Rebuilding trust in BESCOM Mitra
Bengaluru's official electricity-payment app has quietly lost its own users — not to a better competitor, but to workarounds. I set out to understand why, and to redesign around the actual reasons people had left.
Try it yourself
This is the actual working prototype, not a screenshot. Pay a bill, set up auto-pay, raise a complaint, check outages — the whole flow is live.
- Same-device UPI payment, no second phone needed
- Timestamped receipts instead of a vague "pending" state
- Multi-account usage comparison on the home screen
- Auto-pay setup with a clear fee breakup
Tap anywhere on the splash screen to enter.
Why this project
I didn't set out to redesign BESCOM. I noticed something more specific: almost everyone around me with a BESCOM electricity connection had quietly stopped using the official app to pay their bill — and each person had landed on a different workaround. Nobody had switched because a competitor app was better. They'd switched because the official one had, in small ways, stopped being trustworthy.
So instead of starting from a features list, I started by asking six people I actually know what they do when their BESCOM bill is due.
What six real users told me
These aren't synthetic personas built to fit a template — they're six people I know, in their own words, describing what they actually do.
Jayanthi
Her EB bill has been ₹0 for two years, so she's simply unbothered about paying — she doesn't engage with billing at all.
Rishi
Has never used the BESCOM app. Uses GPay instead — it's easy, notifies him before the due date, single-click payment.
Aparna
Switched to PhonePe autopay. Struggled with the app crashing often, and the bill not reflecting even after her meter reading was done — due date the 29th, still not updated by the 26th. Eventually uninstalled.
Hemamalini
Pays via the BESCOM website. Never bothered installing the app at all.
Ramya
Keeps the app installed only to lodge complaints. Uses GPay for the actual payment.
Kavitha
Pays in person at the EB office, or has a neighbour pay on her behalf.
The pattern
Every persona except Kavitha has a working alternative they've defaulted to — GPay, PhonePe autopay, the website, in-person payment. Ramya keeps the app installed only for complaints — payment trust broke completely, even for a user who didn't uninstall. The app hasn't just lost users; it's been demoted to a single-purpose tool by the ones who stayed. Some are even paying a third-party convenience fee rather than use the free official channel, purely to avoid a broken flow.
Reframing the problem
The instinct is to read this as a features gap. It isn't. Third-party apps aren't winning on functionality — BESCOM Mitra can already do everything they do. They're winning because they never break trust at three specific moments: Discover (does the user even know a bill is due), Pay (can they pay from the device they're already holding), and Confirm (does the app admit the payment went through). Third-party apps notify proactively the day after meter reading; BESCOM updates around the 24th for a 29th due date — leaving a window where the bill simply isn't there yet.
That reframes the fix: don't add features, reach parity on Discover and Pay where BESCOM currently loses, then differentiate on Return — usage insight and forecasting — where a personal-finance app structurally can't compete, because it doesn't own the meter data.
What I redesigned
Same-device UPI, with real payment certainty
No more switching to a second phone to scan a QR code — an intent-based flow pays from the device already in hand. Every payment gets a timestamped receipt and an explicit reconciliation state, so a paid bill never sits marked "pending" for days the way it did for Aparna.
A usage dashboard the third-party apps can't build
Area benchmarking, multi-account comparison, and a homepage ticket-status card so users aren't guessing whether a complaint is still open. This is where BESCOM can actually out-compete GPay and PhonePe — because it owns the meter data they never will.
Auto-pay as a standing instruction
For users like Srinivas on a fixed pension, the safest bill is the one he never has to remember. Auto-pay is set up once as a UPI mandate, card, or net-banking instruction — the bill pays itself on the due date, no monthly action required.
Also included: a Gruha Jyothi (Karnataka's free-electricity scheme) registration nudge that most users didn't know existed, plus dedicated Complaints and Outages tabs so status-checking doesn't require a phone call to the EB office.
Taking it back to the same people
Once the hi-fi prototype was ready, I didn't just move on — I put it in front of the same people whose frustrations shaped it. The reaction was consistent: it didn't look or feel like the old BESCOM app anymore. The features they'd been missing were visibly there, the interface read as clearer, and the things they'd been checking elsewhere — usage stats, ticket status — were now easy to find inside the app itself.
That's informal validation, not a usability study with a report attached — but it's validation from the exact users the redesign was built around, which is the test that actually mattered here.