Engagement & Retention | Quicko | Vaibhav Bansal
Taxes are Easy, Taxes are Fun
Quicko is India's fastest growing tax platform for individuals and small businesses. With plug and play broker apps and data from ITD, you can file faster, with zero errors and get more refunds!
Product Features
Quicko has 4 different modules:
1. Save and calculate accurate advance tax
2. Pay your self-assesment and advance taxes
3. File your income tax return
4. Track your investments across brokers
Let's look at an overview of the 4 modules below
Understanding Quicko
Core Value Proposition (CVP) & User Experience
File taxes faster, with zero errors and get more refunds!
- With autofill using broker apps (securities and crypto), Income Tax Department and Form 16 Upload, users can autofill about 70-80% of tax return
- With tax calculation engines as per the latest tax guidelines, with expertise over 10 years, the ITR preparation is accurate with zero errors
- With the Income Tax regime analyzer, see the overall calculations and recommendations for regime selection to save taxes or even get more refunds!
- With our tax experts just a call away, get return filing assitance, breaking down jargons and lingo.
Natural Frequency
For Quicko, an income tax filing product, the natural frequency aligns with the tax filing frequency, that is yearly.
Quicko's other modules like Track and Save have different natural frequencies, but core value proposition is something served by the File module, where the natural frequency has to align with the goverment's filing frequency.
Active user
An active user is one who filed their income tax return with us within the last year.
Why someone who filed their taxes? Because only when someone files using Quicko they can realise the value proposition, "filing fast with zero errors", made possible by Quicko's powerful tax engines and product integrations.
Who is Quicko for?
Criteria | ICP 1 | ICP 2 | ICP 3 | ICP 4 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Name | First-time filers (Gen Z) | Mid-level salaried employees | Traders (F&O, intraday, crypto) | Self-employed professionals |
Description | Recent graduates & entry-level employees; filing ITR for the first time | Employees in private or government firms for few years now; have possible side income | Actively trading equities, derivatives, or crypto; need accurate P&L and loss carry-forwards | Independent professionals (consultants, freelancers, content creators) earning through online platforms or direct clients |
Age | 20-24 | 25-40 | 22-40 | 20-35 |
Location | Tier 1/2 cities (e.g., Bengaluru, Pune, Ahmedabad) | Major metros and tier 1/2 cities | Metro and tier 1 cities | PAN-India; metros plus emerging digital hubs |
Income (Annual) | â‚ą2.5L to â‚ą9L | â‚ą6L to â‚ą20L | â‚ą5L to â‚ą25L+ (varies based on gains) | â‚ą3L to â‚ą25L+ (varies based on experience and industry) |
Primary income sources |
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Tech comfort | High: used to mobile/web apps but unfamiliar with tax portals | Medium to high: Comfortable online but want minimal complexity | High: Since already using trading platforms and tools | High: Familiar with digital tools |
Pain points |
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Current solution |
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Features they value |
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Willingness to Pay | Moderate | High | Very High | High |
Time vs Money | Time | Time | Time | Time |
Frequency of usage | Once a year | Once a year | Once a month or more | 1-2 times/quarter |
Where do they spend their time |
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Where do they spend their money |
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User segmentation
We will segment our users by the Casual/Core/Power matrix, basis the features used. The goal of this type of segmentation is to engage our users to move from Casual to Core & Core to Power.
Criteria | Casual | Core | Power |
|---|---|---|---|
Features used | File taxes | File and Save taxes/Track investments | File taxes, Save taxes and Track investments |
ICP | ICP 1 (First-time filers) & ICP 2 (Mid-level salaried employees) |
| ICP 3 (Traders) |
Willingess to Pay | Moderate | High | Very High |
Primary income source |
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Secondary income source |
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JTBD of the user |
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Stickiness to platform | Moderate | High | Very High |
Breakdown of features
One might ask, why the Casual/Core/Power segmentation by features. The reason is that Quicko's different products have different CVP, natural frequency as well as different active user criteria. Let's look at the features.
1. File
2. Save taxes
3. Track investments
More features = More value derived
If users have more income sources across the different sections, using File will serve your immediate filing needs, but using Save and Track will truly unlock insights and tax saving opportunities for Quicko's users.
More features = High natural frequency
By having our users use features across Quicko, we can increase the natural frequency from yearly to weekly. With this high top of the mind awareness, the opportunities of engagement increase multi-fold.
More features = Higher stickiness
We've also seen the stickiness to the platform increase when users explore and take benefit of more features. Users that use Save, Pay, File and Track have very high stickiness compared to say an user that is only using File.
However, the ecosystem itself brings a layer of stickiness as the filing history is very important to users. Imagine a user having filed through Quicko for the last 5 years. Now, for this user, switching to a different tax platform would mean leaving all that history and data that would've made their next filing experience smoother. So, the average stickiness of our users is higher compared to say, users of a food ordering app.
Engagement framework
We will use the Breadth framework (Feature of engagement) to engage our users.
Why not Depth or Frequency?
The meaning of depth and frequency blurs for an income tax filing product like Quicko. Putting more money or time (Depth) will not allow the user to get more out of Quicko, and frequency is something that has to align with the filing and payment due dates. Quicko is serving a functional goal, file taxes on time.
Why Breath?
Quicko's different modules have different value proposition and different natural frequencies. By engaging users to explore other modules, users will get more out of Quicko, as well as achieve a frequency that is much higher than yearly.
We track retention rates to understand how well users stick with your product over time. Analyze them at key intervals (Day 0, Day 7, Day 30, etc.) and when the retention curve flattens.
It’s important to know which ICPs and acquisition channels drive the best retention. What features or sub-products keep users coming back? Use data to draw your retention curve.
Understanding Retention
Before we understand retention, a few key points:
- Core product: File taxes
- Natural frequency: Yearly
- Primary business window: ~3 months (May to July)
Bird's eye view
It was difficult to get company data or information from the internet about retention of similar products. It's important to note that the time to prepare, e-file, verify and refund credit varies for each user. Some users might also get a notice, and end up filing revised returns too.
Hence, I've used personal experience and guesstimation to come up with the retention curve.
User retention journey
- Most new users for Quicko are acquired during the tax filing window and that's when retention is at peak.
- As soon as the user completes their ITR filing, a major chunk of the user stops coming back on the product (retention drops).
- A few other users still come back to track status or filing a revised/belated return.
Timelines | Retention % | Event |
|---|---|---|
D0 | 100% | No. of users onboarded |
D15 | 70% | No. of users who've started preparing their return |
D30 | 60% | No. of users who've e-filed their ITR |
D45 | 20% | No. of users who come back to track return status |
M6 | 5% | No. of users who come on the product to file revised/belated return |
Microscopic view
Which acquisition channels drive the best retention?
1) Users coming from broker integrations
- These tend to become our most loyal users as they are able to instantly sync their investment data and realise the core value proposition of the product.
What features or sub-products keep users coming back?
1) Accountant feature
- CAs who're serving their clients through Quicko (5+ clients added on Quicko)
- Users who file taxes for their family members through Quicko (<5 clients)
- Users who've added their CA/family member as "Accountant" on Quicko (Accountant = 1)
These are the users who tend to show stickiness and high retention since they are not only using Quicko for personal filing but also bringing more users on the platform --> shows high product adoption.
2) Autofill from ITD feature & connect broker
- Users filing their ITR by auto-filling data from apps successfully get the best experience and are most likely to come back.
Understanding Churn at Quicko
Before we define our active, churned and at-risk users, let's relook at the core characteristics of Quicko.
JTBD of the user | Finish my annual ITR safely, quickly, penalty-free. |
Natural frequency | Filing is inherently yearly, filing window is from May to July. |
Value realization | The value moment is when a return is successfully e-verified. |
Who is an active user for Quicko?
An active user is one who filed their income tax return with us within the last year.
Who is a churned user for Quicko?
Anyone who filed taxes on Quicko last year but skipped the next filing season AND hasn't shown any meaningful progress in last 18 months (considering belated/revised return filers).
Top Reasons users churn
Identifying at-risk users for Quicko
Who? A user who filed at least once (achieved JTBD) but
- exhibited signs of poor experience during last filing season
- shows declining engagement signals before the current filing cycle
Who are our at-risk users?
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