Ayush Baheti grew up thinking he would be a lawyer like most of his family members. What he had not anticipated however was joining the field of tech, becoming a product manager and loving his job! In fact, this Chemical Engineering graduate did not even know what product management was until a few years ago when he launched his own startup. Being in the startup ecosystem for six years made Ayush cognisant of user experience and the importance of being very user-centric. A genuine intention of wanting to solve user problems is what makes Ayush such a great product manager at Meesho.
It also helps that Ayush is committed to the cause of women empowerment. This fits perfectly with Meesho’s mission of enabling our entrepreneurs — most of whom are women — to become entrepreneurs in their own right, thereby making them financially independent.
Ayush is here to tell us how as a Group Product manager at Meesho he loves to take ownership, how women empowerment is a cause he is dedicated to and how the product team and its work lies at an interesting intersection with cross team collaborations across design, data science, tech and business.
I joined Meesho as a Senior Product Manager in September 2018, when the company was barely 100-meeshoites strong. As you can imagine, none of our job profiles were clearly defined at the time, and I remember working on multiple version one projects initially, including implementing a loyalty programme, setting up our first competitive intelligence, and incorporating real images for the reviews that our entrepreneurs submit. I basically hit the floor running and it felt amazing to start this way because not only were they pretty thrilling projects, but each of them gave me a clearer picture of what I would do at Meesho.
In a couple of months, we had defined a clear problem statement, which in turn set the stage for a well-defined set of roles and responsibilities. Looking back at the two years I spent at Meesho, what stands out for me, are the various projects I have spearheaded and have been a part of.
Projects that made the most impact
For example, revamping the entire onboarding flow. Hitherto, all our new entrepreneurs used to learn about Meesho and how they could generate income on the platform using a seven-minute video on our platform. But, around March this year we decided that instead of potentially overwhelming our entrepreneurs with this lengthy video, we must understand the problems they face and break down their experiences. We then provided information and guidance for those specific problems in a way that was easily palatable.
We worked on this from the ground up, creating a framework that allowed us to experiment at each given pivot point and make the whole onboarding process much smoother. This is one of my favourite projects that I have been part of since joining Meesho, especially since it has had a truly positive impact on our entrepreneurs.
Another project I am honoured to have been part of was the automation of our cataloguing process. Until about March of 2019, every action in our cataloguing was done manually, which obviously was pretty strenuous and time-consuming. The time that it took for our cataloges to go live, in fact, went up to four days at the time, and this adversely affected our suppliers regularly. So, we built an entire product which made the process automated, allowing the catalog team to increase their efficiency by 2.2 X. Even from an economic perspective, the cost per catalog came down significantly.
When I think back on all these projects, this much is clear — we achieved all that we did and continue to do so, only because we truly live by Meesho’s core values. For us, in the product team especially, Take Ownership, Think 10X, and Deep Dive and Solve Problems are the three core values we absolutely need to follow to function optimally and at par in Meesho’s fast-paced and dynamic environment.
Taking Ownership
Product team lies at a very interesting interjection where we have to work with a lot of different teams such as design, tech, data science, business, and so on. More often than not, you are not the one implementing your ideas. You are collaborating for each part of a product, including the design, building the tech, running experiments. But, in spite of that, the product team takes responsibility for the results of any project, and for that purpose alone, you drive all the different teams, align them and move them in a direction that derives a result that you can proudly take ownership of.
Here at Meesho, it is not difficult to feel that sense of ownership, because you know that the work you are doing is extremely important and impactful.
I didn’t always know that I wanted to be in the tech field, but as early as I can remember I have known that I wanted my work to be involved in at least one of the issues that I am passionate about — women empowerment, education and climate change. So, of course, the fact that we are enabling over lakhs of women to become financially independent is extremely fulfilling for me.
Engineer in a legal family
Growing up in Bhopal, in a home full of people in the legal field — with my father a judge and sister a lawyer — the sense of justice and equity were instilled in me at an early age. I too wanted to follow in their footsteps for a while, but it was apparent to me even during school days that I had a passion for solving problems and preferred maths and science over most other subjects. So, I ended up pursuing a Chemical Engineering degree from IIT-Bombay.
In college too, this desire to find the best solution for any given problem became even more of a passion and priority. Moreover, working in a factory environment — which is what most chemical engineers mostly do — did not appeal to me, as I was more fascinated by data and technology. So soon after college, I joined Fractal Analytics as an Analytics Consultant, which required me to look at data to solve problems. This helped hone my data analysis skills better and helped me become confident enough to launch my own startup in a field I was passionate about.
When social causes meet professional dreams
Laughguru was launched in March, 2015 and it sought out to revamp the education sector. The idea was to teach students in a way that would allow them to interact with the subjects they were learning in a humorous way rather than throw information at them and expect them to consume it; which is what most of the Indian education is like. When I started out, I had no idea of what product is or how to write codes, as I had not written a single code while pursuing Chemical Engineering. But, I learnt during the four years that I was managing the startup.
Funnily enough, I didn’t even realise that the work I was doing at Laughguru was product management until three years into doing it. Given that the Indian startup ecosystem wasn’t remotely as mature as it is today, I had to learn a lot of lessons while running the startup. It was during this time that I also realised that my ideal career route is as a product manager.
I don’t think that I would have the same job satisfaction as I do today, had I gone into more technical things. Staying close to the user, understanding their problems, and finding solutions for them is where my passion lies.
Here at Meesho that is exactly what I get to do. I also cherish the fact that my work is so extremely impact-driven and of course, tackling the problem in the Indian society — women’s financial safety or lack thereof — I am personally compelled to solve. I look forward to more years at Meesho, of solving tough problems, helping more women become financially stable and independent, and working with colleagues that share a similar value system that I do.
Girls who build: Meet the women of Meesho’s product team
Want to join Ayush Baheti and Meesho’s product team and creative state-of-the-art products that will help women across India financially independent? Click here to see if Meesho has the right job for you.
