Designing for the User Who Has Never Seen Your Category Before

The standard UPI set for simplicity

In a small-town market, a vegetable seller holds up a printed QR code, a customer scans it and the payment lands. No card machine, no cash, no explanation. A few years ago that scene would have needed a lecture. Today nobody thinks about it.

That is the standard a new Indian product has to meet. India's digital public infrastructure, UPI being the clearest case, taught hundreds of millions of people to pay by scanning a code, because the experience was simple, interoperable and cheap to use. [VERIFY: attach current UPI transaction volume from NPCI.]

For founders building the next product for this audience, here are five principles.

Five principles for building for Bharat

1. Start with the phone people actually own Many users carry entry-level and mid-range Android devices with limited storage, older operating systems and patchy 4G. If your app needs a large download, a fast connection or the latest hardware, you have shut out a large part of your market before the first screen loads. Test on the cheapest devices you can find, on slow networks, with low storage. Measure how long the first useful screen takes.

2. Language is not a translation feature Build for the user's language from day one: script, vocabulary, voice and the way people actually speak. A direct translation of an English interface often confuses. A Marathi-speaking shopkeeper in Pune, a Tamil-speaking technician in Coimbatore and a Hindi-speaking driver in Lucknow use different words for the same action. Test with native speakers. Offer voice input where typing is slow.

3. Make trust visible First-time digital users worry, often rightly, about fraud. Design for reassurance: clear confirmation screens, plain-language receipts, visible contact details and a human to call. Where it helps, offer assisted onboarding through a trusted local agent or a family member. Never hide fees in small print.

4. Price in the user's rhythm Many customers earn daily or weekly, not monthly. A subscription charged on the first of the month may not match how money arrives. Consider smaller, more frequent payments, pay-per-use and clear running balances, with every rupee accounted for in the app.

5. Design for the offline moment Connectivity drops in lifts, basements, buses and villages. Save work locally, retry quietly and show clear status ("saved on your phone, will upload when online"). A product that fails gracefully earns more trust than one that is fast but fragile.

“A product that fails gracefully earns more trust than one that is fast but fragile.”

A short checklist before launch

Can a first-time user finish the key task in under two minutes?

Does it work in the phone's own language and keyboard?

Is there a way to reach a human within one tap?

Are error messages written in plain words, with a next step?

Does it work on a low-end device with a poor connection?

Have you watched five real users try it, without helping them?

Where B2B fits in

These principles are not only for consumer apps. A shop-floor tool for an MSME faces the same constraints: workers with limited time, older phones, local language and low tolerance for complexity. The factory-software founders in our Startup Spotlight face this every day.

The takeaway

Building for the next hundred million is less about technology than humility. Watch real people use the product, and remove every step on which they hesitate.