case

SMU-21-0004

This case was written by Wong Yuet Nan, Associate Professor Hoe Siu Loon and Dr. Jovina Ang at Singapore Management University. The case was prepared solely to provide material for class discussion. The authors do not intend to illustrate either effective or ineffective handling of a managerial situation. The authors may have disguised certain names and other identifying information to protect confidentiality. Copyright © 2021, Singapore Management University Version: 2021-05-21

BUS UNCLE CHATBOT – CREATING A SUCCESSFUL DIGITAL BUSINESS (B)

On 12 December 2016, Abhilash received an email from a worldwide digital media agency

requesting his help to advertise the BBC Player on Bus Uncle. The email read:1

Hi Abhilash,

It’s Nelly from ABC Global PR (the one who contacted you on Facebook). As mentioned

previously, one of the brands we're working with will be rolling out Wi-Fi for several bus

services to promote an upcoming launch. Hence, we’re exploring the possibility of working

together to inform Bus Uncle's followers to look out for those buses if they ask about the

specific bus services.

Understand you mentioned compensation. Could I please check how much roughly you’re

thinking of to charge for this partnership?

Please feel free to let me know if you have any questions. Thank you and I look forward to

hearing from you!

Best wishes,

Nelly Tan

ABC Global Public Relations

Abhilash had to read the email twice! Never had he expected that Bus Uncle would be so

influential that brands would want to advertise on it. He thought long and hard. Getting into

traditional advertising would affect Bus Uncle’s brand and personality. This form of traditional

advertising, which was essentially pop-up ads, was intrusive and diminished the user experience.

Hence, in his response, while Abhilash expressed his interest in working with the BBC, he was

firm that he would only collaborate and develop a conversational advertising campaign for the

company. Conversational advertising, still in its nascent stage, was a form of soft advertising, as

the targeted messaging was embedded at the logical point of the conversation. BBC agreed to his

suggestion and that was the start of Bus Uncle’s foray into advertising. As the popularity of Bus

Uncle surged, so too did the requests for advertising from other companies and organisations.

At the same time, Abhilash was getting many invitations from event and conference organisers to

speak about Bus Uncle. His work at TradeGecko was also getting intense. The company was

preparing for Series B funding2 and the founders had many deadlines to meet. Balancing the side

project and focusing on his real work at TradeGecko had become more and more challenging.

Should he resign and focus full-time on Bus Uncle?

1 Note: The names of the agency and person have been changed to protect privacy. 2 Cameron Priest, “The Story Behind TradeGecko’s USD 10M Series B Announcement”, Intuit Quickbooks, July 23, 2018,

https://www.tradegecko.com/blog/tradegecko/the-story-behind-tradegeckos-usd-10m-series-b, accessed March 2021.

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Foray into Advertising

By 6 February 2017, Abhilash was ready to launch the advertising campaign for BBC. He

programmed Bus Uncle to talk about the “BBC Player” whenever a bus painted with “BBC

Player” arrived at the designated bus stop. Bus Uncle promoted the BBC Player by telling the

users about Sherlock (a British TV series that it enjoyed watching), and how they could subscribe

to the BBC Player by including a link to the website (see Exhibit 1). Given that this form of

advertising appeared naturally in the conversational flow, no one complained about it.

Seeing the success of the campaign, other companies and organisations started reaching out to

Abhilash. By the end of 2017, Abhilash had worked on four conversational advertising campaigns

(see Exhibit 2). While some of the campaigns promoted products like the BBC Player, the others

were more educational and used to raise awareness among the public. For instance, the Land

Transport Authority (LTA)3 wanted to raise awareness about the privatisation of the bus

transportation sector. During a series of conversations that were featured on the chatbot and Bus

Uncle Facebook page, Bus Uncle talked about the importance of competition for raising service

levels as the main reason why the sector was being privatised.

When clients approached him, Abhilash continued to educate his clients about his views and

preference for conversational advertising.

When we work with clients, we always tell them that we don't want to dilute the Bus Uncle

brand. But we will help to improve the messaging towards your own products by getting Bus

Uncle to talk about the products at an appropriate moment in the conversation.

Elaborating further, Abhilash said,

Let me give you another example. When the Health Promotion Board came to us to promote

its National Daily 10,000-Step Challenge, we programmed Bus Uncle to get the users to walk

if they were going a short distance rather than take the bus. During the campaign, we also

shared details of the 10,000-step challenge and the potential rewards of participating in the

challenge.

Engaging with Users

Abhilash had thoroughly enjoyed developing the chatbot, and all his free time was spent working

on enhancing Bus Uncle. Yet, he wanted to do so much more. This led him to start with daily

posts on Bus Uncle’s Facebook page, which included sharing about the new features that he was

thinking of introducing on Bus Uncle and getting feedback about the user experience. He also

continued to post the funny and wide-ranging conversations that users were having with Bus

Uncle.

Before he launched “Directions”, which was essentially a feature for the users to ask about the

different modes of public transportation for getting from point A to point B, he ran a public Beta

test with 150 users. This Beta test took two rounds of iterations before “Directions” was launched

on Bus Uncle on 30 April 2017.

When Singapore hosted the Grand Prix in September that year, Abhilash posted a fun and witty

3 Land Transport Authority (LTA) was a statutory board responsible for rail and bus transportation, and road projects in

Singapore.

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response about the buses that were affected by the event (see Exhibit 3). One user even

commented that Bus Uncle’s response was easier to read than the LTA’s!

Speaking about and Promoting Bus Uncle at Events and Conferences

Before long, invitations arrived for Abhilash to share the Bus Uncle story. Abhilash received his

first invitation to speak about Bus Uncle on 21 January 2017 at the ITMA CIO (IT Management

Association Chief Information Officers’) Breakfast Talk. He was subsequently invited to speak

at several local and international events and conferences.

At these speaking engagements, Abhilash shared his insights as to why Bus Uncle had become a

popular chatbot. According to him, there were three reasons for Bus Uncle’s success. First, Bus

Uncle personified the typical Singaporean bus captain and he spoke Singlish. Second, the

conversations with Bus Uncle were totally non-linear, just like how one would talk to another

human being. Finally and most importantly, Bus Uncle gave users the answers they needed.

With these speaking engagements, both Abhilash’s and Bus Uncle’s digital footprint and brand

awareness grew significantly. Bus Uncle was increasing its popularity by the day and it was

getting anywhere from 200 to 500 likes on the Facebook page every day.4 Abhilash was becoming

recognised as an expert in building conversational chatbots. This eventually led Forrester

Research to seek his input and contributions for a research paper on how “Chatbots are

transforming marketing”.5

“What Should I do?”

Abhilash had broached the idea of quitting TradeGecko to focus full-time on Bus Uncle many

times over. His job at TradeGecko was getting more and more demanding as the company was

now servicing customers in over 100 countries6. TradeGecko had become highly successful,

growing by more than 1,000 percent per year, and operating from three countries – Singapore,

the Philippines and Canada.7 The founders were also preparing for Series B8 funding having

obtained Series A9 funding in 2015. Balancing the demands of Bus Uncle and TradeGecko was

becoming more and more challenging. Abhilash was stretched. He had also gained quite a lot of

weight in the past year because he had led a sedentary lifestyle, often sitting in front of a

computer.

He knew he couldn’t do it all – sales and marketing, as well as the technical and operational

aspects of Bus Uncle – and so he reached out to Dylan Tan, a good friend from Singapore

Management University to help him with sales and marketing. Tan agreed to join him to help.

On 1 June 2017, Abhilash tendered his resignation at TradeGecko, even though the advertising

4 Reawana Manjur, “Meet the 24 year-old Creator Behind the Very Local ‘Bus Uncle’ Chatbot”, Marketing-Interactive, March 3,

2017, https://www.marketing-interactive.com/meet-the-24-year-old-creator-behind-the-very-local-bus-uncle-chatbot, accessed April March 2021.

5 Xiaofeng Wang, “Chatbots are Transforming Marketing”, Forrester Research, May 24, 2017,

https://www.forrester.com/report/Chatbots+Are+Transforming+Marketing/-/E-RES136771, accessed April March 2021. 6 Cameron Priest, “The Story Behind TradeGecko’s USD 10M Series B Announcement”, Intuit Quickbooks, July 23, 2018,

https://www.tradegecko.com/blog/tradegecko/the-story-behind-tradegeckos-usd-10m-series-b, accessed March 2021. 7 Ibid. 8 Ibid. 9 Casey Locke, “TradeGecko Raises USD 6.5M Series A to Fuel Product Expansion”, Intuit Quickbooks, April 21, 2015,

https://www.tradegecko.com/blog/tradegecko/tradegecko-announces-6.5m-series-a-funding, accessed March 2021.

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revenue from Bus Uncle was far lower than his take-home salary.

Was quitting TradeGecko the right move for Abhilash? Did it make sense to focus full-time on

Bus Uncle so early in the chatbot’s journey?

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EXHIBIT 1: BUS UNCLE ADVERTISING FOR BBC WORLDWIDE

Source: Bus Uncle Facebook Page, February 6, 2017, https://www.facebook.com/sgbusuncle/posts/sponsored-

aiseh-nowaday-some-bus-got-free-wifi-lehif-you-take-65-or-186-maybe-go/1247592905324637/, accessed April

2021.

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EXHIBIT 2: BUS UNCLE ADVERTISING BUSINESS

Source: Abhilash Murthy, “Presentation to SMU Students”, February 22, 2021.

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EXHIBIT 3: INFORMATION ON BUSES THAT WERE AFFECTED DURING SINGAPORE

GRAND PRIX

Source: Bus Uncle Facebook Page, September 14, 2017,

https://www.facebook.com/sgbusuncle/posts/1468430676574191, accessed April 2021.