On-Ground Adoption: Solving the Last Mile Problem

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# On-Ground Adoption: Solving the Last Mile Problem

Building products from office for users in rural India taught me that the hardest product problem isn't technical — it's adoption. Features that work perfectly in testing fail completely in the field. Solving this "last mile" problem has become central to how I think about product.

The Adoption Gap

At CureBay, we build healthcare products for underserved communities. Our users include:

Pharmacy retailers with varying digital literacy

Sales teams working in areas with poor connectivity

Patients who've never used health apps before A product that assumes reliable internet, smartphone fluency, and comfort with digital interfaces will fail. Most products assume all three.

Designing for Reality

On-ground reality differs from office assumptions:

| Office Assumption | Field Reality |

|-------------------|---------------|

| Exponential Adoption | Inertia to even begin |

| Process Orientation | Job insecurity |

| Stable internet | Intermittent connectivity |

| Digital comfort | App anxiety, preference for calls |

| Individual use | Shared devices, family accounts |

Every feature needs to be stress-tested against these realities. Offline capability isn't a nice-to-have — it's essential.

The WhatsApp Benchmark

When competing with WhatsApp for business communication, you're competing with something everyone already knows. Our pharmacy ordering system had to be simpler than "just send a WhatsApp message."

This is a high bar. We cleared it by:

Reducing steps to place an order

Providing immediate confirmation

Adding value WhatsApp couldn't (tracking, history, analytics) The product had to be better enough to justify behavior change.

Training as Product

Sometimes adoption requires training. But training that requires reading manuals or watching videos doesn't work for our users.

What works:

Embedded guidance — Tooltips and nudges within the app

Phone support — Real humans answering questions

Peer learning & Periodical Evaluation — Training one user who trains others The product isn't just the software. It's the entire support system around the software.

Measuring Adoption

Traditional metrics miss adoption nuance. Active users might be struggling. Completed actions might be assisted.

At CureBay, we track:

Time to first successful action

Support ticket frequency by user segment

Feature usage decay (do users keep using features?)

Self-serve vs. assisted completion rates These metrics reveal where adoption is working and where it's failing.

The Human Layer

Technology alone doesn't solve adoption. At some point, you need humans:

Field teams who demonstrate the product

Support staff who answer calls

Community champions who encourage usage This isn't a failure of product. It's recognition that products exist within human systems. Designing for that reality is the job.

Journey : Analytics to Product

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Siddharth skipped presentations and built real AI products.

Siddharth Chauhan was part of the September 2025 cohort at Curious PM, alongside 13 other talented participants.