If the CEO of Zomato asked you, as a product manager, to launch a grocery product, how would you approach it?

Launch grocery for Zomato

What? Online grocery ordering app

Why? Convenience, Comfort, Affordable, on Demand service

Objective? Are we solving for revenue growth, increasing user frequency, or building a super app ecosystem? Revenue growth

Market research -

Busy users, little to no time for purchasing groceries from shops, on demand grocery requirements needed on an urgent basis, value comfort over cost

User segments - Tier-1 cities

Competitors - There are already existing players, with inventory/ marketplace models for inventory placement. Zomato needs to decide which model to take and also what pricing to set basis competitor pricing. Other parameters to consider - Availability, Pricing, Delivery timings  and Reliability

Value proposition (for buyer) - An online grocery delivery app  where you can order and groceries at the convenience of your home without the need of going outside.

Benefits - Convenience, Comfort, Affordability, Faster delivery

Value proposition (for sellers) - Larger audience reach at no extra cost, increase in ADO/ AOV, no commissions for order transactions, no need of delivery partners from seller side

Benefits - Convenience, Affordability, Higher revenue, Lower cost, Higher margins

Strategy -

Launch MVP in one Tier-1 city, starting with few densely populated areas and then extend to rest of the city. This will be followed by gradual scale up across the other Tier-1 cities and then rest of the country based on the user demographics.

The app can be in English for both (the consumers and for the sellers) and assisted by an AI bot to answer queries or help navigate through the app flow

MVP catalog - High frequency, low complexity items. e.g, essentials, health and household, etc.

MVP features - Grocery list, Real time inventory status, Smart order list generator based on past data and fast moving items, same payment methods, early bird discount coupons, etc.

Buyer onboarding - Zomato already has a huge user base in Tier-1 cities from food ordering app. Can do in-app banners on the food ordering app with deep linking to the grocery app; Partner with google, meta to show zomato grocery ads on their websites; Bill boards, TV advertisements, targetted email invites for early access, etc.

Partner onboarding - Since zomato is already following a marketplace model for food delivery app, it can continue this model for the grocery app as well, because it will save from upfront huge dark store setup costs. Partner with big to medium scale grocery stores in the initial phase, offer zero commission in the initial phase, targetted ads, sms, email notifications to targetted stores, etc.

Driver onboarding - Leverage your existing food delivery fleet to start doing grocery delivery as well and as orders start to pick up, onboard more drivers into the system.

Launch plan -

Pre launch -

• Align with marketing team on the launch plan and marketing channels and plan
• Align on the in-app banner, promotions, etc. with marketing team
• Align on the ops/ support team wrt training on the objection handling and driver sourcing and training as well
• Align with engg team on the deployment prerequisites
• Pilot testing with 1-2 big sellers and early adoption users
• Monitoring dashboard in place

• Production deployment for all MVP location users
• Production sanity
• Public launch announcement
• More in app notifs, sms, push notifs, email notifs, etc.
• Influencer/ Celebrity campaigns

• Metrics monitoring -
  • % app downloads
  • % logins
  • # sellers registered on the platform
  • % users who placed atleast one order
  • % users who placed multiple orders
  • % food ordering users who ordered grocery atleast once
  • % On time orders
  • DAU/ WAU/ MAU
  • D7/ D30 returning users
  • ADO
  • AOV
  • ARPU
  • Revenue
  • Margin
  • Consumer NPS
  • Seller NPS
  • Driver NPS
• User feedback
• Post mortem
• Continuous improvement