Mandar Apte

UI/UX Designer from Mumbai, Maharashtra, India.

Category: Apps

Computer Applications

  • The Black Hat Pattern: A Look at Mr. Pandhare’s HealthTech Startup Business. I’m sharing some insights into how business groups like TIE operate.

    The Black Hat Pattern: A Look at Mr. Pandhare’s HealthTech Startup Business. I’m sharing some insights into how business groups like TIE operate.

    Background

    I went to TIE’s Conference in Pune around February 2025.

    The event cost was about 7,000 to 8,000 rupees, and if you booked the conference ticket, you could get a membership for an additional 2,000 rupees.

    However, that paid membership didn’t really offer any benefits because you still had to pay for each event, but you did get a discount.

    So, you only got a discount on paid events, and then you started receiving an email newsletter for free. They have a members group on Zoho, but it seems no one uses it. Instead, they have an active WhatsApp group with multiple subgroups for each domain and industry.

    The Story

    Let’s get back to Mr. Pandhare, the young entrepreneur who started from humble beginnings.

    I was browsing through the group notifications, and there he was, sharing that he had an extra LinkedIn Premium offer code he’d purchased for his employees, but it was more than he needed.

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  • Understanding Life, Design, Programming and money. The Thought Process Behind Everything.

    Understanding Life, Design, Programming and money. The Thought Process Behind Everything.

    My Thoughts:

    Good design is not visible design
    Good code is code that never got written
    Good salary that never got received

    When I joined Advertising College, I read a book it said Advertising & Marketing is not required. You can’t advertise and market the wrong product. You have to fix the product design first. You can’t take loan from bank or take angel funding and starting fooling people to sale your ugly, bad and broken product and payback your loan.

    So entrepreneur is not an agent who takes commision by taking someone’s money then creating and selling garbage and giving fraction of that money to lender and taking percentage as commission.

    So selling software or products is not strategy to get rich fast.

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  • Monetisation Strategy A Business Lesson from Cinema Theatres and Online Ticket Booking Portals.

    Monetisation Strategy A Business Lesson from Cinema Theatres and Online Ticket Booking Portals.

    Back Story:

    The year was 2001/2/3, and there was a new movie experience on the block. And there was new mall culture introduced in Mumbai for my age individuals.

    Early Success:

    Somehow I got to know about R-Adlabs Playes movies for INR 50.0 only.

    Now every day I find myself watching at least one movie, or sometimes three in a row.

    At that time, classmates would find themselves bumping into each other as theatres went house full.

    First Evil Thought of Money Making:

    After say half a year, cinema hall increased price to INR 250.0, and suddenly all shows were abandoned and empty with no people, or 4 or 5 people per show. Sometimes they have to cancel the shows.

    Then brought down price to INR 150.0, then people started visiting cinema halls again but lost all houseful boards that existed at start with a 50 rupee price tag.

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  • Uber Driver Tip, A illegal/unlawful/unthoughtful user interaction

    Uber Driver Tip, A illegal/unlawful/unthoughtful user interaction

    One fine day I was returning from one destination to home through a cab booked over Uber Cabs. While travelling, I snacked and drank water, and my hand was wet. Once I arrived, I made a trip payment through an online card or Amazon Pay.

    About to get out of the car, I was scrolling on my iPhone through my wet fingers to rate that trip.

    In the next second, I received an in-app notification that you had been charged INR 100 for tipping the driver for a safe ride. In disbelief, I thought about how that happened, as I was not planning to tip the driver.

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  • Betting your company on Metaverse AR/VR Craze

    Betting your company on Metaverse AR/VR Craze

    First Story that I want to share today is from my experience

    In 2009 I worked as an Animator and E-Learning Courseware Creator and Designer. And I was planning to switch the design domain to HCI/UX, i.e. Human-Computer Interaction/User Experience Design.

    And software like Apple Shake and Adobe After Effects was standard competitive tool used in both domains.

    I was using an iMac at that time. Adobe After Effects was bundled in Creative Suite, costing around INR 45,000/- in India. Apple Shake was way cheaper as it was a standalone offering from Apple.

    It was the day of 30th July 2009 that I was going to start to learn the Apple Shake as Apple offered all tutorials on their website for free. And it was the same day that Apple discontinued Apple Shake. When I woke early to learn, I saw the news on their portal. I was devastated by the news. But I was relieved as I saved my time as if I started learning it two months ago, and then they discontinued it, which was a waste of time and energy. The software skill you acquired doesn’t exist in the world, or there is no demand for your talent in your industry, is a total waste of time.

    There is another story that I can share with you today.

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  • Web/Mobile App Monetisation & Revenue Generation Strategies

    Web/Mobile App Monetisation & Revenue Generation Strategies

    All business survives on net profit.

    In accounting terms, here is how you calculate Net Profit. i.e. (Total Business Revenue) – (Total Business Expenditure) = Net Profit

    In the business world, there are two types of industries Service and Product.

    So if you are in the service industry, you survive on a paycheck by paycheck or hourly charges to the client. You have to work every hour of every day to make ends meet.

    But if you are a product company, you create a product based on your market and user research. You find consumer problems/requirements/gaps in the market and then try to solve them by creating your product in that category. So building a product is based on solving problems that your users are having.

    In my case, I was a designer by profession. I graduated with a BFA (Bachelor of Applied Arts) in Advertising. After my first two jobs, I tried freelancing in the web, UX, print, branding and animation film industries. I was the lone proprietor of my business. I was doing everything talking to clients, executing a project, delivering it and then waiting for the final payment to be released. It was too much for me at that time.

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  • My Experience Using Apple Watch for 5 Years and Apple’s Gamification Strategies

    My Experience Using Apple Watch for 5 Years and Apple’s Gamification Strategies

    In 2019, I bought myself an Apple iPhone 11 Pro 256GB and Apple Watch 5.

    I have used an Apple iPhone 5s with 16GB since 2016. But I was dissatisfied with the storage that it allowed me to use. Out of 16GB, 10GB was the operating system, 2GB was for Apps that were able to fit it, 2GB was for Photos that I captured, then I had to delete to make space for the next ones, and 2GB was for other apps’ data.

    It was total dissatisfaction with the Apple iPhone 5s.

    In the year 2016, I had sciatica. So I used to walk for 2 hours in the morning and 2 hours in the evening or night. So I just walked 850 kilometres in a month to eliminate sciatica pain. I used to maintain my diary of walking approx kilometre completed in a day/week/month/year. But I was out of sync with my blood pressure, heart rate, calories burned etc.

    When Apple iPhone 11 Pro and Apple Watch 5 got released impressed with features like ECG, Fitness app, and Health app capabilities. And I choose 256 GB storage for my iPhone as that’s what I require to sustain all photographs, music, videos and other data for a year or two without deleting it.

    I used Apple Watch daily for three years to track my outdoor walking exercises, ECG, Heart Rate Monitoring, Calory burning, Exercise hours tracking, Standup Hours tracking, receiving notifications, receiving phone calls on my watch, reading SMS/Messages on my watch itself etc.

    I was thrilled.

    But one day, I broke my Apple Watch’s Crown or Wheel. I was devastated. I contacted Apple Service Centre. They said Apple Watch is unrepairable. And you are out of warranty too.

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  • I am married now, And here is how I choose the perfect spouse for my life.

    I am married now, And here is how I choose the perfect spouse for my life.

    It was the year 2012 when discussions about my marriage started happening in my home. Proposals of engagement between the prospective bride and me arrive every month or in other’s marriage ceremonies. So I started thinking and planning about it.

    My society, school or college friends were getting married at that time. But something strange things were happening in their married lives. My seven friends, including girls and boys, were having a divorce for unknown reasons.

    1. One girl was proposed to on Facebook she accepted it when they had their real-life engagement ceremony. Unfortunately, her groom’s previous girlfriend showed up to stop that engagement as the groom had been having an affair with her for the last three-four years, So my friend felt heartbroken and betrayed and cheated.
    2. One of my male friends was married to a girl who never cooked or did home-related tasks or never showed the night at home after time out. Then when my friend encountered her for asking about divorce and breaking the marriage, she told him she would launch a law suite and a police case for defamation, sexual harassment and abuse. Moreover, she wanted marriage alimony of 50 lakhs.
    3. One of my friend’s husband was not doing any job and was physically abusing her as she was earning a thousand times more than him.
    4. One of my friend’s husbands was unfaithful and had multiple extramarital affairs.
    5. One of my male friends had multiple sexual encounters with his female friends before marriage, so he wanted a bride that accepted that allowed them to have sexual encounters outside of marriage after marriage.
    6. One of my friends lost his job because of the financial crisis or recession in the year 2008. Then somehow, his engagement broke as the bride stopped talking with him and her parents. But after two or three months, he got a job in a better company with a more excellent salary. So if the bride understood the situation of a lost job, then disengagement of marriage would not have happened.
    7. One of my friend’s brides was suspicious and doubtful about having affairs in office. So she broke the engagement, and he was heartbroken as there was no clear communication between the bride and her family. So then he got married after one year to a different and more perfect girl.
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  • Choosing your correct online Music distribution and streaming service provider

    Choosing your correct online Music distribution and streaming service provider

    In the old golden day, music came on cassettes and compact disks (CDs).

    With the evolution of better, faster, stable internet with Gigahertz processing power for computers, better/stable computer applications came along. With the invention of gesture-based high-tech mobile devices like the iPhone, modern, always accessible pocket-friendly apps emerged.

    With faster 4G and 5G internet mobile data, internet-ready cloud-enabled apps came with better interactions. Moreover, even if mobile devices got more than 64/128/256/500 GB and 1 TB of internal storage, people will never have to come to desktop/laptop computers to back up and free up storage.

    Apple first introduced Apple iTunes with a CD Ripping facility to convert already bought music cd collections to mp3 for easy listening on Mac computers and then a range of iPods. iPods didn’t have to have internet in the early days then. They were internet ready after a few years, the video on iPods and then an iPhone introduction.

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  • My experience in converting my paid educational apps to a subscription business revenue model.

    My experience in converting my paid educational apps to a subscription business revenue model.

    After experimenting with various apps, I ventured into an educational language-earning app in 2013/14. I developed three apps Mudrakshar for tracing Alphabets, Swarakshar for Pronouncing Alphabets and Chitrakshar for Alphabet Charts with Illustrations and audio pronunciation. All three apps were dedicated to Devanagari Script—mainly Marathi, Sanskrit and Hindi Language. For Chitrakshar, I added the English Language with Latin script.

    I am developing my apps for Apple iOS, iPadOS and macOS platforms. Here is my Apple Developer Profile if you want to check it out.

    I think the In-App purchase / StoreKit framework was not introduced back then. That’s what I remember. So I used paid app business model to support my app development and time invested.

    Maybe because I started sailing my apps with an upfront paid pricing model, I was forcing my users to purchase them without allowing them to try them before they bought. As a result, I had significantly fewer downloads or sales. But over the years, I sold almost 1,000 units of apps or more. I also utilised App Store Connects’s App Bundles feature at that time. App Bundles undoubtedly helped me to sell more apps with discounts.

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