about the product and company, they search for Leo1 and land on the page. Blogs and content related to education and lending for education segments on the website can increase the organic search.
   
   Comparison with a few close competitors:
   
   
   The current organic traffic is much better than competitors in most aspects and it may be futile to spend more time and energy to improve this channel as it will organically improve further as more Institutes tie up with Leo1.
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2. Organic - Content Loops: While Leo1 app encourages sharing achievements or rewards with friends and family via WhatsApp, Instagram, etc., it is not actively used right now as there is no incentive associated with it. Also, students sharing these benefits may or may not engage potential Institute buyers and would have a longer conversion cycle, if it is without a purpose. If a content loop can be created specifically for educational Institutes’ management to view and relate, that would be a good means of customer acquisition. A content loop focusing on students would be a brand value add for both the Institute & Leo1 and can make other Institute students as influencers in acquiring new customers. When this content is generated and distributed by the students across social media, the effort required for both Leo1 and the educational Institute to promote respective brands would be low.
   
   More details on how to implement this is explained below in the 'Experiments section' in the form of an experiment.
   
3. Paid:
   Paid ads would add more value in increasing awareness and trust compared to the organic channel as it would focus the pain point and solution on the right channel to the ICPs. Another reason this may work is that Leo1 has Rohit Sharma as the brand ambassador and paid ads that showcase him promoting the brand can lead to an increased trust and curiosity to know more about the brand. Although a good channel and contributor of trust and confidence in the company, the paid ad cannot lead to direct acquisition, more for lead generation and awareness. Currently, Leo1 is not running online paid ads. The paid ads are in the form of events, conferences, media, etc. where CXOs and thought leaders at Leo1 are part of panel discussions related to education or where CXOs are highlighting to media the importance of certain education policies and digitization of campuses. There are also paid ads done in the form of sponsorships where they sponsor fests or major events of the college to get recognition within the student and faculty community of the college and as well participating colleges.
   
   Direct paid ad:
   
   
   Fest sponsorships:
   
   
   Media ads:
   
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4. Product Integrations: Past interviews & conversations with Institute management have also indicated that there are multiple problems that the administration is trying to solve (mentioned in the ICP details) and find it difficult to use multiple platforms. This product integration should create a direct lead for Leo1 to be a good acquisitional channel to experiment with. It will also ensure that once Leo1 has tied up with the Institute, they can either user the ERP to access all features offered by Leo1 or they can directly use Leo1's platform. Integrations is a strong suite for Leo1 as they have already done it with vendors that can be a value add to students and indirectly to colleges. While these are from Leo1 to other platforms, for acquisition we will focus on integrations where the ICP can reach Leo1 from the app / product they use for their day-to-day work.
   Existing Product Integrations (From Leo1 to Other apps)-
   
   - Integration with companies that can get more whitelisted brand offers and discounts (Cannot disclose the names due to signed NDA)
   
   
   - Deep integration with companies that create educational content on Financial Literacy and Stock Market trading (whitelisted and cannot be disclosed due to signed NDA)
   
   
   - Integration with a company that provides career counselling to students (LifeVitae.ai)
   
   
   
   
5. Referral / Partner design: For the partnership model to work, setting an incentivization for Institutes to refer the product to other Institutes is difficult. Based on discussions with both Institute management and sales SPOCs, this model could only work for ICP2 where a board member for one Institute may also be on the board of other Institutes and their influence can get more customers to be onboarded. The number of leads per board member may not be high but the revenue volume from a single Institute conversion is high enough to define an incentive structure. Given the small number of such influential figures, a formal digital incentive structure would not be helpful as they might not use the platform themselves.
   Currently, Leo1 does partnership incentivization in an offline mode and it is a function of the volume the partner is able to get Leo1. The goal for Partnership should be continue with the current approach, adding new Institutes every month.

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Note: In B2B2C businesses of this nature, acquisition is completely offline owing to factors like difference between buyer & user, buyer never actively looking for a solution online, trust of buyer with the brand, personal physical involvement preference of actual buyers, buying through network circle recommendations, etc. The acquisition channels cannot have a built-in CTA for the potential buyer to come and make the purchase, at most they can create a lead via inquiry. Digital and paper acquisition channels help these businesses with brand recall, social proofing and building trust which can directly influence buy decision when these businesses reach out to the customer via the sales pitch. I have also tried to avoid doing experiments on channels where the company is already putting conscious effort to avoid redundancy.

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Acquistion Channel Analysis Conclusion:

Based on the above analysis, we can ascertain the following and choose the channels that best work at this stage and in this industry:

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Acquisition Experiments

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​Experiment 1 (Channel - Content Loops)​

Hypothesis: Getting students to create and distribute content on social media based on a hook inside the app and the physical product (ID Card) can help in getting leads from students of colleges which can then be leveraged in the offline acquisition discussions by sales teams.

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Rationale: Our ICP is looking to increase brand value and gain brand equity in the eyes of potential students looking for admissions. Hosting major events or associating themselves with celebrities or brands add to this brand value for the Institute. Students circulating the card across social media brings attention & interaction from other students and staff members. Circulation of this information across social media platforms helps the Institute in getting more recognition amongst the student and parent community thus increasing admissions and revenue.

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Description: Rohit Sharma is the brand ambassador of Leo1 and the craze of cricket can be used to incentivize students to create and share content on social media leading to social proofing for Leo1. This will be viewed by students of colleges in the same geography, students in the same stream and Institute staff that identifies another Institutes co-branded card. When students receive their card, they share it on social media (LinkedIn, Facebook, etc.) and the ones with highest number of comments on each channel from each Institute, get rewarded with coupons, offers and a chance to watch a cricket match live (T20 / IPL). The content caption of the post should be on the lines of - "Leo1 X College ABC = Stylish Rewarding Card! Want this for your college? Comment 'Leo1 X Your College Name' ".

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Hook: Rewards for the highest number of unique user comments as "Leo1 X Your College Name" in that college

Creator: Students

Distributor: Students

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Implementation Steps:

1. Student completes the onboarding flow (as explained in the introduction) after getting notified by the Institute to register for their ID cards
2. They complete KYC and receive a physical card from the Institute
3. Inside the app, after they receive the card, they see a notification that tells them that sharing on social media will win them rewards
4. There is a process shown on how to click the photo, where to share, what should be the tagline, where to upload the comments information and how/when they will receive the reward
5. Reward would be detailed on this step - Can range from watching a cricket match live or getting Team India X Rohit Sharma goodies. Some can also receive cashback of INR 2000 directly on their cards
6. They click a photo holding the card with the background as their most favorite place on campus
7. They share this on social media (Instagram & Facebook) with the tagline - "Leo1 X College ABC = Stylish Rewarding Card!" and ask their friends to comment "Leo1 X Your College Name" if they want this ID Card for their college too
8. They share a screenshot of all 'Leo1 X Your College Name' on their comments within 30 days of receiving their card to be eligible for the competition i.e. all unique comments received in 30 days would be considered.
9. Once all cards for that Institute complete 30 days, the winner is announced on social media (Leo1 and the college's)
10. A reward is available and visible in the winners app (Multiple winners can be declared)
11. This reward can further be shared on social media to create another loop

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Sample flow:

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Steps after content is distributed: The comments that they receive before a certain deadline have to submitted with proof in a google form. This is done to reduce any burden on tech & product and run the experiment independently. It can be scaled and incentives can be improved and made more integrated with the platform if we double down on this as an acquisition channel.

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Experiment 2 (Channel - Product Integration) - Educational ERP

Hypothesis: Product Integration with Educational ERPs is a good channel for acquiring leads faster and across geographies

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Rationale: One of the main products that is used by the staff (ICPs) and students/parents alike in the

colleges and universities is their ERP platform. The ICPs spend time on the ERP platform for admissions, fees, accounts, time-table, exam results, notices, alumni management, etc. Partnering with ERP platforms would give direct access and visibility across all colleges where the ERP is active.

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Description: Integrating Leo1 at a place where the ERP software has their ID card generation tool can become an acquisition channel as most of the accounts team, principal, faculty, etc. tend to use this platform for various purposes. This can be done at multiple touchpoints with ID card generation feature to be the one to start with.

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Potential partners: ERP companies focusing on colleges and universities (MyClassCampus, iitms, ken42, etc.)

Benefit for the ERP partner: Commission on conversions, an additional method of card creation, digitization story focus, etc. These ERP companies can also act as channel partners (Partnership driven acquisition) for lead generation.

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Discovery and Integration Steps:​

1. Staff member or ICP opens the feature to generate ID card for new or existing student
2. Before they click on print, they see an option to convert this ID card into a Smart ID card
3. When they click on the CTA, a pop-up comes up (See Step 1)
4. This pop-up has all the student details shown but in the Leo1 personalized card template with student and Institute details
5. Along with this template, there is also a placeholder to show more benefits of using Leo1
6. There is a CTA below the card which when clicked creates a hot lead at Leo1's end which can then be contacted for further conversion
7. Another option based on the relationship with the ERP company can be that the Leo1's Institute dashboard for card generation opens up with dummy or actual logins directly when the CTA is clicked along with lead generation (Shown in Step 2)
8. On every lead converted, the ERP company receives a % commission (0.5%) of the total sales value for the cards.

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Working flow:

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Step 1:


Step 2:

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Experiment 3 (Channel - Product Integration) - Educational CRM​

Hypothesis: Product Integration with Educational CRMs is a good channel for acquiring leads faster and across geographies

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Rationale: One important product that the primary ICPs of Institutes use is the CRM for managing leads and admissions to the various programs. Many Institute ICPs also manage movement of students within different streams after initial admissions also via the CRM. These dashboards generally have one dedicated dashboard for students whose admissions along with payments is completed. This is the last step in the admission process for the students and could be where the next step of Smart ID card can be placed.

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Description: The proposition of this acquisition channel is to partner with a CRM and offer the card for students whose admissions are completed in the CRM. The product discovery would be on the screens where completed admissions are showcased. Leo1's card placement would be a next step CTA for these admission completed students.

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Potential partners: CRM companies focusing on colleges and universities (Element451, SlateCRM, TargetX etc.)

Benefit for the partner: Commission on conversions, acting as pure-play channel partners for Leo1

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Discovery and Integration Steps:

1. Staff member or ICP comes on the Admissions completed dashboard
2. They see a pop-up or highlighted section (This really depends on the UI of the CRM company and can vary based on the components they use) prompting them to create a smart ID card for these students
3. When the click on the CTA for creating the card, they are shown a pop-up with a personalized student ID card in the Leo1 template with the Institute logo and student details mentioned (Step 1)
4. Along with this template, there is also a placeholder to show more benefits of using Leo1
5. There is a CTA below the card which when clicked creates a hot lead at Leo1's end which can then be contacted for further conversion
6. Along with lead generation, based on the relationship with the CRM company, it can also be possible to open up Leo1's Institute dashboard in an iFrame inside the CRM portal. (Step 2)
7. On every lead converted, the CRM company receives a % commission (0.5%) of the total sales value for the cards.

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Working flow:

Step 1:


Step 2:

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Note: There could be more placeholders for introducing Leo1 Cards in both the ERP and CRM platforms, I am only considering one for the project as a single experiment. The integration can also be further explored to get consent from the admin (Institute side) to share data with Leo1 directly from the ERP or CRM to onboard students on Leo1's dashboard and ID card generation can be done ​

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