Never run out of ink – that is the promise of HP Instant Ink. This promise attracts millions of customers worldwide. Shuchir Bhatia, Global Product Manager for HP Instant Ink takes us on a journey to discover how HP runs this proposition on a global scale.
Shuchir explains why HP chose a Pay-per-Month over a Pay-per-Use (or Pay per Page) plan and how the ink and the printer play together for HP Instant Ink. Connectivity is key, also for fraud protection. Additionally, we get insights into regional adaptation parameters and the go-to-market interfaces with the local sales organisation.
This episode is the second in the series PaaS Decoded, 16 conversations about the fine details of product-as-a-service.
Video Impression
People
Shuchir Bhatia, Senior Product Manager: Consumer Subscriptions – Instant Ink (Global)
Patrick Hypscher, Co-Founder of Green PO, Expert in Sustainable Business Models
Chapters
00:00 Intro
02:09 What qualifies HP Instant Ink as Product-as-a-Service
05:16 Pay per Use vs Pay per Month
08:10 Market focus: B2B and B2C
09:28 Product Service Bundle
11:14 Connected Devices as Enabler
14:22 Fraud Protection and Remote Control
21:13 International differences in the proposition
25:43 Internal Organisation: Global and local teams
29:24 Good internal collaboration
31:55 Ensure reverse logistics, customer education and scalable infrastructure
34:11 The future: AI, product design & sustainable materials
37:34 Wanted: Partners from adjacent services
About HP Instant Ink:
HP Instant Ink is a subscription service offered by HP that provides customers with a convenient way to manage their printer ink needs. Instead of purchasing ink cartridges individually, subscribers pay a monthly fee based on the number of pages they plan to print.
Further Links
HP Instant Ink https://instantink.hpconnected.com/uk/en/l/v2
Transcript
[00:00:00] Intro
Shuchir Bhatia: The product vision, strategy and product development is usually handled at a global level, which is the product team or the central team. And the regional and country teams, they are primarily responsible for go to market activities, ensuring regional and local relevance, ensuring successful launch of the product, generating awareness about the product, partnership with channel partners, measuring performance against the plan. So that’s how we’re structured.
Patrick Hypscher: Welcome to the second episode of PaaS Decoded. 16 conversations about the fine details of product as a service. In the first episode, Bert van Son explained how MUD Jeans uses the Lease a Jeans concept to access used products. In today’s episode, we cover another B2C example, but focus on the international dimension, especially the implications for the proposition and the internal organisation. Let’s start.
Patrick Hypscher: He has degrees in commerce. Computer science, finance, and marketing. He worked at HP as manager for competitive intelligence and strategy before starting his own food startup in New Delhi. Afterwards, he returned to HP as senior product manager, where he is globally in charge of consumer subscription. Welcome Shuchir.
Shuchir Bhatia: Hi, Patrick. Thanks for having me.
Patrick Hypscher: Shuchir, what, what was the last page you personally printed
Shuchir Bhatia: I printed an activity sheet for my three year old daughter. She likes to do some kind of coloring with her color pencils and crayons. So that’s what I printed for her.
[00:02:09] What qualifies HP Instant Ink as Product-as-a-Service
Patrick Hypscher: I know that with my kids also let’s stick to the printing and switch to the commercial side. You are responsible for HP Instant Ink. In what way is that a product as a service?
Shuchir Bhatia: Right. So my role in consumer subscription and services group is I handle the Instant Ink globally, Instant Ink product and Instant Ink is a consumable as a service product that promises savings and convenience to HP printer users. So how it works is customers can choose a monthly page plan and they can print as they as per their print requirement. Customers never run out of ink because ink is always delivered before they run out of ink. As a part of the subscription, customers also get free delivery of cartridges. And free recycling of cartridges. And that’s not the end of the value. The value that comes along with Instant Ink subscription is anybody who subscribes, they save up to 50 percent on the cost of printing the consumables as a service is very different from buying consumables transactionally. So if you have owned a printer before, you would know that every time a customer runs low on ink or toner. The first thought is to go online or go to a retail store to buy new cartridges. As a part of Instant Ink, that model is not applicable any longer. The cartridges are delivered to customers as a part of Instant Ink subscription. They only pay for the pages that they are printing. They are not paying for the cartridges. When a customer has consumed the cartridge, we send them a new cartridge before they run out and the old one, we take it back and we recycle that cartridge. So that’s how this is a product as a service and not a transaction sale.
Patrick Hypscher: Okay, so actually the problem you’re solving for the customer is, or there are actually two, sounds to me, it’s convenience and it’s also cost.
Shuchir Bhatia: Convenience and savings. That’s right.
Patrick Hypscher: Any other important value you see on the customer side?
Shuchir Bhatia: Really, this is about taking all the pain surrounding the product away from the customer. So what we are really doing is in a transactional environment, when a customer buys a product, they are fully responsible for using and disposing of that product by offering supplies as a service or consumables as a service, we are taking that headache away of managing supplies, both during the use and during post use.
So for example, after life of the cartridge, we take it back. We are responsible for recycling. That is how they, this service model aligns really well with circular economic principles. We believe we can deliver best value to the customer at the, at the same time, we can keep circular economic principles in mind and make sure that whatever we are putting out in the market, we take it back, recycle responsibly, and then reuse it for new cartridges.
[00:05:16] Pay per Use vs Pay per Month
Patrick Hypscher: I saw on at least a German website that you offer it for a monthly fee depending on the number of. Pages I want to print per month. And you don’t have a price per page that’s something, that usually comes to people’s mind to say, Oh, cool. You can pay per page, so to say why do you offer this monthly fee and not a price per
Shuchir Bhatia: That’s a very good question, Patrick. And I get asked this question a lot, not just from my colleagues at HP, but also my family members and people who know that I’m working in Instant Ink.
So whenever we launch a new service, our first objective is to develop a service that would work for majority of our customers, right? You always call for the biggest use case. And what we have seen is since the time Instant Ink was developed, subscription model work perfectly for most of our customers, customers, like the reliability or certainty of a certain amount per month that they paid. So when a billing statement comes in, they see that 1. 99 or 2. 99 charge on their billing statement, they know this is what they pay every month. So that is a certain thing a customer loves about Instant Ink. They don’t have to worry about how many pages they printed that month. They might have printed 15 pages one month. They might have printed 25 pages the other month. And customers do not want to change what they are charged. And that’s the beauty of how our subscription model works. If you are enrolled in a certain page plan, you pay for that page plan. Let’s say you subscribe to a 50 page plan and this month you printed only 45 pages out of your 50 page plan. That means there were five unused pages that roll over to the next month. Now the next month, if you again, print 50 or 55 page. in that month, your charge doesn’t change because you have five pages from the previous month and you have 50 pages in this month. So that way a customer sees a certain amount that is built to them every month. Our customers love that kind of certainty.
Now having said that, like all businesses, when you launch a new product in the market, you learn from the usage behavior. You start solving for the next bigger group and then the next bigger group. And we have seen that there may be an opportunity to offer a different kind of a pricing model. So this is a question for all our organization to consider. Do we want to offer something that doesn’t require a monthly commitment? Can we offer something that doesn’t charge customer every month, maybe charges them once a quarter, maybe charges them once in six months, but customers still have access to the service without having to commit to a certain amount every month. So that’s an opportunity. And like all the businesses. We will solve for such use cases in the future as well.
[00:08:10] Market focus: B2B and B2C
Patrick Hypscher: Okay. And to put that in context are we talking B2C only, or are there also B2B customers? Knowing that let’s say leasing printers in general is something that has been around already for, I think, decades.
Shuchir Bhatia: Right. So this question would have different layers.
So first thing to think about is when you say B2B versus B2C: what is the B2B component that you think about in your mind? How we think about our addressable markets is there are customers who print in home environment. There are customers who print in business environment. There may be customers who still print in bigger business environment like enterprises. So it really depends on how you filter your markets. In our case, Instant Ink is currently designed for home users and those small businesses that do not have a dedicated IT environment or an IT department.
The customers who manage their printer and supplies on their own, these could be small businesses, these could be home users, these could be professionals working from home. So that’s how Instant Ink is structured. We go after this part of the market and not B2B or B2 or business to enterprise side of the market, because that is already catered to by managed print services offerings that HP also has.
[00:09:28] Product Service Bundle
Patrick Hypscher: Clear. Got that. So, so let’s stick to the printers. Do I get it right that the customers own the printer and you provide the cartridge or the ink?
Shuchir Bhatia: Right. When we first conceived the idea of Instant Ink, that was the model that we followed. Meaning if you own an HP printer already, you can subscribe for consumables as a service.
However, like I explained before, as you grow, you try to look for other pockets of opportunity and what the customer requirements are in the market. And we figured out that there is a substantial requirement or demand for a complete end to end service that includes the printer as well. So recently our organization launched something called an HP all in plan, which includes the printer as well.
So now imagine how it works. With Instant Ink, you have to own a printer and then you subscribe to a consumable service, which is Instant Ink. With HP all in Plan- let’s say you are out in the market to buy a new printer- now you can choose a printer and a page plan, which will be charged in the form of one monthly subscription fee, and you get a printer of your choice. You get your supplies taken care of by HP Instant Ink, and as a result, you get a complete end to end service.
You could also opt for paper as a service. So that gives you a complete package. Now you have a hardware that is covered by warranty for the lifetime of the printer. You have a consumable as a service, and if you are interested, you can also opt for paper as a service.
Patrick Hypscher: Okay, cool. So the only constraint is then the fantasy of the kids when it comes to the, the pages to print out.
[00:11:14] Connected Devices as Enabler
Patrick Hypscher: When you, you mentioned that I don’t have to worry about reordering the cartridges. How important is the connectivity of the printers for that?
Shuchir Bhatia: So Patrick, as you would know from your previous background, products that are connected to internet, it’s easier for the service providers to monitor the usage and give you the best level of service. In the printers, printer as a service or consumables as a service. Or print as a service, connectivity is the core aspect that makes this business model possible. Let me explain why.
When we offer consumables as a service to a customer or print as a service to a customer under the all in plan, it is imperative that HP monitors the usage of that product. Let’s say you are subscribed to consumables as a service which is Instant Ink and if you are about to run low on ink I can already know that Patrick requires another set of cartridge.
Maybe he would have certain print requirement coming up in next 6, 7 days, 10 days. He shouldn’t be stranded out of ink. This is how we figure out that a Patrick or let’s say a Sam or a John in certain state at a certain address requires ink at a particular time. And that is how our system is designed. That cartridges will always arrive before you run out of ink. And that’s the magic of the service. Connectivity is very, very important. So that’s one aspect of delivering the value prop that we promised to the customer, convenience and savings.
But the other important aspect of connectivity is we have to make sure that the customers. are being communicated about the status of their service in a timely manner. We have to inform the customers how many pages they printed in a particular month. And all of this is only possible if our printers are connected to the internet, they are communicating their usage data back to us so that we can tell the customers what to expect, what is the charge coming up on their next statement.
Patrick Hypscher: I remember this let’s say functionality also with home appliances. And that’s, a different story because fortunately printer is almost always connected to a PC, which is not the case for a washing machine. But was this functionality already baked in the printers when you started the proposition? Or did you have to place a change request to enable that feature to actually then run the business?
Shuchir Bhatia: Right. So there are different requirements based on what you want to enable for a customer. In case of Instant Ink, the ability to monitor usage of the printer or how many pages are printed, what features are used is what we call telemetry data. And like most IoT devices, a printer is also an internet connected device that communicates through the cloud to our servers and reports data on telemetry. Now that functionality already existed.
[00:14:22] Fraud Protection and Remote Control
Shuchir Bhatia: To be able to successfully offer an imprinting model, one of the other aspects you have to figure out is how do you make sure that the business model that you are offering to the customer is abuse proof, is foolproof, right? Because you don’t want to be in a situation where you place an expensive refrigerator and then you are not able to know what the customer did with that refrigerator. Let’s say the customer defaulted on their payment. How do you make sure that it’ll retain the control of a device? That same kind of,
Patrick Hypscher: Never happens. That never happens. Joking. You’re absolutely right.
Shuchir Bhatia: …in Instant Ink as well, and, and this doesn’t just apply to Instant Ink. For most of the internet or IoT based services, this functionality is important for the service provider to have so that they can make sure that the devices that are placed with the customers can be controlled through remote monitoring and remote control.
Patrick Hypscher: And I mean, it’s a bit unprepared, but if we’re close to that topic, do you have functionality or do you have means to, block the printer if invoices are not paid, especially in the constellation when the printer is owned by the customer?
Shuchir Bhatia: Right. So this is a tricky one. So how I would answer this is what applies in case of most IoT related devices. Also perhaps applies to Instant Ink.
Think of it this way. Let’s say you own a Tesla car and you have bought it with car as a service kind of a model where you are making monthly payments. And this car is continuously connected to the internet. Now, as a customer, in most cases, you would be honoring your monthly commitment for the car that you have to make the monthly payment that you have to make for the car that you are using. Now, as a service provider, if the service is offered by Tesla or a third party, they need to make sure that all their customers are paying on time. And when they pay on time, they can continue to have access to that Tesla car for an extended period of time. But what happens in case of bad actors? Let’s say there is some customer who buys a Tesla car and defaults on their payment intentionally, perhaps. In most cases, not, but let’s say in some cases, few cases, there are customers who are mad actors and they want to abuse the system.
In such a case, a company like Tesla or a third party service provider would want to make sure that the device cannot be used if the customer did not make the payment on time. And similar is the case in Instant Ink. If a customer decides to cancel the service, Instant Ink service under wayse they receive consumables, or if they defaulted on the payment, we give them grace, period. Right. It is possible credit card expired. It is possible that a customer change their credit card, whatever. In such cases, we remind customers about the pending charge on their account, and we give them sufficient time to be able to make the payment. Only if a customer is not able to make the payment, or if they have terminated the account, they lose access to those cartridges that work only with the subscription. We do not disable the printer. A customer who owns a printer can continue to use their printer with traditional supplies or what we call retail bought supplies. So if you are an Instant Ink customer today and tomorrow you decide not to have Instant Ink, that’s completely fine. You can simply go to Walmart, Amazon, your favorite retailer, you can buy cartridges, insert it in your printer and your printer will work as normal.
Patrick Hypscher: Okay, so you’re actually able to identify the cartridges also, and to, to make that decision.
Shuchir Bhatia: Yes.
Patrick Hypscher: And, okay, clear. That, that sounds pretty nice. One last question about the cartridges. You mentioned you recycle them. What happens to the cartridges once they come back?
Shuchir Bhatia: Right. So, one interesting thing with this printing model is every time we send customers a new set of cartridges, we send that in a cardboard box, right? As a part of that cardboard box we include a recycling envelope. So these new cartridges show up on a customer’s door. They can simply use the new cartridges, put it in their printer. The cartridges that they have exhausted, they can put it back in the recycling envelope. They can combine multiple set of cartridge in the same envelope. Or they can simply send, let’s say, whatever number of cartridges they have available today, they can send it back to our recycling center. It is a part of what we call HP Planet Partners Program. And once we get those cartridges back, we recycle them and we reuse the plastic in making the new cartridges.
Patrick Hypscher: So, one last question about the cartridges. Based on the conversations we had, I’m pretty sure you already thought about not only recycling the material, but refilling the cartridges. Is there anything you can say about that? Are there any plans to do that?
Shuchir Bhatia: Right. So like I explained before, used cartridges that are returned to us as a part of the service. We prioritize recycling and reusing components as much as possible, aligning with the circular principles. This not only reduces the waste, but it also lessens the environmental impact of producing new cartridges. Now, having said that, definitely there could be an opportunity where instead of simply recycling all the cartridges we get back, we could find or create a system where we can find whether there are any cartridges that are returned to us, which are in good enough condition to be refilled and then again deployed with the next customer. But this is a concept that would probably require certain kind of testing with our customers, because we have seen as the acceptability of reuse, renew is becoming more prevalent in the market there may be still some customers, who expect their products to be always new, right? So we will have to find out whether there is big enough group that would be resonating with this kind of an idea where cartridges delivered to them as a part of a sitting service could be refilled cartridges instead of fresh manufactured factory new cart. So that’s something that would be considered in the future, but of course it would require a lot of testing.
[00:21:13] International differences in the proposition
Patrick Hypscher: Okay. Got it. So let’s continue on the customer side. If I’m not mistaken, you’re active in about 40 different countries. I assume that you have to adapt the offering to certain local conditions. Are there two, three main dimensions that you most likely have to configure to fit it to local needs and what are these dimensions?
Shuchir Bhatia: The answer to this question can be simple or complex based on how we look at it. When you consider this question from customer value prop point of view, the value prop is very similar across all those 40 countries. The value prop of savings and convenience is consistent across all those 40 countries. Nothing changes.
The price a customer pays in those countries is also largely similar. So you might be paying 2. 99 for a certain plan in US and you might be paying a comparable 2. 99 in let’s say Germany for the similar plan. That way the value prop of savings and convenience and the price a customer pays doesn’t change.
Now what might be different is the value prop perception on the customer side. Let me give you an example. There could be some customers who are not price sensitive. In a certain market, and as a result, you would see a very high level of adoption in that country. Whereas in another country, there could be customers who do not like subscription per se. So, as a result, the adoption level in that country might be lower. There could be still another country where at the same price you’re seeing even higher level of adoption because this is a country where subscription services are very pervasive. And as a result, customers do not stick to their old habits of consumption. Right? So when you offer consumers as a service, although it is a new model, customers previously were attuned to purchasing their own cartridges and then managing their own supplies. But under this model, you are paying for pages not for the cartridges.
So it really depends on what kind of country you are operating in and how customers perceive the value of your service. The value prop at a high level is the same across all these 40 countries, but how customers perceive that could differ from country to country as a result, our adoption level changes.
Patrick Hypscher: Yeah. Okay. So that, that’s also pretty interesting that it seems to come down to the, let’s say openness towards subscriptions in general. Yeah. That’s, that’s what I’m hearing.
Shuchir Bhatia: It could also be. If I give you an example of a developed market country versus a growth market country, let’s say. You are offering Instant Ink in U. S. at a certain price. Again, let’s take example of 2. 99 plan. Would a customer in Malaysia or in a country like India or China be eager to pay same 2. 99 equivalent in their currency for the same page plan? Maybe, maybe not.
And this is where market dynamics from one market to another could be very different. Reason being, the customer behavior is different. Reason being, the alternatives that these customers have access to might be very different.
So, while in a country like US, which is geographically very disperse country, there may not be too many print and copy shops in the neighborhood. So customers may want the convenience of owning a printer, keeping it, keeping, keeping it in their home for their personal use and the convenience of consumables as a service instantly. But if we go to a growth market like a China or a Malaysia, where the populations, population density is very high, there could be some copy shops. As a result, not all the customers would find convenient to own a printer and operate a printer on their own. Maybe they print only once in a year. Two times in a year, such a customer has access to neighborhood print coffee shops.
So that’s how customer behavior market dynamics can differ from one market to another. Alternatives might be different. Economic factors might be different, price sensitivity might be different, which impacts the adoption of the service in different markets.
[00:25:43] Internal Organisation: Global and local teams
Patrick Hypscher: Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. That sounds exciting, especially in your case, you’re looking at it from a global perspective. Let’s stick to that international dimension and have a look at the internal organization. How are you organized at Instant Ink? What are the things you do centrally or globally? And what are regional or local responsibilities?
Shuchir Bhatia: Yeah, at a scale that we are operating in and because we are a part of a business that has operated for a long period of time, HP as a company has presence in almost all the countries across the world.
Instant Ink is a business model that is more recent within the company. So we have the benefit of using the established internal organizational structure. So grateful for that.
And how it is set up is the product vision strategy and product development is usually handled at a global level, which is the product team or the central team, as you perhaps wanted to say. And the regional and country teams, they are primarily responsible for go to market activities, ensuring regional and local relevance. Ensuring successful launch of the product, generating awareness about the product, partnership with channel partners, measuring performance against the plan. So that’s how we’re structured.
Patrick Hypscher: Was it easy for you to fit the local structure or are there countries where you have to see, where does this responsibility fit in?
Shuchir Bhatia: That’s a tricky one, but I think how we operate is very similar to how we have operated as a hardware team for a long.
Patrick Hypscher: Okay.
Shuchir Bhatia: So let’s talk about PC or printers that we sell that we have selling on a transactional basis.
The responsibilities for product vision and strategy and product development always sits in the GPU. And GTM teams are at the regional and local level. They may still roll up to the global sales organization or global GTM organization, but the participants or the team that operate at the regional level, all the team members are also situated in that region or in the country.
So in case of Instant Ink, yes, we have been very flexible in terms of using the existing muscle. So whenever we have to launch in a new country, we will work with the existing hardware teams, but we will also have our own GTM teams working with the hardware GTM teams so that we go together as a partner and show up as one team, as one company in front of the customer.
Patrick Hypscher: And responsibility for the revenues is with the local or regional teams, of course, you probably have targets about that one, but, but the revenue is shown in the countries.
Shuchir Bhatia: For most part, that would be true, but as more and more companies are evolving their business models and getting into product as a service space, we have also seen some trends -I’m not talking about HP here I’m making a general comment- that product teams are also now beginning to take ownership of the revenue or profitability targets that could come in the form of adding new features, adding new lines of services, or entering into adjacent markets to help grow the business. So I’m seeing more and more companies going to a model where the product team or the global team, as well as the GTM teams now act as a partner, especially in cases where it is a product led kind of a model.
[00:29:24] Good internal collaboration
Patrick Hypscher: HP has a history of I mean, it’s, it’s an international company already for, for quite some time. Can you share the secret to a good collaboration with the regional teams?
Shuchir Bhatia: What I would say is I’m still learning what the magic or secret of good collaboration is and like any, any person who, who is learning about new business models, I think I’m one of them. So what I have learned, I can speak to that.
I think the effective collaboration happens when you have clear communication with your GTM and sales organization. Because as a product team, we like to believe that we know everything about the customer is on the user research we have done based on the customer feedback that we read let’s say in online communities or customer reviews that we see in the online communities. But really there is some magic that happens at point of sale, meaning customer takes out his wallet or a credit card to make the final payment. That is a make or break moment for the customer that is a moment of truth for the customer and really that is where the GTM and the sales teams are closest to the customer and they can provide us the rich feedback. So it is very important. I believe the secret to good collaboration is not to just think that product is be all and end all. And product alone defines the success or failure of a service. And we have to continue to hear the feedback that our sales team and the marketing team, go to market team is collecting from the market with firsthand experience of speaking with the customers and keep incorporating that feedback in future iterations of the product. I would say that would be the secret to a good collaboration.
Patrick Hypscher: It sounds a bit like a role model, especially your learning attitude, and that’s, the prerequisite if you want to be successful, or at least if you want to be successful in the process of finding out if it works, yeah, because sometimes the result can also be that this specific idea might not have a sufficiently big market.
Nice. We’re coming towards the end and I have three general questions that I ask to everyone who’s part of these product as a service series. The first one is, what do you think, what’s the main thing a brand or manufacturer has to ensure before you start a product as a service?
[00:31:55] Ensure reverse logistics, customer education and scalable infrastructure
Shuchir Bhatia: I would say it is about figuring out as you launch something new, you figure out what are the things that you’re still missing. But if I could say what are the things that need to be in place for making a circular product as a service successful, it would be to ensure that you have reverse logistics capability.
You have enough effective customer education capability in the sense that because in most of the business models where you are now beginning to offer a physical product as a service, we have seen that it requires a lot of change in customer habit and how they consume the service. For ages and ages, customers have been used to buying a product, owning it through the life of the product, managing or maintaining the product, warranty, if something goes wrong, they bring it to the service center, all those things. So this is a model that they have been habituated with. This is something that sounds familiar to them. Now, when you bring such customer from ownership model to product as a service model, it requires a lot of customer education. It requires you to make the customer believe that this product as a service is either no different from how they have consumed before. Or this is much better way of consuming what they have been consuming before as a part of the ownership model.
So a lot of effort is needed on the customer education side, and I would say you need scalable technology infrastructure. These elements, I would say, would be crucial. For successful transition to a circular model.
Of course, once you get into the flow of offering a circular model, or let’s say product as a service, you would then have to figure out how can you make devices that are more durable, that last longer, how can you manufacture devices that use more sustainable material? So those are the things that a company entering this kind of a model can continue to iterate on, improve, learn, launch new stuff.
But I would say the main structure that you need in place is reverse logistics, a lot of effort in customer education and scalable technology infrastructure.
[00:34:11] The future: AI, product design & sustainable materials
Patrick Hypscher: The second question is about the future. What are the significant trends in Circular Product as a Service for the next five years?
Shuchir Bhatia: I believe you are the expert to answer that question. But thanks for asking as well. I almost want to say that the trend is around using IOT, but that’s already happened. So maybe it’s not something new, but there are other aspects that would come into play.
So for example, we all talk about this cliche term these days, AI, I think AI would become pervasive. In this part of the business as well, mainly in terms of figuring out what is customer trying to do, what are the outcomes they are trying to achieve and how you as a company make sure that you show up right when they need.
So example of that could be today we monitor a customer’s usage of their in cartridges. But tomorrow can we apply artificial intelligence and machine learning to figure out when would a customer be looking for a specific kind of a notification? When does a customer who is using a certain kind of a printer, is that printer likely to malfunction in near future? Can we send a customer notifications in advance that their printer is coming to the end of life. And then maybe they want to upgrade at this time. So some kind of AI integration would start happening and you would see improvements throughout the customer journey, from the purchase, usage and end of life.
I also see that new design for product designs that would come to market, which will allow multiple life cycles. Today, if you talk about a car or a printer or a PC. Talk in terms of number of years that device would last. Let’s take example of refrigerators. Maybe a refrigerator typically last 10 years, 15 years. Of course, there would be outliers where refrigerators last for 20 years. The product design would change. We will see the products. Having multiple life cycles. So even when the product reaches its end of life, it will not really go to a scrapyard. Perhaps you can use some of the parts for the next product that you want to sell to the customer or place under product as a service.
We would also be seeing, you know, much more reliance on new materials, sustainable materials. And this is perhaps the most important one. I see a lot of my colleagues, they typically think of product as a service only applicable to those products that are internet-connected, that are technology oriented, that are digital oriented, or that are internet-connected, right? But I think that is going to change.
And right before we were Speaking before this podcast, you mentioned something about jeans being offered under this leasing program. So that’s a great example of how this product as a service model will be even more pervasive. It will go beyond connected devices. It would also apply to devices that are pieces of physical products that are usually not associated with the product. With product as a service model.
Patrick Hypscher: I like many aspects of the future you’re painting there. And my last question is about people. Yeah. So circularity is about sharing knowledge and connecting people. Maybe you have some milestones you want to reach or opportunities you want to unlock. So if someone is listening right now, who should contact you?
[00:37:34] Wanted: Partners from adjacent services
Shuchir Bhatia: There are many opportunities Patrick, and this is an important question to wrap up with perhaps. As business models grow and companies start reaching a place where they have, let’s say, occupied most of the market and the future growth slows down. Most companies and I count Instant Ink or HP within those companies, they look for new buckets of growth, right? I’ve expanded to 40 countries. What would it take for us to expand to let’s say next 20 countries or next five or next one country.
So we would be interested in hearing from companies that are operating in print or print adjacent space that could act as a great partners for us. So imagine if today Instant Ink model is only consumables as a service or print as a service where you get printer as well as Instant Ink bundled into one, could we develop new services that bundle some other print adjacent services? Could it be some kind of partnerships with the companies who are operating in print adjacent space? For example there are a lot of companies that are offering customizable printable accessories or printed accessories. Are there companies operating in that space that we could partner with or whether they could partner with us? To bundle new kind of services either as cross promotion of services. So somebody buying Instant Ink could be made aware about these print adjacent services or these two services could be offered as a bundle to deliver more value to our customers, to our customers or to these partners customers. So we would be interested in knowing who are the companies who would be interested in such collaboration opportunities. And we would really be interested in hearing from them.
Patrick Hypscher: So that was a wide open invitation. Thanks a lot. So I personally learned a lot. And it’s really amazing to talk to someone who oversees such a large operation. Thanks a lot for sharing your experience and good luck with finding the new pockets.
Shuchir Bhatia: you. Thank you, Patrick. And as we wrap up, I want to say that I am representing the Instant Ink group. I am one part, a small part of the organization, but once one person part of this big organization, of course, Instant Ink also has so many brilliant other product managers who are working on different aspects of the service and making sure that we deliver value to our customers every day. So I speak on behalf of my entire organization. I believe I’m representing them here. So really fortunate to have this opportunity and thanks for having me at your podcast.
Patrick Hypscher: I love your attitude. Thanks a lot.
Shuchir Bhatia: Thank you.
Patrick Hypscher: This was the second episode of PaaS Decoded. 16 conversations about the fine details of product as a service. If you liked it, share this episode with colleagues or on social media. If you missed a question or topic, please send me an email so I can improve the conversations for you. If you learned something from this episode, please provide a review via Spotify or Apple Podcasts. That helps others to discover the podcast. And, don’t forget, the most abundant renewable resource is your imagination.