India has 6,48,000 temples. The astrology market is estimated to be ~₹3,20,000 Cr – most of it is unorganised. Astrotalk is making ₹600 Cr revenue this year & turning a ₹100 Cr profit after tax – here’s how ⬇️
Remember the last time you went to an astrologer? I’ll admit, I did when I was 16 – I had a major car accident and right after that I remember my mother showing my “Kundli” to a family “astrologer”.
Fast forward, I remember an astrologer matching “Kundli” before my marriage – even when I don’t trust the whole process. Some things you do for your parents & future in-laws.
Astrology market is built for life events ✨
These could be sad/happy events – they may be planned or unplanned. One thing is common though – they carry certain level of risk.
No wonder “Astrology” works only with trust ♥️
You will hardly find a astrologer without word of mouth from someone that you trust – making this an extremely hard category to build a scalable distribution with. And, Astrotalk still cracked it with 2,50,000 monthly paying users.
Here’s how they did it 👇🏼
First/ the initial insight 💡
12,00,000 astrology related Google searches happen every freaking month – just in India. Of which ~20,000 searches are for a direct intent of “online astrology”.
Second/ the “chat” proof of concept 🛠️
When you enter the product, it’s build like WhatsApp chat experience. This requires no habit change from a user point of you. This was key to bringing initial set of users.
Third/ initial set of users 💭
90% of their current paying customer base is under the age of 35. That’s interesting considering the taboo of only old age Indians trust astrology – everyone wants to know the future if there is a way.
Fourth/ extreme monetisation 💸
You go to the astrotalk website or app and start chatting, first 5 mins are free to chat/talk. But, the whole onboarding is designed to engage you in a conversation that is impossible to end in 5 mins.
👉🏼 I took the product for a spin and asked an astrologer on Astrotalk “At what point in my life will get to travel the world without looking at the cost of travel?” – it gave some pretty interesting answers.
👉🏼 By the time I got to 2nd question, the first 5 mins was over and I was thrown a prompt to recharge for Rs. 5 for next 25 mins of travel. This is classic freemium model optimised with number of questions.
Fifth/ it’s extremely addictive 💀
I spoke to atleast 10 users in the past month who have used the app at some point. I asked them – “How much have you spent on the app?”. Surprisingly every freaking person recharged and had spend > ₹200. WOW!
Sixth/ getting the core philosophy right 🥹
Astrotalk could use bots and remove human astrologer – it does not work. It will never work. Astrologer as a job is built on reputation – think of it like someone telling you future and you will judge them over a period of time on how well those bets pan out.