INDmoney · Investor growth

When the Rules Changed Overnight

We rebuilt a referral program until it worked. Then regulation shut it down, and we had to build it again somewhere else.

Sign-ups 6.2x CAC −40% vs inorganic After the pivot ~22K users/month

See the screens

PART 1

The rebuild

ACT 1

One program for everyone, built for no one

The INDstocks referral program treated every user the same. It was one-way, so only the referrer earned a reward, and the reward didn't care who you were or who you were likely to bring in.

But not all users behave alike. Our hypothesis was simple: investors bring in investors, and traders bring in traders. If that was true, they should be rewarded differently.

🌱

Investors

Long-term holders, likely to bring friends who invest for the long run.

⚡

Traders

Active, frequent users, likely to bring friends who trade.

ACT 2

Rewarding what a referral is actually worth

Splitting investors from traders was the start. Within each group, activity varies a lot. Someone who has invested ₹1,000 isn't the same as someone who has invested ₹1 lakh, so their rewards shouldn't be either.

Investor or trader status
Overall activity on the platform
Reward tiered by user value

Rewards scale with how valuable the user is

Lighter activity

Moderate activity

High activity

Illustrative. Actual tiers and amounts aren't shown.

ACT 3

Show people where their referral stands

A referral can take days to turn into a reward. Without visibility, that wait feels like nothing is happening. So we redesigned the journey after the share: every referral now shows its status, such as whether the friend signed up with the link or has opened their demat account.

ACT 4

The right moment, the right message

Referral is a cross-sell, so timing matters. We reworked where the entry points appear, aiming for moments when someone is most likely to want to share the app with their network.

We also customized the WhatsApp share messages and experimented with what they said, including the investment amounts we highlighted.

ACT 5

The button that was too polite

Users could share a referral two ways: a link or a code. The two buttons sat side by side, splitting the space 50/50. That even split was quietly causing a problem.

Friend joins with a code

→

Forgets to enter it at sign-up

→

Support ticket, manual fix

With a link, the code applies itself, because the friend installs the app through a deep link. So we tested giving the link more room.

Before

Share code

Share link

50/50: equal weight, so many users chose the code.

Winner

Code

Share link

30/70 in favor of the link, still on the right: better conversion, and fewer forgotten codes.

Sometimes the biggest lever is just how wide a button is.

ACT 6

Six months later

6.2xreferral sign-ups

5.3xtrade-account opens

2.8xnew investors

−40%CAC vs inorganic campaigns

Measured against the program before the relaunch.

PART 2

The rules change

ACT 7

Then the ground moved

Regulatory changes from the stock exchanges (NSE and BSE) meant brokers could no longer run certain referral programs. Ours was one of them. The program we'd just made work was no longer compliant.

What we did

Closed out every pending reward for users who had already referred
Shut down every referral entry point in the app
Paused referrals entirely while we found a compliant path

Honoring pending rewards mattered. The people who had trusted the program the most were the ones who'd referred, and they shouldn't pay for a rule change.

PART 3

The pivot

ACT 8

Where could referrals live now?

We still had a working playbook. We needed a product it could run on. INDmoney had three other options.

Ruled out

US stocks

Came with its own regulatory challenges.

Ruled out

Mutual funds

Also had its own regulatory challenges.

What we chose

Credit-card bill payments

We could run a referral program here compliantly, and it's a sticky product.

That stickiness was the real prize. If you get good cashback on your card bill one month, you remember it next month, and you come back to pay again.

ACT 9

A different kind of referral

This wasn't a copy-paste. Like the stocks program, it was built closely with finance and legal, but bill payments raised new questions: how to position it, how to keep out people gaming the system, and which basic KYC checks would confirm users were genuine.

	INDstocks referral	Bill-pay referral
Who's rewarded	Referrer only	Both referrer and friend
Reward tiered by	Investor or trader, platform activity	User persona, such as credit score
Where the reward goes	Paid to the referrer	Only on the next card bill payment
Built with	Finance and legal, with eligibility and KYC checks	Finance and legal, with anti-gaming and KYC checks

Locking the reward to the next bill payment did double duty. It couldn't be withdrawn to a bank account, and it gave every new user a built-in reason to come back.

ACT 10

A new channel, fast

~22Knew users a month, within 3 months

~30%first-time bill payers on the platform

And the story didn't end at the bill. INDmoney's North Star is turning users into investors and keeping them. Many of these new bill payers went on to become investors later in their journey.

Referred friend→ First bill payment→ Comes back next month→ Becomes an investor

THE FINAL WORD

Lose the channel, keep the playbook

The relaunch taught us how referrals really work: reward the right people, show progress, and remove tiny points of friction. When regulation took the channel away, that knowledge didn't go with it. We found a product where the playbook still fit, and one people naturally return to.

01Reward the behavior you want more of, not just the action.
02Small UI details, like a button's width, can move big numbers.
03When rules change, honor your users first, then look for where your playbook still works.
04Pick a product people come back to, and growth compounds.

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