Unethical business conduct by Indian startups is not a new thing.

Marketing, sales, and management practices of some big Indian startups have been criticized for their unethical business conduct.

But today I want to write about not so serious, but very annoying things that Indian startups do.

Startups in India, especially tech startups are really annoying in their approach of dealing with existing customers. They won’t stop their aggressive marketing shenanigans even after you sign up.

It is understandable many of these companies are on tight budget and set priorities to get the most out of their budget. But the level of incompetence when it comes to customer relations, data security, and other issues is appalling.

Following are some of the things that Indian startups do that really annoy me as a customer.

Not allowing account cancellation.

If someone creates an account with them, there will be no option(in website or app) to cancel it. You are in it for life.

One of my recent experiences is with aqualence.in.

I created an account at aqualence(which i think is a subsidiary of lenskart) and after creating the account, I realized there is no option in the dashboard to cancel/close the account.

Only way you might be able to do it is by writing an email to the customer care. And wait for a response that may or may not come.

Unnecessary calls & SMS.

For instance industrybuying.com. At the moment I add something to cart, I get a call from them. They will keep calling me until I take that call and talk about the product I added to the cart.

Imagine getting a call from Amazon customer service every time you add something to cart.

Likewise, many tech startups in India are so pushy to get a sale today, not caring about long term relationships with customers.

I tried to stop getting SMS promotions from lenskart by opting out from the website, but they still send it.

Too many app notifications.

And, every time they send a notification, they also send a promotional email too. One of the best examples is shiprocket,which I uninstalled, because of all the notifications.

I know that we can turn of the notifications. But sometimes, turning off all notifications from an app is not possible. For example, as a seller in Flipkart, I want to get a notification when sales happens. But amount of repeated notifications in their app is too much. And i am not able to turn it off. In fact there is an option to turn of notifications other than sales notifications, but it doesn’t work.

One or two notifications here and there is no issue. But constantly receiving notifications is a problem.

Passive-aggressive language in notifications.

Buy now, or you will regret” kind of language in notifications.

Passive-aggressive language in notifications is a common practice in tech startups.

It kind of works when it is a well-thought-out and a bit funny message.

But the way Indian startups do it is way too aggressive and not useful.

Useless calls for marketing and promotions.

5 different people from udan.com called me asking which category of products I am interested in buying. Each one of them said they are updating my profile.

Lack of co-ordination between different departments is clearly visible in the calls.

Giving stupid tribe name to employees

Giving stupid tribe name to employees is a common practice in Indian companies. These names are often cringy. If company name is Agni, and you are employed there, then you are an Agniveer.