PhonePe’s Pincode app: How it stacks up in week 1 of use

PhonePe CEO Sameer Nigam launching the Pincode app

PhonePe, India’s largest UPI app by market size, ventured into the hyperlocal e-commerce app space with ‘Pincode’ last week. Built on top of the Open Network for Digital Commerce network, it was the first buyer-side app on ONDC and is currently available only for customers in Bengaluru.

ONDC is a decentralised, network-centric model where buyers and sellers can transact irrespective of the platforms/applications they use as long as those platforms/applications are connected to this open network. It doesn’t require buyers and sellers to be on the same platform to carry out a transaction.

Why a separate app was built

Why was Pincode developed as a separate app and not as a tab in the existing PhonePe app? CEO Sameer Nigam said a separate app was required because the product expectation is different. In the case of payments, the aim is to make the customer spend the least amount of time making a payment, which is not the case with shopping, which is experiential.

Order volumes would also have been a concern. PhonePe’s current structure would not be able to support a multi-category shopping app, according to Nigam.

In this case, PhonePe is onboarding seller apps, not stores. The company doesn’t touch the price. The seller pays a commission to the seller platform, and a part of it goes to the buyer platform — Pincode in this case. This is not a regulated space, and Nigam said the commission it charges is in single digits.

How it works

Pincode seemingly targets the same audience that uses Swiggy, Zomato, Dunzo or Zepto for food or grocery deliveries. How does Pincode — which had over 10,000 downloads on Google Play Store at the time of writing — match up to the other apps? Can it emerge as a contender? Let’s find out.

If you use PhonePe, signing up for Pincode is a seamless process as it integrates the data of both. If you’re not, you can download the Pincode app separately and sign up. It’s not tedious and it's fairly quick. Input your phone number and your address (since it’s dependent on your postal code), and you’re good to go.

The app layout and colour scheme are reminiscent of Dunzo, at least in its previous iterations.

Once you sign up, the home screen offers you six categories to choose from: food, grocery, home decor, pharma, electronics and fashion. You select a category and you’re presented with a list of stores in your immediate vicinity. Grocery and food both have sub-categories such as cuisine type (Chinese or Indian food) or product type (dairy, snacks, personal care).

So far, so good.

Niggles

However, this is where regular users of other apps may trip up.

Sorting is a standard feature in most other apps and you don’t realise how much it is relied upon until you don’t have it.

Being able to toggle between vegetarian and non-vegetarian food, or jumping to the ‘mains’ or ‘dessert’ section so that you don’t have to scroll through every listing is standard. Otherwise, it’s possible to search for a dish you want and get a list of all the restaurants that offer it.

No such feature is currently present on Pincode and neither is a listing of restaurants in a manner that flows logically. You can search for what a restaurant has to offer, but scrolling through its entire listing is a tedious process.

There’s another niggling feature that PhonePe may have to fix. After going through the listing and deciding what to order from a restaurant, the app tells you that orders aren’t being accepted. The same listing, however, continues to be live, with no indication to show otherwise.

Of course, this may be a bug in some areas only and based on limited use.

Similarly, for grocery, it offered up supermarkets in the area, and here there was an option to sort through the content as well. The supermarkets offered more high-end produce, while I was looking for more local pricing. Some colleagues who tried using the app were pleasantly surprised to find nearby stores on the app. This may have been just a matter of time and the pin code. One colleague realised that groceries on the app were cheaper than those ordered on other apps.

The pharma section offers over-the-counter products from Apollo Pharmacy and other chemists in the area. As in the case of Pincode’s competitors, there is no option to upload a prescription to receive drugs from the nearest pharmacy, which may severely limit the functionality of the feature.

One immensely helpful feature is the ability to add multiple carts. One can build a grocery list right there on the app, or if you’re not able to decide on which of three restaurants to order from — every cart is saved, making it easy to access. This was immensely helpful when I placed a food order and simply couldn’t make up my mind. My choices had been laid out for me and it didn’t disrupt my grocery order either.

Coming to pricing, most restaurants offered a 10-15 percent discount in my area. It was unclear if these discounts were offered by the restaurants, PhonePe, or ONDC.

It is important to note that prices are higher on apps such as Swiggy and Zomato than at the restaurant, which has to recover the cost of steep commissions levied by the apps.

A first-hand experience

I placed an order from a restaurant that was 1.3 km away from home at 6:04 pm on a Sunday evening. Apart from the food itself, I was charged Rs 30 for packaging and a Rs 8.92 seller convenience fee as well as Rs 6.90 in taxes. Delivery was free. Again, it’s unclear who was footing the cost of delivery.

The checkout experience was smooth, with zero glitches. The order was assigned swiftly and I received my order at 6.28 pm.

A progress bar displays when an order has been placed, accepted and being prepared and you also get to know when a rider is assigned. However, one is unable to track the rider, which becomes necessary in the case of a wrong map location to direct them to the right address.

There is a help feature on the app. I didn’t need to use it. However, another user’s grocery delivery was delayed by five hours and the chat was quite unhelpful.

Again, it’s only been one week and in this short duration, the app delivers and how. No technical glitch soured the experience and it was seamless for the most part.

One could argue that Pincode isn’t a platform-based business like the ones we are used to and is a new way of doing business. But old habits die hard and with people spoilt for choice, it may be worth making a few tweaks.