What's New? Tata Neu's Differentiation Dilemma

By March 2023, almost a year since its launch in 2022, Tata Digital Private Limited’s super-app, Tata Neu, was still struggling with low user adoption and engagement as users encountered frequent technical glitches such as tardy page load times and one-time-password errors. While the super-app had promised seamless shopping for consumers, user engagement levels had yet to touch the desired 40 per cent since the launch of the super-app. Tata Group (Tata)’s major challenge lay in differentiating Tata Neu from other super-apps currently used by consumers—especially as niche services in India reached a saturation point and competition increased—and in consolidating its ecosystem by integrating multiple services into the super-app. Tata Neu had to consider what steps and strategies could help it restore user trust, accelerate growth, gain a greater market presence, and realize better user adoption and engagement amidst its navigation of technical stability issues, varied user behaviour and preferences, and the need for hyper-localization.

This case study can be used in master of business administration courses on marketing management, digital product strategy, customer relationship management, customer experience management, and digital product adoption, as well as in executive education programs for similar topics. After working through the case and assignment questions, students will be able to do the following:<br><br><ul><li>Understand the challenges of repositioning a struggling super-app in a competitive and diverse market.</li><li>Analyze how saturation and strong competitors in diverse and fragmented markets can impact a new entrant’s success.</li><li>Recognize why technical stability and a seamless user experience are critical to adopting a new app or platform.</li><li>Learn which strategies, such as an effective communication strategy or a customer support strategy, can help manage the transition from a standalone app to super-apps.</li><li>Explore areas where existing brand equity can be used to gain user trust and facilitate adopting new services.</li><li>Examine what strategic positioning and unique value propositions can do to help differentiate a super-app from established competitors.</li></ul>

• user adoption
• super app
• user experience
• unique value propositions
• user trust
• customer engagement
• digital strategy
• market presence
• technical stability
• competitive advantage
• hyper-localization
• brand equity
• app transition
• customer support
• seamless shopping
• user behavior
• service integration
• digital product strategy
• marketing management
• fragmented markets