You’ve surely heard of the term of the term enshittification? In case you haven’t, it was coined by blogger and journalist Cory Doctorow. He defined it as the pattern in which online products and services decline in quality over time.

This decline or decay has started to show in Indian Consumer tech products as well, resulting in an experience for customers that is much worse than what was promised. From seemingly unharmful dark patterns to unnecessary cross-selling, the spectrum lies wide sour digital experiences for a customer today.

And why they’re doing this is quite simple.

These products first got your trust and managed to delight you by delivering on their promise. Then, they made that promise available for a price. Fair enough, if it’s good, then surely the promise has a price you should be willing to pay. Now, we seem to have arrived at a point where they’re asking more to deliver that same promise. They want to extract more money from a customer’s wallet. What forces them to do so becomes the next question.

This enshittening and many more ways in which many of the platforms we use have aged badly was the core of the discussion in this week’s episode of Two by Two. Joining hosts Rohin Dharmakumar and Praveen Gopal Krishnan are Aditya Suresh, head of India equity research at Macquarie, and Abhishek Madan, ex-VP of Product at Paytm*

Aditya brought the market’s perspective to the discussion with his sharp insights, how the experience could be different based on whether a company is public or private, and what gets talked about in both contexts. Abhishek, in his third time on the podcast, added the flavour by explaining why and how the platform decay came about.

Welcome to episode 36 of Two by Two.

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Additional reading:

Enshittification is coming for absolutely everything - https://www.ft.com/content/6fb1602d-a08b-4a8c-bac0-047b7d64aba5

Phonepe spent millions to rival Policybazaar. Its users couldn’t care less - https://the-ken.com/story/phonepe-spent-millions-to-rival-policybazaar-its-users-couldnt-care-less/

Swiggy needs to reclaim its past glory - https://the-ken.com/newsletters/two-by-two/swiggy-needs-to-reclaim-its-past-glory/

How will Ola and Uber avoid ‘death by a thousand cuts’? - https://the-ken.com/newsletters/two-by-two/how-will-ola-and-uber-avoid-death-by-a-thousand-cuts/

First, Cult.fit’s group classes got everyone’s attention. Now “Cult injuries” do - https://the-ken.com/newsletters/two-by-two/how-will-ola-and-uber-avoid-death-by-a-thousand-cuts/

Additional listening:

Should you invest the first two years of your career in strategy consulting? - https://the-ken.com/podcasts/two-by-two/should-you-invest-the-first-two-years-of-your-career-doing-strategy-consulting/

How will Ola and Uber avoid ‘death by a thousand cuts’? - https://the-ken.com/podcasts/two-by-two/how-will-ola-and-uber-avoid-death-by-a-thousand-cuts/

Swiggy needs to reclaim its past glory - https://the-ken.com/podcasts/two-by-two/swiggy-needs-to-reclaim-its-past-glory/

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This is a free 10-minute trailer streaming on all podcast streaming platforms. If you'd like to listen to the full episode, you can do so by becoming a Premium subscriber to The Ken or by subscribing to Two by Two on Apple Podcasts via a separate standalone subscription.

This episode of Two by Two was produced by Hari Krishna. Rajiv CN, our resident sound engineer, mixed and mastered this episode.

If you liked this episode of Two by Two, please share it with your friends and family who would be interested in listening to the episode. And if you have more examples of enshittification, do tell us about them. You can write to us at [email protected].