People+AI / EkStep · 2024
Report
AI Opportunities in Indian SMEs
Where the opportunities are in building for population scale in India, by empowering MSMEs.
Download reportConsumer Intelligence Lab · India
We tell you why your Indian customers do what they do.
Most agencies take several weeks and hand you a deck your team skims once. We hand you decisions and a growth playbook to act on, drawn from real conversations with your customers in the languages they speak, at scale. AI powered and human moderated.
human moderated depth ethnography gamified surveys ai voice study longitudinal studies usability testing ux audits panel building design sprints human moderated depth ethnography gamified surveys ai voice study longitudinal studies usability testing ux audits panel building design sprints
The research team behind D91 Labs and The India Notes, read by 18,000 founders, operators, and investors.
What we do
Four questions we answer.
We sell outcomes, not interview counts. Pick the question you are sitting on.
01
Discover your customer
“Who uses our product, and why?”
The few archetypes that actually drive your business - what each wants, what they hire you to do, and which to build for next.
02
Find your positioning
“Where do we sit in the customer's mind, against everyone else?”
The space you can own - and the language that gets you there before your competitors do.
03
Price with confidence
“What should we charge, and how do customers judge our price?”
The number: what to charge, and why customers accept it as fair.
04
Fix the drop-off
“Why do users leave, and what brings them back?”
Where users leave, why, and the one fix worth shipping first.
Real India
We reach the India other research can't.
We built our panel and our methods around how India actually talks - and the panel is the part nobody can copy: a vetted, vernacular pool of real consumers we can reach this week, not next quarter.
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10+ languages
We interview people in the language they think in, not only English and Hindi.
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Tier 1 to Tier 3
Metros, small towns, and the districts in between, where most panels never go.
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WhatsApp-first
We reach people where they already reply, not on a video call they will skip.
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A real, paid panel
Vetted and incentivised across the country, ready this week, not next quarter.
- cities
- 24+ cities
- languages
- 10+ languages
- depth
- Tier 1–3 depth
Delhi Gurgaon Jaipur Lucknow Mumbai Pune Nagpur Ahmedabad Surat Indore Bhopal Raipur Bengaluru Mangaluru Chennai Coimbatore Tiruppur Erode Hyderabad Kolkata Asansol Patna Kochi Visakhapatnam How it works
We pair AI speed with human judgment.
AI runs the volume. Our researchers run the depth. Both feed one dashboard you keep and query whenever a new question comes up.
Interactive surveys
Mobile-first and multilingual, with voice input. Built to finish, not abandon.
AI voice interviews
An AI agent calls, holds a ten-minute conversation, and returns a coded transcript by morning.
Human-moderated depth
Trained researchers run the 60-minute sessions where the real story surfaces.
Perspective
How we read the market.
A few pieces from The India Notes that show how we think about Indian consumers, products, and AI.
- 01
WhatsApp owns India
Distribution - 02
What Indian consumers want in 2026
Consumers - 03
Seekho is a crazy subscription business
Business models - 04
The untold story of Where Is My Train
Product - 05
India badly needs its own ElevenLabs
AI - 06
Indian MSMEs might start buying software
SaaS - 07
India will create AI middle managers
Future of work
Featured work
Research we have published.
2023
Field study
Life of a Gig Worker
What platform workers in India want, fear, and save for, built to guide the financial products made for them.
Download reportMeta & Setu · 2021
6 principles
Design Principles for Data Sharing
Six design principles for consented data sharing under the Account Aggregator framework, published as a UX playbook.
Download reportWhat teams say
They are a rare mixture of domain knowledge and procedural rigor. Unlike most research firms with a clinical, domain-agnostic approach, 1990 Research Labs has chosen their niche. I recommend them to everyone. You can't go wrong with them.
Prashant Singh
Head of Product, Jar
I haven't seen such detailed and exhaustive data collection from a research team. They make the findings concise to consume, unlike the 200-pagers one will never return to.
Nandini Gangal
Lead Experience Designer, CRED
Best in industry for UX research, especially for those very specific India-first problems. Always bubbling with ideas for how to design better for the average customer, with a sharp eye on practical execution.
Lizann Fernandez
Director, Jupiter Money
Some founders dropped their problem statements after one round of user research with us, and moved to a more compelling problem. That was the best outcome we could have asked for at Antler India.
Nandini Vishwanath
Program Director, Antler India
Work with us
Three ways in.
Read
The India Notes
Our weekly read on Indian consumer behaviour, for 18,000 founders and operators. Free.
Subscribe →Research
Canvass
Our platform to recruit participants and conduct surveys and AI voice interviews at scale.
Coming soonAdvise
1990 Research Labs
Founder-led studies for the decisions that carry the most weight.
Talk to us →The team
Who you'll work with.
Dharmesh Ba
Founder & Chief Researcher
Dharmesh is a behavioural researcher trained at the National Institute of Design. At Setu he built D91 Labs, India's first user research lab focused on fintech, documenting the financial lives of rural women, kirana owners, and gig workers. Forbes covered the work.
Since then he has run research for Meta, Duolingo, CRED, and Udaan, and writes The India Notes, read by 18,000 founders and operators. He started 1990 Research Labs to bring that depth to every company building for India.
Ayushi Agrawal
Strategy & Research
Suprita Chaudhary
Design Researcher
Arokiya Raj
Founder's Office
Sushant Rao
Full Stack Developer
Backed by
Backed by people who know India and AI.
Funded by 
Supported by 
Grant 
Startup program 
Tell us the customer question keeping you up.
We take a few projects at a time and go deep on each one. If you have something that matters, write to us.