Delivering Innovation at the Doorstep: Tejas Vyas
Being the alpha in a service venture requires the tackling of different dynamics, as you design an ingratiating system for people to interact with. With the pandemic hitting different parts of the world, there has been a drastic change in the way people are interacting, especially in the digital space. This change in behavior has thrown a series of challenges and opportunities for different service providing platforms. One of the massive growth opportunities in this scenario is for the different eCommerce platforms.
In the 6th episode of our podcast, we witness the progress of BigBasket — on how they tackled the challenges that came with the nationwide lockdown and how they are building innovative solutions to foresight the scenarios and mental model of their customers. We have with us Tejas Vyas, who leads as the Director of Products at BigBasket. He talks to us about how important being versatile is in terms of collaboration of Design and Technology as the end solution is holistic between both the worlds. The process of adaptability of agile strategies to improve the experiences of their consumers and how the future of services will evolve with digital transformation.
Rohit Lalwani: I see a lot of young designers who tend to move towards solutions at times, the minute they receive a project, they move towards creating solutions and answers. How important do you think is to identify the problem itself and then move upward in the process?
Tejas: This has been one of the biggest learnings in my career. In my earliest startup, I used to be someone who would hear the problem and start with the solutioning. My learning about my entire life and my startups has been that what happens a lot of time is you invest a lot of effort into solutioning it. And then you later realize that the problem that you are trying to solve, it’s not the one that you solve for. It’s something else, and all that effort and time that was spend thinking has effectively gone for zero. There is no output out of that. My humble request to all the listeners and the younger generation is to spend some quality amount of time trying to understand and jot it down; you write down the problem statement in a crisp two bullet. I call it the two-pager methodology, which means you should be able to enunciate the problem in two bullets effectively, and that should fit within a small window, which can be taken as a screenshot.
So you effectively should be able to write your problem statement in two sentences clearly explaining the problem and the reach of the problem for clarity. Deeper comes with understanding with the help of data, by understanding the numbers, trying to do a more in-depth analysis to get to that. Only then you’ll be able to solve the problem that you started. Getting into the solution is actually in my view is a waste of time, because you will realize and learn in your career that what you would build is not what the users asked for. It needs a lot of understanding of the problem, asking your customers, asking your users to get to the real why.
Rohit Lalwani: One of the other observations, especially in the current short-term future, we expect digital transformation to be massive and imperative for all organizations. But do you think digital transformation is about talent and not technology?
Tejas: Let me first answer the term transformation. The way I look at it is, I always break it up and do what they call a fixed transformation approach and growth transformation approach. The older world where things should be the way they should be is what I call the fixed transformation. Any adaptability to change becomes an inherent problem. The growth transformation is something that you solve it, you think, you transform yourself, but at the same time, you’re open to feedback, you keep adapting and evolving. After you gather feedback, the feedback loop is always present. And in my view, the digital world is moving at such a rapid clip, that there is no scope for fixed transformation in this word.
You are always going to be walking up in a growth transformation model and going back to your question. When you talk about talent, if a person comes with a very fixed mindset wherein it becomes tough for one to open up and change, it becomes very, very hard. One needs to adopt a growth mindset to be able to keep learning, keep adapting. And this is very important in the digital age. So as more and more organizations move towards digital transformation, everything associated with technology becomes part of the way we operate. One has to keep adapting and evolving else one will be left behind in the race.
And It always boils down to mindset. So the talent, which will still stand out in the digital economy, will be the one who keeps evolving and keeps adapting the technological change.
Rohit Lalwani: While we keep talking about the business evolving, especially with e-commerce flying in the current time & future, do you think it will take a very different height with Artificial Intelligence and Augmented Reality? It will let you see the product and other exciting developments that could be happening?
How do you think the online world will complement the offline world? There is a debate that the online world is killing the offline business. What is your view on this? Are they going to be two different worlds, or are they going to complement each other?
Tejas: The world is moving at a very fast click. In my view, we are moving towards an age where more and more people are going to be interacting a lot more digitally. We have seen the behavior over the years; It gets plateaued at points in time when certain constraints affect the ecosystem in terms of that movement. For example, the availability of the internet, and these are all market economies.
The more widespread data across the economy, the more people, latch into their smartphones and start consuming content and start using it for their daily purpose. I would say that the world is headed towards the online platform. But to answer your question, we will see an age where you will be able to avail a lot of offline services. When you say offline, it is the way that they’re operating, but augmented using cloud technologies or personalization. For example, you will be able to enter a physical store where the merchant will know who you are, what your past behavior was, and what products you like. The merchant will be able to offer far better and personalized services in a matter of minutes. That’s the world I envision. So your experiences will continue to evolve. As a consumer, you can sit in the comfort of your home and use your fingertips to order anything that you want in this world, be it any service, or any quarter, or you could even go out with your family and visit a physical store as we see it today. The experience is only going to be a lot better, where you will be offered personalized virtual services that don’t exist today. That is a world that I see where the online-offline, these nomenclatures will merge because ultimately everything will be over a cloud system, and everything is going to be hyper-personalized.
Rohit Lalwani: What is the next significant disruption that one can expect in the coming times, especially in the E-Commerce Industry?
Tejas: The E-Commerce Industry will be moving in two different ways. Considering the current COVID situation, you have a new normal, so finding this and building further. Second, safety with delivery is something that is going to change the way most E-Commerce companies operate currently.
Everyone is going to expect home delivery, at least for the next year or so, in the safest manner possible. A lot of startups are going to be mushrooming in this space, in the ability to provide more secure solutions for customers, most E-Commerce companies will adapt and evolve to be able to give a large safety cover for their deliveries.
Further speed will always continue to be the key for most consumers. A typical delivery, wherein a customer would have to wait for a week or so, will now look in a matter of minutes.
You have a vending machine, and you can pick up items at the drop of a hat. And all this is using your mobile phones. So my perspective here is most of the E-Commerce industry is moving towards a lot of safer solutions with the consumers, and a lot of quicker solutions for customers.
Rohit Lalwani: I’ve seen most of the techies working towards the productization of their services. What’s your view on this?
Tejas: Today’s services are looked upon as a commodity. You could walk to any solution provider who could solve it out, have a fixed project attached to it, then key project, and then you deliver the service. The world is moving towards getting into a platform approach where a lot of these services ultimately formulate to key platform buildup, which can eventually be flexibly used with a bit of customization across different vendors.
That is where the world is headed. Some of the key leaders in the world of technology like Microsoft, Amazon, have built a platform. And when you create a platform, you achieve market leadership, because then you can quickly customize, develop better products to be able to provide any level of service, that can continue to ensure that these players continue to have leadership. And this is where the industry is also headed.
If you don’t want to miss out more on how these two domains, technology, and design, are collaborating, head to our podcast to discover more. For details, do visit the profile.
