Vikas Agarwal, an expert in Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Cloud Computing, writes a special column for Deccan Mirror about service aggregators using AI in their business models.
What happened when the first wheel was invented? It created revolution. It is as simple as that when it comes to explaining what aggregators have done the ever evolving digital landscape. By definition, aggregators are online middlemen that link service providers and customers. For the end customer, they provide a variety of options, including payment methods.
The world is so big that you get lost in searching for solutions for daily life challenges, irrespective of whether you are a consumer or service provider. It is an arduous task for a normal person to find the potential provider with multiple options, which was a dream decades ago. As we all speak about globalization, the aggregators are the real catalysts enabling everyone to have the fruits of globalization.
Popular apps like Amazon, Uber, Ola, Zomato, Urban Company, and eBay, Booking.com are some of those you call aggregators, which have changed the world for good. People these days are just a click away on their mobile phones from the service they desired to meet their needs. These services, in addition to their provision, do charge a minimal amount, which was another blessing in disguise for the vast pool of talent they hire and provide us.
With great power comes great difficulty, as the quote speaks; the aggregators too have come with their own sets of challenges. There is often confound criticism about how these platforms charge their end users, which often goes out of control or leads to debate from the consumer. The inconsistent pricing sometimes hikes up unreasonably, which has no cap whatsoever; the governments try to restrict them.
Also, the debate over how much control the people have over the pricing of the services, which are often decided by the platforms, becomes a huge debate. Some of these platforms, after attracting the customers in large numbers with initial prizes, will hike the amounts exponentially once they have reached their targets, which leads to the downfall of them. That downfall again falls as a burden on the part of the recipient of their services. Regulatory hurdles also persist, as governments grapple with how to categorize and tax these entities.
Expanding from the sectors of e-commerce, real estate, transportation, and food delivery, the new in the array of its incursions zeroes down to OTT aggregators. With so many movies distributed across multiple platforms, consumers find it difficult to search for one set of movies all in one platform and also an arduous task of paying each OTT. Now that OTTs are too brought together in the form of aggregator tools like OTTPlay, it becomes a new trend for the entertainment consumers to watch their desired playlist.
The AI technologies are enabling them to more personalize these services based on the user behavior and trying to offer them desirable products. The much-awaited blockchain may improve pricing and transactions in the coming days. With so much future awaiting, aggregators come to seep into every aspect of human life as a transformative tool.
