Lovelocal
Head of Product
Lovelocal (previously m.Paani) is a platform that helps Local retail compete against big-box retail and online e-com giants.
This Google Accelerator company started as an SMS-based loyalty program for India's local retail stores to improve their customer retention.
In 2019, the company pivoted to a unified hyper-local marketplace (B2C) + retail store management & marketing solution (B2B).
My Contrubution
The Challenge
Lovelocal (previously known as m.Paani) was know for its loyalty product that was created back in 2014 and for Rural markets in India. The product ran on was SMS based and with internet penetration in India improving leaps since 2016, meaning the product retention was falling short on both the retailer & customer side.
The product needed a ground up re-think with the core principles of empowering the local retailer. I was tasked to navigate the company through this pivot that too with a turn around time of 3 months.
Solution Design
Step 1- Market Research Sprint
Considering I was new to the retail technology sector, it was imperative I understand the dynamics of the operation of the sector, the supply chain and the distribution channels.
I spend a 15 day sprint living the retailer's life, which included;
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Understanding their key distributors
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Stocking & Inventory management
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POS & Billing services
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Stacking & shelving
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Structured and unstructured customer relationship management
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Logistics & last-mile deliveries
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Credit management & payments
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Accounting
During this research, there were 4 different concepts that could be viable directions of taking the company.:
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Digitizing the local store & providing their customers a hyper-local marketplace.
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A creditor management solution.
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Purely digital marketing solutions for local retails.
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Smart inventory stocking & distributor aggregator software.
Step 2 - Concept Testing, Prototyping & UX Testing
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The 4 concepts were prototyped and tested with different scales of stores, their owners & their customers. The objectives of this round of testing:
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Business proposition viability
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Monetization testing
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Usability testing
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Business impact testing
The resounding output was the first option, where we provided turnkey digital SAAS solutions that would take these stores online for the first time and allow them to compete against the online players.
The next step involved getting Board and other stakeholders' approval & then it was down to making the concept a reality in less than 2.5 months with a team of 6 engineers & a UI designer.
Step 3 - Agile Development Planning & backlog management
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Efficiently planned for the development of both B2B & B2C apps over 4 sprint cycles.
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Project managed this mission-critical development.
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Managed & prioritized feedback & backlog from Sales, Service, Clients, Management, Development & other teams.
B2C - Hyperlocal Marketplace
B2B - SAAS for Local Retail
Step 4 - Go-to-market & Growth.
B2B - Growing our retail base.
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Worked along with our Retailer success teams & Sales teams to formulate a growth strategy, the strategy used:
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Hyperlocal area targeting - This involved bringing in the largest store from the neighborhood onboard.
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Leveraging referrals from onboarded retails to invite their other store around them.
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B2C - Growing the user base:
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Incentivizing the store existing customers to move onto app orders, hence acquiring customers at an extremely low cost of acquisition.
Key Results
Successful Company Pivot.
Spearheaded a company pivot & turnaround over a 3month time span. My contribution took the company from a space of uncertainty to a phase of growth.
Contributed towards raising Series A round of funding.
The pivot & product growth helped the company raise its Series A round of ~$10million.
In 2021, the company has raised another $18 million.
Hockeystick Growth
Increasing the retail product usage by 373%, from 118% early in the year, effectively resulting in an increase of 329% in revenue.
Leadership Hiring
I assisted in the Leadership hiring in the company & helped grow the team size from 25 to 100+ over a year.