My thoughts on the Indian e-commerce logistics market 2016 - An interview to AT Kearney

• How has the ecommerce logistics market evolved over the last 2-3 years and what are the key trends that are emerging

If you probed deeply, many e-commerce organizations are actually supply chain and logistics organizations, who also happen to sell merchandise. With that definition in mind, I think the last 2-3 years saw a huge revolution in the logistics space in India, especially in the last mile. 

Most organizations realized that establishing a sustainable and profitable business meant, first establishing a sound logistics capability whether in house or outsourced. It is no more an after thought, which bodes well overall for that industry.

The last few years have seen multiple innovations in the modes (COD, scheduled delivery, exchanges, try and buy etc.)  visibility, delivery timelines, control over the last mile and more importantly a significantly better customer experience in the logistics sector. From 4-5 days, which was the norm 2 years ago, to same day deliveries, organizations have progressed a lot. And with hyperlocal businesses in the fray, that has further come down to 2-3 hours!

• How have the operating models of the logistics companies evolved? (In-house/outsource different parts of the value chain)

Operating models have evolved, as and when organizations have understood the needs of the customer better. With a very high population in India on the smart phone network and increasing day by day, the average customer is constantly connected and hence demands more now. 

For example, the customer started wanting to and is now able to track each and every shipment real time. This was considered a good to have feature 2 years ago, but any organization starting now, would consider this as a must have.

Also, the larger the volumes, an organization was shipping, the better the unit economics.

The enhanced customer expectation and increasing sales meant, there arose a need to better control and expose your logistics and fulfillment network to the end buyer in a cost effective way. That lead to many organizations starting to build their own in house capabilities, as an internal supply chain means more control than an external one. 

In house logistics arms also meant that, an organization could  pass on its cultural values to the last mile delivery boy easily. This gave a more personalized experience than having it delivered through traditional logistics companies.

However, there also emerged specialized e-commerce logistics players which offered better unit economics and the freedom to an e-commerce organization, from maintaining a large payroll. Even traditional logistics organizations, now have, specialized e-commerce arms that deal solely with the wide gamut of online players.

• What are the key success factors across different segments – First mile, fulfillment centers, line haul and last mile?

Success factors depend upon the business that an organization is in. For example, there are many food tech companies now, or should I say logistics companies, which happen to deliver food, whose success actually solely depends upon the speed of delivery and maintaining the quality of the food they deliver. 

For other e-commerce organizations, the success depends upon a combination of the end customer experience, the packaging, the speed and the accuracy of the deliveries. 

In summary, speed has continued to remain a key success factor across segments.

• What are the implications of hyperlocal on ecommerce logistics market?

This is a very exciting space in India now. Hyperlocal is all about maintaining and innovating to make your logistics more proactive than reactive. Traditional hub and spoke models may not work with hyperlocal. Most hyperlocal businesses are centered around groceries, staples and food. As I mentioned before, speed is of the essence here and they also happen to be low ticket items.  You expect to see brilliant innovations in this space right from workforce management and routing to technology optimization. We have already started seeing transportation aggregators use their fleet to deliver groceries in less than an hour!

• What are the key innovations we are seeing in logistics across the different segments? (Like pickups etc.)

Pickup is another interesting area where the industry is going through rapid innovation.  Many traditional brick and mortar organizations have also introduced the online ordering and pick up option to customers. Many e-commerce organizations have either created their own offline space or have tied up with offline partners where they allow this facility to their customers. 

You again expect to see a lot more of omni-channel experience than just a 'delivery to home' in the near future. The best would be if someone could deliver my order when I wait at the Silk board or the Sony World junction. I would reckon that that, day may not be too far away!

Rambling thoughts of a Ramblin' Wreck

Intersection of People Leadership and Product Management : 

I have recently switched into a people leadership position. I was having lunch with one of my favorite product people, and while talking about my current role, he mentioned that I am product managing, people leadership. I had never really thought of what I was doing like that before, but when I did, it made a whole lot of sense.

Things that do go well together between people leadership and product management is that you manage the expectations of your stakeholders which is primarily your team now. You need to serve them as well as the market demands and other stakeholders. Your manager has expectations from your team and you, other folks do too and as with everything else, not enough time to get all of it done. So most of your time is spent on setting the right expectations of what you will be doing and more importantly, what you won’t be.

As a people leader you are continuously getting feedback on how the team and the individuals are doing, sharing the successes and collectively trying to get better (customer surveys? :) ). It is also about setting a vision for the team that all of us subscribe to , a culture to operate in, getting everyone’s buy-in, creating a plan to get there and executing it (product roadmap?). It is also being able to react to organizational and environmental changes(Agile, anyone?).

Though my role has changed, I feel a lot of parallels with my former product manager role. And of course, I document all of this on Confluence still! 

Once a product manager, always a product manager.

An open letter to the HRD minister Smriti Irani

Dear Smriti,

I am Rahul and I work for a leading multinational.I am a graduate from Georgia tech and had decided to get back to India 4 years back.

I have grown up seeing you on the television. It is great to see you being bestowed with, probably, one of the most important ministries for India, not just for the next five years but for a long time to come.

As a child and then as an adolescent I had access to quality education. I have also wondered as a child, why it is so difficult to provide quality education to everyone in India.

I then grew up and was among those unfortunate souls who was under pressure to write the IIT JEE, and having narrowly failed to get through, had to settle for a NIT. History repeated after 4 years when again after writing the CAT, I could not get through into an IIM. That was it. All options in India were over for me and just like many other million kids, I went to get my graduation done, from a top university from the USA.

It was sad that India had lost a good student. Because students in India are judged by pure acumen in math and science. Not by their personal experiences and what they have learnt as a human being. Interviews in IIM s, are notorious for making the candidate feel like he should never have been born in the earth,rather than systematically judging his skills and what he/she can add to the university and consequently the country.

But I returned, leaving a hundred thousand dollar job. Believe me, it was not convenient, but I returned. To my homeland, with hope, of a better future. I helped start ups grow, like Flipkart and Myntra. But I have seen in my experience now, that though our youngsters are educated, I mean they have a degree, from a top notch college, they are not ready for a job. They lack so many soft skills which are part of the education dissemination process in the USA. I also unfortunately see so many engineers who could have been artists or musicians stuck at the wrong job. Consequently, not able to shine there. It is unfortunate.

I have had good teachers growing up. And I believe after parents, it is a teacher who influences the child, the most.

I feel we need a change at all levels. Our training for teachers needs a rethink, a reform of the middle school teaching style, a change of the competitive exams which gives smart people a chance - not just people who are able to solve a complex math problem in ten minutes, a system that encourages the girl child(and her family) to pursue education,a society that allows a child to do what he /she wants and is good at, and finally a committee, that researches, on a continuous basis, the most modern techniques of disseminating education and more importantly a strong core team to implement these measures, along with coming up with a roadmap to put India on the world map as a destination for quality education.

I want to be part of that team, where I can use my previous experience and my passion to make a change for my motherland. I want to work for you and with you since I see you have intent and I am inspired by you. I am equally, if not more, inspired by our prime minister. It is finally great to see a leader with a back bone. It would be great,if unlike other previous ministers in India whom I have wrote to, I see a reply at least from you. You can reach me at 91 9538094306 anytime.

Regards,

Rahul Ramkumar

Product Manager - A mini-CEO?

This was the cliche doing the rounds when I had just joined as a PM in a leading e-commerce venture. Obviously, being a newbie I was proud and excited. I took that to mean the following,

1. Power to do whatever I wanted to with the product
2. Ability to give shape to my own thoughts
3. Can take the risk required to roll out a product, which is not agreeable to the vast majority
4. Get away with whatever s*#t you may have done with the product
5. You are your own master

and I was completely wrong!

What that meant, was actually the following :

1. Your customers are your masters
2. You will be questioned even if you have done the right thing. You almost always have to explain your decisions to  the stakeholders.
3. You will be at the mercy of the engineers to get things done for you
4. You will need to face failures and learn to live with it
5. Be the universal punching bag. If things go well, the engineers and customers will take credit. If things go bad, YOU will be blamed.

The saying( a PM being the CEO of his product ) is actually true though. Just that I had always got the job description of a CEO wrong(Any aspiring CEOs?). The following two points were the most important takeaways from a lesson learned the hard way.

1. You will always be judged by the way you deal with failures.
2. You are a leader, but one who will only have to lead by influence and participation, never by authority.

Lets take each point on its own.

All of us hate to fail. But if you are a PM and you think you have not failed, then you are either the worst PM on the planet or you are not one at all(your organization has been deceiving you). You need to understand that failure is not bad at all. The problem with failure however is that, it has a tendency to cloud the mind with negative emotions. I had this huge mental thing that, after a failure I would just do a LOT of reflection and question my abilities as a PM, that I have in the past, missed the essence of the lesson learned by virtue of the failure. Every failure needs a response and PMs who respond strongly to failures are the ones that tend to succeed in this thankless role.

Analyse every failure. Take it for granted that you will fail and since that is a given, a few positives will help you learn your lesson in the least painful way. Some of the positives are :

1. Being surrounded by great people. Get around people who will support you when required and reiterate the trust they have in your ability. It helps.
2. Question your decision making process and spot the gaps. Treat every failure separately and invest time to learn from the mistakes.
3. Accept the fact that you have failed, humbly.

I have lost count of my failures. It has become a way of life and I have made my peace with it.

Just remember one thing though, every failure need not be published beyond your manager. Affects your peer reviews and bonus. 

Now that I think about the second point more,I feel it deserves a whole post by itself. 

How did I become a PM?

My journey till now has been very interesting.  Weird ,but interesting . Just when you have a plan, God decides to have a little fun and screws it all up. Well, being the theist that I am, I go with the flow or I have till now. Most of my decisions till date have come from the heart, just a gut feel. Be it choosing higher studies over a job with a  leading automaker in India or deciding to move back to India when I had a well paying job in the US of A.

A similar such gut based decision landed me a job with, say, A.com. A poster boy now for the Indian e-commerce industry, A had just about set shop when I joined them in 2010. I was happy to be chosen as an Operations Manager and was 'expected' to turn around the supply chain(Or at least I expected that out of myself). I still remember my first conversation with the then AVP and COO. I was giving them all the cool Georgia Tech fundas(come on I had to show off somewhere) on how to do optimization and improve efficiency and blah. The COO calmed me down, took me aside and told me "Rahul we do not even have a functional ERP, why don't you build one first?' And then you can do any kind of optimization that you want to, on top of that." That was an eye opener. All I had done or learned in my life till now, was to tweak existing processes and systems. Now I had been asked to define and build them.Massive. Challenge and opportunity presented themselves together, just that I was not sure if I would be able to stand up to the task. 

What was this role that I had landed myself? Well after a good two months(my extended training period) of understanding the different processes and systems that existed in A, I got to ask the same question to a bunch of people.My AVP called me an internal consultant. The COO told me "Call yourself anything it does not matter, just get the s**t done(in a nicer way)". I would only later come to know, that this is exactly the kind of s**t a Product Manager does, apart from a LOT of other stuff, which is probably another blog post all together. 

I, still an Operations Manager, and a confused one at that, assumed responsibility of the new role, which also entailed interacting with a new breed of engineers, who during college times, were the ones we used to go to, if our laptops had any issues.Software engineers. I always got the shivers when I was asked to tell the computer what and how to do things at college. I managed a tragic C+(irony) at computers. For some reason though, the software engineers always looked cooler than the other folks that were around and used to talk in a language extremely difficult to understand(believe me because I have spoken and understood Chennai Tamil and Delhi Hindi, and they are absolute tongue twisters). But this new language, though a version of English was replete with cool jargons, that I had not even the slightest hint of what they meant.  

The first ever meeting I had with a person known as a Tech Lead(I now know what it means! Yaayyy!!) for my team was a revelation. He kept asking me what were the "use cases". I had no idea what he meant by them. I was however candid and asked what it was(slightly sheepishly). He was slightly exasperated(probably thinking how I even got hired) but he was humble enough to explain what it was to me. The term,would then become one of my most used terms, in the near 2 year stint with A and probably my career. That was an eventful day, when the COO also decided that I would be heading the efforts to automate another of our now flagship products. I was not sure whether to be excited or to actually own up that I seemed to lack whatever was required to do this role.

At that point my AVP asked me a question which probably instigated me to prove myself, to myself first and than to the others. The question was "How do you know you are not good enough to do it? Have you done it yet?" That set the ball rolling to my career as a PM. 2 weeks later was when I actually came to know what my designation is. An email was floating around saying " ... as a PM, we expect a PRD(another frequently used term during my stint) and blah blah". I was actually brave enough to ask what a PM was to which I got a reply that it was a Product Manager and I was one(not without a smirk). Has it ever happened to you that you had to be told what your designation was? Well it has happened to me. And from that day onward I have never taken a step backward. It has been a great journey till now and I hope that it takes me further. I had always prayed to God to make me a PM(I had prime minister in mind) and he made me one now(Lesson learned : Be specific to God just like how you should be with engineers). Like I said, just when you think you know what you want in life, God takes it away and gives you what you need!