YouSaid · the spoken record

Anuj Rathi

lines on the record: 79
first: 2023-12-07
most recent: 2023-12-07
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“So, the FXUs also are very important to kind of set processes in the system. For example, if now we are Jupyter, we are a financial services app. So every FAQ will mandatorily have how are we going to make sure that it is fully compliant? Have we gotten sign off from ABC people? Have you actually thought about legal aspects and so on and so forth? So for example, you can use the FAQs very effectively here, which is, for example, when it was SWIGI and it's a three-way marketplace. You have consumers deliver executives and restaurant partners. Now, any small change that you do on say delivery partners, for example, if you're working on optimizing their earnings per hour, which will lead to some changes in cost per delivery. But that may have a completely different impact on delivery fee. I'm just making this up. But now because of so many moving parts in your FAQs, you're explicitly asking, have you thought about what are the implications on restaurant partner? Have you thought about what are implications on delivery partners? And we, in fact, used to have that RFU.”
2023-12-07 · Lenny's Podcast · The full-stack PM | Anuj Rathi (Swiggy, Jupiter Money, Flipkart) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Now, people can compare and contrast, and that's a very powerful leadership tool. And that actually is a very powerful tool, even for CXOs. When they say, let's build this, they say, here are three ways we can build this. And here's the reason why I'm not building what you said, because you will like these two more.”
2023-12-07 · Lenny's Podcast · The full-stack PM | Anuj Rathi (Swiggy, Jupiter Money, Flipkart) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To three tasks, or for example, let's seek another one which says instead of building a membership, let's build a tiering pricing program with membership points. And instead of this segment, let's use another segment. Let's say within these three, and they all need to be fully thought through. And that kind of helps the leadership choose. So the two things that help that work here, when you are in the product discovery phase, you would have heard from a lot of folks. And finally, if you show them just one roadmap, it feels like, hey, this person, they listen to my interesting point, which was valuable, but didn't include it. But when you're doing this three PRFs, you're saying them, I considered this. And this added up to a story that eventually is valuable. This alternative, I considered your point of view, and I created a story, but unfortunately it's not adding up, so we rejected it.”
2023-12-07 · Lenny's Podcast · The full-stack PM | Anuj Rathi (Swiggy, Jupiter Money, Flipkart) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I want my customers to say this from marketing and from my pricing team. Can we actually ship this so that consumers will say that? And then from the business owner's court, you actually say, this is what we are shipping. But what are your goals? Can you say that within three months, we would have achieved this much? And so using that to kind of build one entire picture is one way that I found it really powerful. Because if you find disagreements here, then say, I can't ship it. Then you change the date and then you change the goals because all of these things are changing together. So instead of one, you find the other set of all the things that need to come together for that press release to go live is the real value. The other part that I found interesting here is that I really fully believe in the power of three. I actually ask my teams to write three press releases. Alternative and divergent, like what if we, so suppose you're launching a membership program? So instead of two tiers, let's”
2023-12-07 · Lenny's Podcast · The full-stack PM | Anuj Rathi (Swiggy, Jupiter Money, Flipkart) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If I take a slightly open stance on this one, what is a press release? A press release is you have a one-pager which talks about what are we building, what is a particular date, what is the exact value proposition, what will consumer say, what will the business manager say, what will, how will they respond, how will they use it. But the one thing that comes out from this framework is that you can use it for a whole bunch of other things. You can use it for negotiation, for example. Because you start with a date. And then you say this is the one page that I need to ship. And I want consumers to say that. And you can use it to now go to VP engineer and say, by this date, can we build all of this? Now they do not have all the PRDs and everything, but they can give you a sense that this is too aggressive or this is not and so on. You can also use the codes here to actually find alliances or find people who are going to actually derail this. So you actually use the customer code.”
2023-12-07 · Lenny's Podcast · The full-stack PM | Anuj Rathi (Swiggy, Jupiter Money, Flipkart) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My insight, or at least the way that I thought about this one, is it's not working backwards only from a customer value proposition. Our customers love it and will they pay for it? And is it noteworthy? And is it something that we should even be working? While that is one of the most important things that the working backwards framework teaches us. But essentially what you're working backwards from is an entire machinery at a particular day that is working for that date of GTM what do we need to do from here till that particular day so that that GTM is successful but also what will be the machinery we would have created so that this product is successful now because you are already talking about GTM you're already thinking about how will users love it what is the money that we'll spend what are the alternatives that we will routes that we have explored that finally we have zeroed in on and all of those so they are all going to be a part of a PR”
2023-12-07 · Lenny's Podcast · The full-stack PM | Anuj Rathi (Swiggy, Jupiter Money, Flipkart) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think the people who invented working backwards is clearly Amazon. I think they started this entire process, which are like, hey, why don't you write a press release? And with that press release, we'll work backwards from that one. And I thought that was a very cool idea. And I was trying to dig down into like, hey, why does it work?”
2023-12-07 · Lenny's Podcast · The full-stack PM | Anuj Rathi (Swiggy, Jupiter Money, Flipkart) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Talk about a phrase that now I use with product managers a lot to kind of simplify how they should be thinking. I think one thing is, and that's not only for the consumers, but even how we operate. Users are doing something, and now we want them to do something else. Our engineers are doing something, and now we want to influence them into building something fast. Our leader leadership has some plans, we have to influence them to essentially look at a plan and basically sign off and do something else. We are in the business of influence. And you are doing this all the time internally. Otherwise, you are anywhere not successful even in shipping. Now we have to extend this to our users and really think about it from that point of view. And so you are a full stack influencer and not only an external influencer. So you've got to think like more like sales, more like marketing, more like influencers.”
2023-12-07 · Lenny's Podcast · The full-stack PM | Anuj Rathi (Swiggy, Jupiter Money, Flipkart) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Over a period of time, what is the right time when I introduce them to this other one rather than being very greedy about letting the new user try everything? So that's one. The other thing that I feel is a lot of product managers don't do right is forget about everything. Here's my app Go figure is how most of the products are designed, unfortunately. Automatically these things will happen without any intervention. I have created something which is so beautiful. And once you tap that icon, everything inside that is my product that is so working perfectly. But they don't really think about at what moment do I actually get this user here and why will they use it? But this user is lazy, vain, and selfish.”
2023-12-07 · Lenny's Podcast · The full-stack PM | Anuj Rathi (Swiggy, Jupiter Money, Flipkart) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's absolutely right. And let me give an example of this one, right? And one of the reasons why I really feel product managers must, if not better, but equally understand category consumers, which are not in market or which are not really looking or which are not buying your products just yet, as good as the marketer or the brand expert in your team does, because they really are tasked with what is that one message that I can say that will make the user take attention or get to like all this interesting and direct attention towards your product. And if the product managers are able to do that, then they will choose that positioning and essentially understand what is my hook product and what is the hook that will at least get them to try or any of those things, right? So if they understand it as well as a marketer and then understand”
2023-12-07 · Lenny's Podcast · The full-stack PM | Anuj Rathi (Swiggy, Jupiter Money, Flipkart) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Largest amount of delta that happens that people don't know really why are we not able to cross pollinate or cross sell and so on and so forth. Right now I'm working with a company called Jupiter which is a financial services app and it's a Neobank. So we care for personal finance and it has a bunch of offerings. There's a personal account or savings account. There's a credit card. There's mutual funds. There is investments in say gold and FB and so on and so forth. It's a bunch of things. But when people think about why using us only for one service and just go away. And actually the key is to recognize that this user has found value and they are not interested in all the other things that you talked about. So be able to empathize with that user and now thinking about like the behavioral science aspects in terms of how do I convert this user from one to the other. That I think is extremely important.”
2023-12-07 · Lenny's Podcast · The full-stack PM | Anuj Rathi (Swiggy, Jupiter Money, Flipkart) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“User from the point of view of let's assume that you have heard about us 20 times and what was that exact situation that brought you to download this app so right from the entire journey of you hearing us what was the trigger and what was the marketing message and what was the promotion that we were running and how do we continue that journey on your onboarding from your 200 rupees of of x rupees if you buy from us continuing that entire journey in the language that they understand and with the user experience that is continuation from the marketing to product other thing that we started focusing on a lot more and it instantly started like you know showing those results but while i'm talking about like just a very simple example and everybody should be doing it that is true even for uh when you have a particular app which has multiple products and many product lines the same principle that applies there and that's where i think the”
2023-12-07 · Lenny's Podcast · The full-stack PM | Anuj Rathi (Swiggy, Jupiter Money, Flipkart) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So we use it in like two different areas. So, one is, of course, products I worked on. So I worked in Swiggy for the last seven years. And really when we started working towards this user, instead of thinking about everybody as, you know, this is what our onboarding experience looks like. And this is what our product is. So essentially we used to basically say key that it's we are a food delivery app. We had a grocery delivery app and we have like these bunch of things. Instead of that, we just started reframing it from the point of view of what would you want and how could you use us and what is it in it for you? And we started connecting all our marketing messages along with the onboarding. So even going out market and thinking, where do you actually find us? How did you know about us? It's a reasonably large brand. Why have you not already downloaded us and used us? Have you used us and rejected us in the past? So kind of building that entire mental model and looking at a”
2023-12-07 · Lenny's Podcast · The full-stack PM | Anuj Rathi (Swiggy, Jupiter Money, Flipkart) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The biggest amount of change in terms of a product success, then your core product features that you're going to build for your loyal consumers. So that one insight, and I've seen and applied that multiple times, not only the companies that I've worked with, the companies I've consulted and spoken with, most neglected, well, they kind of get user onboarding is important, but just how important is that is one. And B, this is a craft of thinking like a user who is lazy, vain, and selfish and basically rejecting all your products. This does not work for this kind of customer. It's extremely hard. It's very hard, but it's totally worth it if you put that lens on.”
2023-12-07 · Lenny's Podcast · The full-stack PM | Anuj Rathi (Swiggy, Jupiter Money, Flipkart) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Users on modern internet consumers having three attributes. So they are lazy, they are vain, and they are selfish. So lazy meaning I don't have time for this. Lin, which means I have a habit. I am solving this problem in a particular way. And here you come with your two bug product and asking me to change my habit. Do you really expect me to do that? That's second. That's their inherent attribute. And the third one is that they're selfish, like show me what's in it for me. And once you start thinking about users in that vein, and if these users are not even using your product, suddenly you realize, oh my God, it's quite difficult. Even how do I attract this kind of customer? And if my marketing team has done a good job at bringing this user to my product, how do I actually empathize with this lazy selfish and vain customer and build my product in a way so that I can make this we are on your side? Like this is the thing that you have to use. The way you write your copy, the way you build your onboarding, the way you do your first warm welcome, it's going to make”
2023-12-07 · Lenny's Podcast · The full-stack PM | Anuj Rathi (Swiggy, Jupiter Money, Flipkart) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“One of the things that I realized once we started working about the products is that product managers and generally companies are too engrossed in thinking about because they're very close to the product, it's close to their heart and they're looking at it all the time. They're looking at a lot of minor nuances in terms of how this works and feels and almost inherent into this is the bias that everybody is thinking about this product all the day, all the time and so on and so forth. Whereas the reality is most consumers in the country or in your target market, they don't care. And they may have sometime heard about your product. The word of mouth is not ever so strong even if you are the strongest brand and so on and so forth. But that is the customer that you've got to bring in and then serve. So there's very interesting insight that I heard from Scott Belsky from Adobe and then now he's doing like very interesting stuff. And that kind of stayed with me, which was you had to think about.”
2023-12-07 · Lenny's Podcast · The full-stack PM | Anuj Rathi (Swiggy, Jupiter Money, Flipkart) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Price that people are willing to pay. And it generally is also look at the per capita money that people have is very low. It's in the two and a half thousand dollar range compared to US, which is maybe 30 times more and so on. So while there's a lot of people who are going to give you traffic and engagement and so on. But the craft of actually choosing the right kind of paying customer who will actually come and engage and give you money is at a premium. So a lot harder work needs to be done. If you're running e-commerce, who are the people who will pay me delivery fee? Who are the people who will actually buy this expensive stuff? And so a whole bunch of different ways of thinking has evolved in this country. And that's why it's so vibrant and so different than any other global products.”
2023-12-07 · Lenny's Podcast · The full-stack PM | Anuj Rathi (Swiggy, Jupiter Money, Flipkart) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Kind of break down because it's not even that the same language will apply. While English is a language that is used by the people at least who have the money and who have the dollar to even give to you, but you have to think way more widely. The other thing that about India that is interesting is”
2023-12-07 · Lenny's Podcast · The full-stack PM | Anuj Rathi (Swiggy, Jupiter Money, Flipkart) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Even if five rupees, that is basically like 10 cents or less than that. That would be paid through UPI. And people started moving away from cash and so on. And there's something called the India stack that is like all of these things coming together, which is social security, identity, payments, and so on, that a whole bunch of other apps can now use to build their own layers on top of that. So many interesting cases kind of started coming about. So that's kind of one, which is just the number and in the infrastructure. Now, the other thing to look at is India is very diverse. So the number of languages spoken here, even the official languages is so high. And they say there's this quote in India, like every 15 miles. The language will change on the people and their culture will change. And it's a huge country of so many people. So your traditional ways of thinking about products also that whom I'm building for is very different. Are you building for this person or that, et cetera? So a bunch of...”
2023-12-07 · Lenny's Podcast · The full-stack PM | Anuj Rathi (Swiggy, Jupiter Money, Flipkart) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“From smartphones, there was what we call the geo revolutions. There's an Indian company called Reliance Geo that basically got internet at the cheapest prices for smartphones. So because of this, a whole population came onto the internet, which was hungry for newer products, newer content, completely different ways of interacting with each other and using internet for all sorts of different things. That was one of the waves. The other part is really what the Indian government really enabled, which is especially in digitization of a bunch of absolute core fundamental citizen related machinery, which is either through digital payments, which is a whole bunch of Indians now started having a bank account by default and something called UPI. So even if you do not have a bank account or that bank account is linked to your mobile phone number, but now everybody would pay through that. And that brought in like a very different kind of revolution.”
2023-12-07 · Lenny's Podcast · The full-stack PM | Anuj Rathi (Swiggy, Jupiter Money, Flipkart) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This is a very wide question. So I'll tell you before the opportunity in India, I think I'll talk about the complexity in India, which is which I think a lot of people don't understand. So India has what 1.4 billion people. So there are three waves really that happened in India, but also in the globe. The first wave was from desktop to mobile. And then even from mobile to smartphones.”
2023-12-07 · Lenny's Podcast · The full-stack PM | Anuj Rathi (Swiggy, Jupiter Money, Flipkart) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The decadal time when I can very clearly imagine that's where a lot of people started building for India. So, I think when Flipkart started that kind of journey. But in a couple of years, then they were like Ola, which was in a way similar to Uber, what they were doing elsewhere. And then a whole bunch of other startups that started coming in. So for example, in food delivery, when I was working at Swiggy, that came in like say 2015, 2014 in that time frame. And now you see a whole bunch of startups which are trying to do not only things which are what could an Ubert for India look like or what could a DoDash for India look like very different and also very innovative. So I think now is the time when you see a lot more product building around that area.”
2023-12-07 · Lenny's Podcast · The full-stack PM | Anuj Rathi (Swiggy, Jupiter Money, Flipkart) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think 2010 was kind of when it started because look, there were a few products that were built before that also. And I think somebody said this clearly, that usually when modern consumer internet starts coming in countries, it usually starts with travel. So you do have basically any country you would start with, which is the first travel company. So I think India started with some companies like MakeMetrip and so on way earlier. There were a few very interesting products being built in India which were solving uniquely for the Indian consumers that were in the matrimony side, which is Shadi.com and Bharat Metrimony.com and so on. Like what do you think about Tinder? Like India is famous for arranged marriages. So like a product that would really understand that, hey, if you're a parent, if you want to get your kid up for matrimony, how would you solve for them? And that marketplace of matchmaking, et cetera, started. So a few blips here and there, which was following uniquely for India. But I think 2010 was...”
2023-12-07 · Lenny's Podcast · The full-stack PM | Anuj Rathi (Swiggy, Jupiter Money, Flipkart) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And that mentality also kind of moved on to what I expect from product managers or product building journeys and so on. So I think over a period of time, a lot of those cycles have happened and a lot more other leaders in companies have now seen those cycles and kind of understood and all right, now I understand software is not machinery. Consumers are not predictable as much as we thought. And that has led to now finally, I think, product management coming of edge.”
2023-12-07 · Lenny's Podcast · The full-stack PM | Anuj Rathi (Swiggy, Jupiter Money, Flipkart) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Is the VP of business and who is the VP of supply and sales and ops and technology and all of that? That group knew how to work with each other to build software products. They understood how that would be built and what to expect. I think in India, when we were in 2010, et cetera, even those different people who needed to come together to build e-commerce, they would come from, say, FMCG or they would come from manufacturing and so on. And what they would have seen in their journeys in terms of what we expect is a very request response kind of understanding, which is here's machinery. give this X resources.”
2023-12-07 · Lenny's Podcast · The full-stack PM | Anuj Rathi (Swiggy, Jupiter Money, Flipkart) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Product building, forget product management as a field in the first place. There were no colleges which were teaching anything about this. There was no playbooks and so on and so forth. We would go to the internet and look at YouTube and look at SVPG and all of that. But what we would understand would not, you could not port directly to the Indian startups. And the way that they shaped up, I think also shaped up the way product management field would evolve in India. So it's taken like a bunch of iterations and I think there are like two or three different waves that have come in and we are way closer to how good product management should be done in India. We still have a little bit way to go compared to say US. And I also think of it along, like, for example, in US, the product building culture probably started in 1970s, the modern software product building culture. And you didn't only have product manager, but the entire ecosystem, if you think about a company, like who”
2023-12-07 · Lenny's Podcast · The full-stack PM | Anuj Rathi (Swiggy, Jupiter Money, Flipkart) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I think that's a very interesting question. And I think about this all the time. When I look at product management in India and I do have a lot of friends comparing product management versus say in the US or even in Europe versus even in China, Southeast Asia, et cetera, I think India has had like a very interesting journey of products in general and hence product management also. I think till about 2010-ish, there were not really many products built for the Indian consumers in the first place. There were a lot of products being built, a lot of technology being built, but largely because it was a back office. So you had a lot of great engineers kind of working in companies which would build products for the American customer or even for the European customer and so on. So once these startups started coming in, which were thinking about building for the Indian consumers, I think we did not really have that talent which we could directly tap into, who were trained into product.”
2023-12-07 · Lenny's Podcast · The full-stack PM | Anuj Rathi (Swiggy, Jupiter Money, Flipkart) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It feels really good, and I really feel it's come together because I've been doing product management for the longest time. In 2010, when I started the product management journey with Flipcut, I think that was a time when there were not a lot of products being built for India. So I think one part is just the tenure. And B is, I think it's just a lot of people have known their work.”
2023-12-07 · Lenny's Podcast · The full-stack PM | Anuj Rathi (Swiggy, Jupiter Money, Flipkart) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Only three reasons why things do not happen the way you want them to happen as a leader. And you can look at a person and you would say either that person can't do, which is a capability issue, or they won't do, which is a motivation or an alignment issue, or they were not set up to do, which is really your problem that you didn't set up the ways of working in Aug design properly. So as a leader, do you have the right people in terms of capability? And if not, is the right answer for us to coach them or to really put them or mentor them and so on or move them to some other place because maybe the capability is suited elsewhere. If they won't do, why won't they? Are they not aligned to you? Do they not agree with your vision? Do they not have enough time? And so on and so forth. So you need to really go deeper there. Why won't they do?”
2023-12-07 · Lenny's Podcast · The full-stack PM | Anuj Rathi (Swiggy, Jupiter Money, Flipkart) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source