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 (D)

Fast forward in time. It was April 2021 and the number of subscribers for Bus Uncle had been

growing steadily (see Exhibit 1).

Smiling to himself, Abhilash was proud of what he had accomplished in such a short time.

Revenue was growing significantly at 300 percent year-on-year for the chatbot business. He now

had a strong team that included Yin Yin, who had joined him as co-founder and Chief Operating

Officer, focusing on strategic planning, sales and marketing, and platform development. Yin Yin

had been part of the Bus Uncle journey from the start, and was totally aligned to his vision for the

chatbot business. Abhilash was only 29 years old and Yin Yin, 27 years old.

The two co-founders had been hard at work. They reinvented the chatbot business, which was

now more scalable (see Exhibit 2). It offered a subscription-based chatbots-as-a-service for

clients, where four levels of service were provided to any business wanting to develop its own

chatbots (see Exhibit 3). The business was renamed BotDistrikt1, as the Bus Uncle name no

longer was all encompassing for what the business stood for.

BotDistrikt became the first Southeast Asian enterprise chatbot-building platform that focused on

helping clients create chatbots that were human-like and conversation-based. It also offered a

feature for the chatbots to be deployed to multiple platforms including websites, Facebook

Messenger, Telegram, Skype, Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa.

The two co-founders also developed the BotDistrikt score – a metric to help their clients to

determine the usage, simplicity and effectiveness of the chatbot. The other feature of BotDistrikt

was that it offered its clients an analytics dashboard that aggregated analytics data from Facebook

Analytics and Chatbase by Google.

Feeling very grateful and blessed, Abhilash smiled and said,

This had been such a wonderful journey. I really had no idea that I would be running my own

chatbot business when I started Bus Uncle back in 2016.

1 Information about BotDistrikt can be found at https://www.botdistrikt.com, accessed April 2021.

SMU-21-0004 Bus Uncle Chatbot – Creating a Successful Digital Business (D)

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EXHIBIT 1: BUS UNCLE SUBSCRIBER GROWTH

Source: Abhilash Murthy

SMU-21-0004 Bus Uncle Chatbot – Creating a Successful Digital Business (D)

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EXHIBIT 2: BOTDISTRIKT – END-TO-END BUSINESS MODEL

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

SMU-21-0004 Bus Uncle Chatbot – Creating a Successful Digital Business (D)

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EXHIBIT 3: BUS UNCLE WEBSITE

Source: BotDistrikt Website, https://www.botdistrikt.com/pricing, accessed April 2021.