Dhruv Upadhyay

My Projects

Vera Loans

Loan services platform (AA Client) leveraging Account Aggregator Framework initiated in India, with all the enablers. An infrastructure connecting small loans at scale through mobility including feature phones. Explicit consent management for awareness, and actors to facilitate reach and promote AA ecosystem.
Technologies used: APIs, USSD applications, privacy-preserving techniques, Zero-Knowledge Proofs
GitHub: https://github.com/IntManear/veraloans

FlexiTest Port

Patient-centered, privacy protected testing framework leveraging blockchains and distributed data storage to run a point of care or home test.
Objectives: to increase safety for both patients and doctors, to reduce the lead time around current processes, to have identity-based provenance, consumer consent-based data share and de-identified reporting and a privacy-protected minimal proof of safety.
GitHub: https://github.com/IntManear/FlexiTestPort

Quantitative Analysis of Indian Stocks

The Quantitative model mainly focuses on pairs-trading strategy which is used by many industry professionals. Pairs-Trading conventional models deal with co-relation and co-integration of time series but I have tried taking a more from-scratch approach instead of just calling the in-built Python functions so that the intricate workings are easily understood by the reader.
GitHub: https://github.com/IntManear/Quantitative-Analysis-of-Indian-Stocks

My Product Observations

DBS Digibank App

DBS is a digital-first bank in India. Their operations and infrastructure is virtually completely digital. This allowed them to focus on many of user’s pain points when using a banking application. Apps of even largest banks in India feel clunky and unintuitive to use - DBS has leveraged their digital bank proposition to position their bank as an attractive choice for this generation. They have also been successful in many ways in solving the pain-points.

Intuitive and easy to use UI/UX.
Fast payment processing - thus user may not switch to a separate payments app like Google Pay.
Providing personalised insights into one’s finance - user spends more time on the app, hence increasing engagement.
Providing full-suite of financial services like MF Investments on the app - potentially replacing direct investment apps like ETMoney.
Catering to additional services like travel booking, facilitating recharges etc.

Content subscription prompts on websites

You might have noticed these boxes pop-up on some article/newsletter sites. These websites basically monitor the presence of cursor on the screen and just as the user moves the cursor out of the screen (to probably close the tab), they bring this box to prompt the user to subscribe to their content.

I think this is pretty nifty implementation of a signal prompt - the visitor most probably visited the site in search of content they provide and just as he/she finishes reading it, this prompt will pop-up as the cursor is taken out of the website screen.

It’s a low ability prompt.
Possibly a high motivation one if the visitor found the content worthwhile.

So if prompted, there’s a good chance of user conversion here!

Spotify Search button

`Spotify` uses a single Search button to serve multiple functionalities

Tap 1x: Opens up the search tab which has genre selection
Tap 2x: Takes the user to the search bar and displays keyboard
Long Tap: Allows the user to use Spotify Assistant
Using a single button cleverly for multiple functions allows Spotify to optimize the usage of limited screen real-estate.

Slack's prompt asking users to upgrade

"Slack has it’s unique way of showing the free-tier message quota to the users. Keeping it in an easily accessible location helps in reminding the workspace if they need to upgrade to Slack’s pro version. They have structured it in a very concise way-"

Color-coded Pie chart representation of the message count
Primary benefit of upgrading to the pro version - “Upgrade to access your first 113k messages.”
Finally showing the currently active offers along with a link to explore all the pricing options - “Get 60% off a paid plan, for a limited time. See plans”

Moneycontrol

"Moneycontrol is a business & finance app with predominant presence in India They have recently introduced MC Minis, short explainers on a variety of subjects from stock market to economy that fits onto a phone screen."

With the UI they currently have, it can become a challenging task to look for a certain news and its effects on the markets/economy.
With this feature they are trying to solve a user pain point to access latest news quickly and in a concise manner.
Thereby reducing the time taken for a user to extract target information from the app.

Youtube Voice Search on PC

Youtube is testing a voice search feature on its web version. Currently voice search support is present on the mobile devices and the TV App of Youtube. With this feature on Youtube Web, they might be addressing to some of the following issues/pain-points:

Letting the users have a similar product experience on web as the app, thus bringing more consistency throughout the Youtube Platform.
Desktop screen time of an individual has increased significantly ever since companies around the world have adopted to the virtual workspace concept. So, that increase in time can be directly correlated to the time spent by the individual on Youtube Web.
Minimising the effort on the user’s end - using the in-built microphone for voice commands over using keyboard to type every search query - thus increasing adoption and engagement.
Currently this feature seems to be in the A/B Testing phase, I did not find this feature on one of my other accounts.

My Publications

Intracranial Haemorrhage Detection Using Neural Network-Based Methods With Federated Learning

Reinforcement and Imitation learning in Virtual Reality

Mini Case Studies

How would you improve Google Pay for consumers/buyers?

Persona of choice: Active Adopters

User pain points:

Cumbersome user journey to make a payment (6 steps)
Disorderly tile placement
Unorganized Expenses

Solutions:

Integrating Google assistant to smoothen user journey.
Introducing One tap payment button.
Using separate customisable tiles for individuals and businesses.
Introducing expense tracker.

view detailed solution

How would you increase the usage of "Wishlist" feature on Amazon marketplace

User persona of choice: Heavy and moderate users

Customer journey: User opens app --> Searches for the product --> Scrolls the list of products presented (applies filters of necessary) --> clicks on the product --> Scrolls the product page--> Clicks on "Wishlist"

Solutions:

Bring the wishlist button to the front - on the product tile
Prompt the user to wishlist the product after spending 20 seconds on product page.
Introduce customised suggestions "Based on your wishlist" on the Amazon Homepage.

view detailed solution

How would you measure the success of Amazon Alexa

Product stage: Growth
Target metric: Engagement
I'll start by mapping user need with the services Amazon Alexa offers, then we'll move to metrics for quantifying the effects.

User needs --- Service:

Music --- Prime Music
Questions --- Google Search
Games --- Amazon games
Cooking --- Recipe narration
Calendar updates --- Google calendar support
Shopping list --- Amazon Pantry and Marketplace
News updates --- Google and Amazon news

Metrics:

Month over month growth in average number of voice commands per day
Average duration of conversation per session
Task success rate
Media played through app Vs Alexa

view detailed solution

Education

Internship(s)

My Projects

My Product Observations

My Publications

Mini Case Studies

Achievements & Extra Curriculars