“I wish my mother had a Meesho to turn to ten years ago,” says Senior Product Manager Mayank Gupta, whose mother happened to watch the Meesho TVC recently and was deeply moved by it. Mayank has seen Meesho and its entrepreneur stories resonate at close quarters — right at home, where his mother, a homeopathic doctor had to quit her practice a few decades ago. The vacuum she felt at having given up her profession has been a constant. This became even more evident when she downloaded the Meesho app soon after she finished watching the ad.
Mayank’s work [as part of the Product team] involves speaking with and understanding the issues of Meesho entrepreneurs. These interactions are the best part of his job, and they are perhaps the biggest motivations for him to do what he does. He sees a bit of his mother in all these entrepreneurs and their aspirations, and has made such a huge connection with these entrepreneurs that some of them have even tried to get him to be a part of their businesses.
According to him, Meesho’s success lies in the ability to solve a huge problem — enabling women with the agency to work, be financially independent, and forge an identity for themselves. “Any company that is able to solve this issue is going in the right direction, and Meesho has certainly been able to find a perfect solution for it,” Mayank says.
In pursuit of passion
Mayank got onboard the Meesho rocketship in April 2019 but knew of the company long before that. He even lived with Meesho CEO and Co-Founder Vidit Aatrey for a couple years prior, when he first moved to Bangalore. As someone who was always interested in working in roles that had a social impact, Mayank followed the company’s journey religiously for years.
Having completed his BTech in Biochemical Engineering from IIT Delhi, Mayank faced no shortage of opportunities when it came to working. He started his career as a consultant at McKinsey & Company. While it was a great first placement, Mayank was, however, itching to take a risk and decided to launch his own startup a year into working at McKinsey. The idea for the startup came from the fact that as a newly salaried person he knew nothing about managing his finances. With his business model, he wanted to help young people to be able to invest sensibly into mutual funds.
But, Mayank and his co founder soon realised that they needed a deeper product and business understanding to make a startup work and soon this led to a role at MechMocha, an entertainment gaming company. Mayank even built an online Ludo product called Hello Ludo, which connected people across the country and helped them make friends over a game of Ludo.
“I was proud of that game, especially because of how massively we were able to scale it. But, the nagging feeling of wanting to do something more impactful from a social perspective made me look towards Meesho. Eventually, in April 2019, a little after Meesho received its Series C funding, I joined the team as a Senior Product Manager,” relates Mayank.
Invaluable insights into discovery and user experience
“I was very excited to finally be a part of Meesho,” says Mayank, adding how the first project he took on at the company, video merchandising, is also the one he is most proud of. “Video merchandising is basically presenting the products on our app in video format along with images. I worked on it primarily with Rishi [Singh; Product Manager] on it. Technically, I would not call this project a success, but it helped us gain more insights into our entrepreneurs and it is currently being revived and iterated by new members. The aim is to give our entrepreneurs a better experience with regards to discovery and we were able to lay the foundation for that,” explains Mayank.
Another similarly exciting and important project that Mayank worked on is Challenges, which basically allows you to provide a challenge to a user. He explains, “We look at a user’s past performances and say that we want to give you a stretch target that comes with a reward. The user is also able to track their progress in real-time, which also encourages them to perform better and work towards tangible goals.”
All these projects are aimed at one thing alone, and that is the Meesho core value of Making Entrepreneurs Successful. We are obsessed with this, and it can only put into practice when you are fully focused on their problems. This is why user research is a huge function for the product team. “We have done tremendous work on this topic solely for the last couple of years,” says Mayank, adding how the research and the decisions made based on them, need to reflect on the business metrics as well.
To Make Entrepreneurs Successful
“What we build is solely for our entrepreneurs. We are not concerned with whether it would change anything in the world as a whole,” says Mayank. The Meesho core values of Deep Dive and Solve Problems, and Thinking 10X are also important to Mayank. He explains how as a company Meesho has made unprecedented bets like journey gamification solely because we listen to our entrepreneurs, and are able to think outside the box.
“When we launched gamification, the idea was not just to create a game within the app. But, it came as a supercharge solution to the problem that our entrepreneurs were struggling with — that of motivation. We made their whole journey on the app a point-based system complete with a leaderboard and it resonated with our entrepreneurs,” says Mayank. Adding how Meesho’s Product team is very problem-focused, he says:
“I am constantly thinking of ways to customise projects that worked elsewhere in the world for our target group and build it in a way that will last and continue to be valuable instead of being a small, short-time injunction.”
To dynamic growth
“In the years that I have worked here, we have grown so much as a company and because of this, so many areas have come to the fore that need the attention of a product team. Naturally, the product team has sort of grown to keep up with the pace of the company’s growth. For example, we went from just anyone looking at entrepreneurs’ issues or the app as a whole to having a team dedicated to looking at discovery, search, at gamification and so on,” explains Mayank, elaborating on how the division of functions has allowed product folks to deep dive into specific areas.
Mayank, who is constantly in awe of Meesho entrepreneurs and their hustle, draws inspiration from them and is constantly inspired to imbibe those traits in his work too. He adds, “No matter how much we work at Meesho to empower our entrepreneurs, it seems minuscule compared to their drive and their hustle.’’
Mayank, a voracious reader, has one main goal for the company going forward: “Our aim is to keep breaking our own records week in and week out, and to constantly discover and solve problems for our entrepreneurs.”
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