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Case study

Phatse: a party marketplace

I founded and led an online marketplace where customers booked food, cakes, decorations and flowers from nearby organisers.

Result600K rupees in 2 months
My roleFounder and CEO
Team I led18: 8 engineers, 5 sales and marketing, 5 interns
PeriodDec 2019 to Jan 2023

The problem

Planning a party meant calling many vendors, comparing prices and chasing availability.

Discovery

I interviewed more than 100 customers and event organisers, and more than 30 party vendors. I also attended over 20 parties as an observer to see what actually went wrong on the day. I wrote user personas, PRDs and user stories from this, and used the findings to set the roadmap. Over time, NPS rose by 30%.

Solution

A simple booking flow where customers chose the occasion, browsed nearby services by category, and scheduled a date and time. Organisers earned from each booking, and Phatse took a 20% commission.

1Choose the occasion
2Browse nearby services
3Schedule date and time

I mapped the customer journey and the flow chart first, then wireframes and prototypes, then worked with the engineers through the build. I used Mixpanel to see where customers dropped off and ran A/B tests on features and campaigns, keeping whatever performed better.

Running the team

I built and led a team of 18: 8 engineers, 5 in sales and marketing and 5 interns. I set the vision and roadmap, owned product and growth, ran acquisition, and kept engineering, sales and marketing working to one plan.

Growth and retention

Referral reward

I designed an instant reward for referrals. Acquiring a referred customer cost about 600 rupees, while that customer brought in about 4,800 rupees in commission over 2 years. That is roughly 8 to 1. The reward drove 50% month-over-month growth.

Email campaigns

I set up welcome, re-engagement and referral-reminder emails, and ran campaigns in Mailchimp and Sendinblue (now Brevo). Churn fell by 22%, measured over six months: one month before the journeys went live and five months after.

Results

600K

rupees in bookings in the first 2 months, about 85 orders at 7,000 rupees each

22%

churn reduction after email journeys

+30%

NPS

Phatse was named one of India’s Top 25 startups at the BITS Pilani Entrepreneurship Conclave 2021.

What I took from it

I learned how to read a marketplace from both sides, because customers and organisers need different things from the same booking. I also learned to treat a referral reward like any other cost: work out what a customer is worth first, then decide what you can afford to pay to get one.

Next time I would set up cohort tracking and a holdout group from day one, so every campaign’s effect is measured from the start.

Skills and tools used
Customer interviewsPRDs and user storiesMixpanelA/B testingReferral and unit economicsMailchimpSendinblueGoogle AdsTeam leadership