Gold Rush

~70% of Paytm Gold users made a single investment and went dormant within 30 days. Push notifications had stopped moving the needle — open rates were falling, and users who came back once rarely came back again.

We needed repeat investment behavior without discounting the product — margin risk and long-term precedent ruled that out early. The bet was whether status and competition could do what money couldn't.

• 01Designed the full campaign mechanics end-to-end: time-bound contest period, leaderboard ranking by points earned per rupee invested, and auto-enrollment on qualifying purchases.
• 02Built the points system: percentage of investment amount converted to points, with real-time leaderboard updates creating live competition between users.
• 03Owned every entry point across the app: landing page CTA, hero banner, and post-investment success screen — each tuned for enrollment.
• 04Defined edge-case logic for tie-breaking across ranks, including multi-way ties — the kind of decisions that never make the PRD but break trust if handled wrong.
• 05Worked through regulatory and legal constraints to structure the campaign in a way that felt seamless while staying fully compliant.

28% more lump sum investments during the campaign compared to the 4 weeks before it. The post-investment enrollment screen became one of the highest-converting touchpoints in the flow. Users came back daily to check their rank — turning a one-time product into a daily habit for the campaign window.

Gamification only works when the stakes feel real. The leaderboard created genuine competition — users refreshed their rank multiple times a day. The hardest part wasn't the mechanics; it was the edge cases and making legal constraints feel invisible to the user.

What I'd rebuild: a post-campaign re-engagement hook. Investments returned to baseline within 2 weeks of the campaign ending — which means we drove activity, but not habit. The next version needs a mechanic that transfers that urgency into something stickier.