Once Upon a Time: Amar Chitra Katha’s Story
In 1967, Anant Pai embarked on a mission to bring Indian stories to life for children across the world. Amar Chitra Katha was born to bridge the gap between India’s heritage and the modern world. Through beautifully illustrated comic books, the series captured the imaginations of children and adults alike, narrating stories of Indian history, mythology, and culture.
Today, Amar Chitra Katha has evolved into a multi-channel publisher, selling its cherished content through physical stores, online platforms, and even apps. But this was not always the case. A few years ago, the organization faced a growing challenge of catering to a new digital-savvy consumer base, with a primarily traditional business setup. Only 1% of their overall business came in through digital channels, which they wanted to grow to 50% within 7-8 years.
To do this, they sought a payments partner, who would not only help them process digital payments seamlessly but would act as a catalyst in their transformation from a traditional, offline business to a new-age D2C brand. That’s when they turned to Razorpay’s UPI Stack. With its success rate boosting features, Razorpay UPI stack was able to deliver a 6% uptick in success rate every month resulting in 85% payment success in October. Amar Chitra Katha, powered by Razorpay, delivered a seamless online shopping experience, boosting its online business from 1% to 50% and reducing cart abandonment from 9% to 1% in just 3 years.
Addressing Payment Issues in a Niche Market with Growing Demand
As a marketplace publisher offering niche cultural content, Amar Chitra Katha operates in a competitive space, selling both physical and digital versions of their book, along with a range of merchandise and games. With growing traffic on their app and website, payment failures were a challenge, with cart abandonment rates as high as 9%. Additionally, a large part of their audience, nostalgic readers and parents educating their children on Indian culture – needed a convenient, reliable payment experience.
Razorpay’s SR Boosters to the Rescue!
In 2019, Amar Chitra Katha partnered with Razorpay to resolve their payment challenges. Razorpay introduced a combination of solutions, including its UPI Stack. The features provided by this stack helped improve conversion and success rates every month. Here’s how:
- UPI Native Intent
This feature allowed Amar Chitra Katha customers to seamlessly make payments through UPI without needing to manually enter their UPI ID. In the month of October, UPI intent drove an 87.3% adoption rate for UPI payments, contributing to a 3.92% increase in SR, and an additional Rs. 7.5 Lakhs in revenue.
- Dynamic Routing
By utilizing Razorpay’s machine learning-powered dynamic routing system, Amar Chitra Katha could automatically route payments through the most successful gateways during downtimes. This added another 2% to their SR, leading to Rs. 3.8 Lakhs in additional revenue every month.
The Results: Seamless Payments, Satisfied Customers
Amar Chitra Katha’s payment journey with Razorpay has been a success story in itself. Its UPI stack delivered a success rate of 85% creating an uptick of 6%.
- Business Growth: Since partnering with Razorpay, Amar Chitra Katha has witnessed a 50% YoY business growth. Due to the SR boosting UPI features, Amar Chitra Katha saw a total revenue increase of Rs. 11.3 Lakhs in just 30 days.
- UPI Dominance: 52% of their total payment volume now comes via UPI, with the rest split between cards and net banking.
- Cart Abandonment: Reduced from 9% to 1%, a dramatic improvement that is 40% lower than other payment aggregators.
A Strong Partnership: Amar Chitra Katha’s Story with Razorpay
Reflecting on their partnership, Amar Chitra Katha expresses strong satisfaction with Razorpay’s performance. The ability to resolve issues quickly and scale effortlessly has been a game-changer for their operations. Over the past five years, Deepesh Kothari has actively recommended Razorpay to over 60+ brands, praising Razorpay’s ease of use and self-explanatory interface.
With Razorpay, Amar Chitra Katha continues to grow, spreading, delight and learning among parents and children, one seamless transaction at a time!
