Bus Uncle Chatbot – Creating a Successful Digital Business

This case study is set in September 2016 to April 2021. It describes how Abhilash Murthy used the Digital Product Management (DPM) framework to create the Bus Uncle chatbot and subsequently, to pivot to a successful digital business. The DPM framework combines Design Thinking, Lean Start-up and Agile methodology. It can be used to develop digital products and solutions in the private and public sectors. There are four distinct stages that correspond to cases A, B, C and D respectively. And there are supporting videos for this case.

Case A: How Abhilash created the Bus Uncle chatbot and then rapidly re-architected it to scale after the chatbot went viral.

Case B: How Abhilash started monetising the Bus Uncle chatbot through conversational advertising.

Case C: How Abhilash built a chatbot agency to develop and implement chatbots for other organisations.

Case D: How Abhilash created a chatbots-as-a-service platform called BotDistrikt to scale the chatbot business further.

Students will be able to 1) learn about the DPM framework, 2) Adopt the DPM framework for developing digital products/ services, and 3) Understand why chatbots are different from other digital products e.g., mobile apps and learn about how to create a chatbot that customers want to use.

Inspection copies and teaching notes are available for university faculty. To receive an inspection copy and teaching note, please email cmpshop [at] smu.edu.sg with your registered faculty email ID and a link to your contact information on the faculty directory at your university as verification. An inspection copy and teaching note will then be sent to your faculty email account.

Download Information

SMU Faculty/Staff can download the case & teaching note on iNet with your SMU login ID & Password via the following links:

· The Case Part A (SMU-21-0004)

· The Case Part B (SMU-21-0004)

· The Case Part C (SMU-21-0004)

· The Case Part D (SMU-21-0004)

· Teaching Note (SMU-21-0003TN)

For purchase of the case and supplementary materials via The Case Centre, please access the following links:

· The Case Part A (SMU-21-0004)

· The Case Part B (SMU-21-0004)

· The Case Part C (SMU-21-0004)

· The Case Part D (SMU-21-0004)

· Teaching Note (SMU-21-0004)

For purchase of the case and supplementary materials via Harvard Business Publishing, please access the following links:

· The Case Part A (SMU-21-0004)

· The Case Part B (SMU-21-0004)

· The Case Part C (SMU-21-0004)

· The Case Part D (SMU-21-0004)

· Teaching Note (SMU-21-0004)