A PRODUCT MANAGER’S PLAYBOOK FOR THE CURIOUS MIND
by Neha Kumar | Product Manager at Swiggy
If you love the idea of getting freshly cooked food right at your doorstep and enjoy the experience on the Swiggy app, I for one would be one of the happiest people on the planet. For those of you in Bangalore with Android devices, who are familiar with this, it’s very likely that you have bumped into our first gamified experience (powered with a slot machine) at the end of every transaction; and got lucky playing it and won many exciting rewards.
For me, this small, fun, gamified moment at the end of every transaction is beyond just the 10 seconds you might have experienced. Being among the ones who envisioned and built this, there is a lot more for me to say, and a lot of this has to do with who I am — as an individual and a Swiggster. I was recently reflecting on my journey so far in life and thought it’s something I want to share with the world. So here it goes.
Chapter-1: The sun rises in the ‘East’
Before we jump into work, here is something you should know about me. I hail from Mumbai — heart, and soul — and in some way, the spirit of the city has infused into me. But more than that, a lot of my traits are attributed to the way my family has shaped me. I am, for one, an extremely curious individual who enjoys ambiguity. Learning something new, and exploring the unknown (small or big) is a very innate trait, and something that my father has always embraced (he never liked main-stream stuff anyway). Trails of this can be seen in my academic journey.
I did my Bachelors in Design from IIT Guwahati (2700 kilometers to the east) and started my explorations in the world of UX Design. While by nature, design thinking and consumer obsession were always a part of me (phrases that I never knew back then), the graduation experience truly opened my horizons. This was probably the time I came to realize that as a UX Designer, I have a real opportunity to act as a creator which I can exploit to build meaningful experiences for a variety of users… Woo-Hoo!
Chapter-2: Destination Bengaluru
College is one place that most of us dread to part ways with, and as disheartening as it was to move away from Guwahati, I was equally thrilled about what was coming up next. For the next two years, I worked within a large, global MNC, as a UX Designer, and while the learning was immense, soon enough I found my way to another academic rendezvous with IIM-Bangalore.
From UX design to product management, this felt like the most apt shift that I needed to make in my career. I wanted to move towards a field where I can club the foundation of design thinking for building products and crafting their business strategies, and with the MBA from IIM Bangalore, I could imagine both the world’s coming together — a truly enlightening moment. In 2017, as placements were in place, my eyes were on the start-up, hyperlocal tech space, which was also the most in-thing at the moment (and in my opinion the future). That’s when Swiggy happened — one of the most exciting times for me to be a part of the bandwagon.
I kicked off my journey as an Associate Product Manager in Swiggy in 2018 with the Checkout & Payments Team and was given the challenge to bring intelligence and convenience to the payments experience. If you recall, this is the time when UPI and online payments were bubbling in the industry and the likes of PhonePe and Google Pay were on top-of-the-game. With complete liberty on designing UPI experience on Swiggy with clear objectives, I set out on the journey with the team to explore possibilities. The intent was to reduce the payment anxiety of consumers while ensuring that the experience is seamless and secure for the end-user.
After a year in Payments, I moved to the Revenue & Growth team at Swiggy. Here, I wanted to build experiences that would primarily focus on driving growth for Swiggy via many promotional, discounting, and gamification initiatives. Being a part of this team as a Growth Product Manager, I have enjoyed crafting many promotion-led products that drove efficient growth for Swiggy as-well-as for our Restaurant Partners. What more could a curious soul ask for, and trust me when I say that every moment of this journey, till date, has been worth the learning.
Chapter-3: Game on with Gamification
While I continued crafting promotional initiatives in Swiggy to drive growth, I started double-hatting and was tinkering with some of the most exciting projects that a Growth Product Manager could ask for, which is when a new proposition came into play. I am, by nature, always curious to learn something new, and when Anuj, VP of Product, and Harsha, our CEO, were thinking about leveraging gamification to drive more growth and engage our users more on Swiggy, I jumped on to the opportunity to explore and pursue the opportunity.
While Gamification was the in-thing and something a lot of players in the market were jumping into leveraging it to grow their businesses, we were not sure at this point whether Gamification is an absolute necessity for our audience. We wanted to be certain that if we do introduce the concept, it had to be objective-driven — enhancing the consumer engagement while aligning with our business vision. In retrospect today, that was the best decision as whenever we were lost in the journey of building it, we all went back to the objective that we were trying to achieve.
Unlike many popular engagement concepts, Gamification was cosmic. There was no definitive playbook to refer to, and the only credible sense of the need could be made through instances from other players. Hence, we jumped right into it. I started speaking with communities and experts in the field, started to read on how to build gamifying experiences to deepen my understanding of applying the concept, and soon enough found a place for it in the Swiggy experience.
All of this led us to carve out a focused MVP of a post-order gamified variable rewards product that allows users to win exciting rewards across food, Instamart, and much more. The whole construct of the gamified variable rewards with slot machines took months of experiments, failures, and moments of truth, and we went through a super iterative journey and built 5 different experiences to what you now see which has successfully achieved its key objective. A journey well started and still a long way to go…
Chapter 4: Onto new adventures
There is no ending to this narrative of experiences and which is why I leave this as an open chapter. Being a Growth Product Manager has been an exhilarating experience. While there have been creations that I’ve built in the past, at Swiggy, there is no end to improve them continuously, while not being apprehensive about creating something new. The reason I wanted to share this note of reflection was to share instances on how curiosity and continuous eagerness to learn will always keep growing you as a professional and individual. I am thankful for every moment in my life that has got me here.
From my openness that my parents have got into the way I think and learn, to the opportunities that my profession entrusts me with, and more importantly the Values that bridge both — embracing curiosity, being thoughtful, and going after excellence — I would say this. Be in a place where you can be your best. Do the things that will bring out the best in you. Always thrive to become the best version of yourself. Connect with the human side of your world and contribute to solving real problems objectively.
I hope my 2 cents of learning from my journey would help you bring out the best in you, in whatever you do — UX, Product design, product management, as an individual, or anything else.
Stay curious, always! Be the best version of yourself every single day!
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