Tapping into the pulse of Bharat through our Listen or Die ritual

5% Indian households shop with Meesho everyday 🥳 That’s approximately 12.5 million households, primarily from India’s tier-2 and beyond cities.

On the other side of the equation are our sellers, many of whom are experimenting with online selling for the first time.

Not your typical e-commerce user base 🤷

Despite catering to users that are uniquely placed in the e-commerce sector, we’ve been able to serve them and nurture their trust. We have more than 100 million transacting customers and 6 lakh sellers on our platform. We are truly on our way to “Democratise Internet Commerce for Everyone” 🎊

All thanks to “Listen or Die” (LoD): a company-wide ritual where we have direct conversations with our users, both sellers and customers. We use insights from these conversations to nail the right problem areas and build products to solve them. And so, amidst our hyper-growth stage, our priority was to go back to our sources of truth to figure out how we can unlock the next phase of growth. All the CXOs headed out to different cities spread across Bharat to speak with our users. I too, headed out for my in-person LoD to Coimbatore.

Day 1 — June 27, 2022

“User Research” with customers

On a Friday morning around 11:30 am, I went incognito to attend a “user research” about e-commerce platforms organised by an external agency 🤫 We didn’t want the participants — our customers — to know that I’m from Meesho. This was the only way to ensure candid feedback.

Our customers were divided into three cohorts:
Habit users — Customers who order via the Meesho app regularly
New users (Active) — Customers who have the Meesho app installed but haven’t made any purchase in a while
New users (Inactive) — Customers who haven’t made a purchase in a while and have uninstalled the app.

I spoke to 12 customers over multiple sittings spanning 3+ hours, and I noticed that they started speaking more after the first round of discussions. This allowed me to ask some probing questions and gain valuable insights… especially from “New users (Inactive)” 😮

For example…

“Journey gamification” is a feature that incentivises shopping on the Meesho app. But surprisingly, many of our customers did not fully utilise this feature.

The discussions revealed that only one out of four customers even knew about this feature. How would they use the reward points they gained for uploading reviews and photos of their purchase if they are unaware that they’ve won a reward?!

These insights were helpful in highlighting features that need a different product marketing approach.

From incorporating more “Meesho-trusted” products to expanding the mens wear category, we received many suggestions to ponder over at the end of day 1.

Day 2 — June 28, 2022

Chai and chat with suppliers

Day 2 of the programme involved interacting with our sellers but the approach had to be different from day 1. We wanted our sellers to know their issues were being heard by Meesho’s senior leaders. So, we set up seller meetings in advance. In turn, they welcomed us to their warehouses, factories, and home offices, bubbling with questions, comments and feedback. During the course of the day, I met four sellers at different stages of growth on Meesho. Some had built thriving businesses on Meesho while others were in early stages of growth.All of them gave me incredible insights that I may have otherwise overlooked had it not been for this ‘Listen or Die’ ritual.

Seller 1

A second generation perfume seller, the owner of PIK Pvt. Ltd. is a businessman through and through. He conducts a large part of his online business through Meesho, and has an impressive catalogue of 100 products. His goal is to eventually take his business to a Direct to Customer (D2C) model and expand internationally as well.

Seller 2

Yet another brilliant businessman, the owner of Ayam fashion sells only on e-commerce platforms as he believes this gives him large distribution as opposed to selling offline through retail stores. Basically, he has cracked the code to monopolise the sportswear market, and is able to get 2000+ orders every single day supported by just a small team of 5 employees.

Seller 3

Another menswear seller, the owner of ABI Brand Hub, is an artist and a businessman. He has been designing the products he sells on Meesho since mid-2021. Even though he is listed as a seller on multiple online platforms, ABI Brand Hub makes the most margin on Meesho.

Seller 4

DJ Traders is run by a husband-wife duo, who sell fashion jewellery exclusively on e-commerce platforms. I spent the most time talking to them and got some valuable feedback on our pricing, returns, and payments processes.

After listening comes implementing

LoD exercise doesn’t end with these visits and conversations. It only begins. Now, in fact, comes the thrilling part. Converting these insights into actions. All members of the senior leadership team presented their inferences to each other the week after our return. The meeting, which lasted nearly 12 hours, had us dissecting what each feedback meant and the key problems we need to address for our customers and sellers. Here are some of those:

• How do we get more new to e-commerce customers to build trust in online shopping on Meesho?
• How do we personalise our shopping experience on the Meesho app even more to account for the heterogeneity of the Bharat customer base?
• How do we provide new technology tools for our sellers that can help them better manage their growth vs. profitability trade-off?
• How do we provide a great experience for sellers on our platform that can help us achieve industry leading seller NPS?

As you read this, many of these questions are being answered. If you are excited by the prospect of adopting a User-First approach to solve difficult problems and build for a billion Indians, join us.

Credits: Cover image by Rahul Prakash (LinkedIn, Behance)

Also Read:

How to Effectively Communicate with India’s Small Businesses

Here’s how Meesho’s Seller Base Grew a Whopping 700% in a year