Case 1 - Quick-Commerce (Store to home) for Tier 2/3 cities

Overview:

Quick-Commerce (Instant delivery from Self-Owned Store to customer’s place) is one of the
hottest trends in Metro cities. Multiple start-ups like Dunzo, Swiggy, Zomato, Zepto etc. have
jumped in the frenzy and are competing neck to neck to grow in this space with superfast
deliveries, ranging from 10 to 30 minutes. Other Online grocery e-commerce platforms like
BigBasket, Flipkart, Amazon, Blinkit (Grofers) etc. are also setting up special focus teams for
instant deliveries (which was just a secondary channel earlier).

While so many young and established start-ups are fighting over this space, it wouldn’t be a bad
idea to focus primarily on Tier 2 and 3 cities and gain market leadership there. It will be an
entirely different game with low Mobile app penetration, less population density and stronger
local brands.

Problem Statement:

You are the Product Head of an early-stage start-up that has decided to enter the quick
commerce business in Tier 2 and 3 cities.

Scenario 1: End Consumer App

You are going to have your own sales (or demand generation) team. Consumer App will be the
primary channel of sales, and you have to design and build the app. There are many
established applications to take reference from. The critical part is how to construct the app in a
way that is easier for your not-so-tech-savvy consumers to adapt to it. With a strong operations
and sourcing team at your disposal, it is your app that is going to decide the fate of your
start-up.

(OR)

Scenario 2: Store Management App

Flipkart and Amazon will be your demand generation partners in 2 cities. Your team will handle
the entire store operations and last-mile delivery. Based on the performance in current cities,
both of them will consider making your company the partner for the rest of their expansion
plan. Your store management app should be efficient enough to enable accurate and faster
deliveries. Your store workers can be trained on app usage. You should be focusing on
efficiency more than ease of use.

Note: You can make necessary assumptions in terms of any parameters like customer base,
daily orders, service levels, store layout, number of labourers, number of delivery partners
etc. as per your own rationale. Kindly call out such assumptions and rationale, if taken.
Case Study Tasks:

You can choose one of the above scenarios and complete the mentioned tasks for the particular
app:
1. Mock UI screens and Product Requirement Document (PRD).
2. Business and Product Metrics to be captured in the product.
3. User Test Cases for Development Team for release of the app.

Case 2 -Dynamic Serviceability Platform

Introduction:
If you have tried to purchase a product or a service on any of the e-commerce websites, one of
the first essential steps is to enter your Pincode/location and check if the product can be
delivered to your location. This is the point where the customer intent is subtly changed from
informational to transactional. This is the moment where ‘Serviceability’ comes into the picture.

There are 3 things happening at this moment:

1. The ‘Lead’ is getting very specific for the platform, by providing details of demand
by location and product.
2. The customer is getting information on when he is likely to get the product.
3. The delivery capability of the e-commerce platform/seller is being determined.

Serviceability is needed to determine if any product/store presented on the Customer app is

genuinely serviceable, based on a multitude of factors. This is to ensure that promises made
during the ‘Order Placement’ phase are actually fulfilled.

Problem Statement:
You are a Product Lead who is tasked to launch the Dynamic Serviceability Platform. The
business objective as briefed to the Product team is:
- To arrive at a decision regarding the acceptance of the order based on its serviceability,
which is based on a few real-time parameters.

There can be multiple user personas such as the customer could either be looking for 10-minute
delivery, next day delivery or a Slotted Delivery.

Let’s assume that serviceability varies with availability, delivery time, and location/Pincode.
These factors may vary depending on the user persona. E.g: For Instant delivery, serviceability
can vary with the delivery fleet to maintain a Demand-Supply Equilibrium.

What you need to do:

You have to design the first version of the Dynamic serviceability platform. While the assignment
is meant to be open-ended, here are a few things we would like you to cover:
 1. What principles would you lay down for this platform?
2. How would you think about scoping V1 of the product?
3. How would V1 of the product actually work?
4. What metrics would you track to measure the impact of the platform?

Case 3 -Neobank for the under-banked

Introduction:
A neobank (also known as an internet-only bank, virtual bank or digital bank) operates
exclusively online without traditional physical branches. While the range of services provided by
neobanks is not as broad as that of their traditional counterparts, they bridge the gap between
the services that traditional banks offer and the evolving expectations of customers in the digital
age.

Problem statement:
You are setting up a neobank that is ‘neo’ in the sense that it brings a fairly new, under-banked
segment into the mainstream banking arena. A product-driven platform with a mission!

You are driving the Product-offering, while aiding the business strategy, to get the idea up and
running and create an impact.

Pick your target customer segment in India:

● Homemakers
● Domestic helps
● Migrant workers
● Other underbanked segments (Specify)

You can look at the solution in broad buckets, largely(although not necessarily) in this order:

A) A detailed document with:

1. The business case—What makes you pick this idea, and why do you think it makes
business sense?
2. Customer Persona: Who are you building the neobank for?
3. Pain points that you want to address.
4. Research/ Data points on the analysis basis of primary, and (or) secondary research.
5. Product offering and roadmap.
6. Success metrics of the proposed solution.
7. Go-to-market and scale-up strategy, with Risks and mitigants.

B) Illustrative mock-ups
While you work on the solution:
● We appreciate the zeal to solve real problems, backed by pragmatic on-ground insights.
 ● Knowing your user, and solving the right problem for them is the key to a winning
solution
● We celebrate out-of-the-box thinking! So, while the above is the core offering of the
platform, feel free to tailor more offerings that you think will help address the key
problems of the target group.

Case 4 -Digital Consumer App

Choose any existing Consumer-facing digital app and improve/redesign the app. You can
choose to completely revamp the app or add a few functionalities or features to improve it. You
are free to use design tools like Figma, Whimsical etc., for the app mocks. You are required to
create a document on the app’s flow, which will serve as a Product Requirement
Document(PRD).

Since you are outside the company, you may not have full information or visibility of the data &
statistics. You are free to make any reasonable assumptions. We are not looking for any
particular answer. We mainly want to understand how you approach and solve an ambiguous
problem towards a specific vision/direction.

A few aspects that we’ll be evaluating you on are:

● Out of the box thinking
● Approach to the problem
● Structured Problem-solving
● Ability to cover use-cases holistically
● Metrics that you would like to track for hygiene, success, stability etc. of the app

Case 5 - Automated, Technology-Driven SMB Credit Lending

(ApnaBank)

ApnaBank, an Indian digital-only bank, has set out to deliver and refine an all-digital lending
experience. ApnaBank seeks to leverage technology to optimize its risk management processes
and fully automate the delivery of loans and credit lines to SMBs.

Overview:
ApnaBank aims to provide inclusive financial services to unbanked and underbanked individuals
and micro, small and mid-sized enterprises (MSMEs). To serve the MSME segment, ApnaBank
intends to launch ApnaLoan, one of the first domestic, online unsecured credit loan platforms
that provide liquidity to enterprises in India. The platform uses proprietary technology
characterized by a comprehensive risk model and extensive use of automation in servicing and
risk management.
ApnaBank intends to expand into the small-business lending space through continual
improvements in leveraging fintech capabilities to support its business growth. Notably,
ApnaBank wants to leverage technology and non-traditional data to support credit and risk
automation.

Challenge:
Bank leaders want to automate the lending process to grow revenues while reducing costs. But,
many bank leaders struggle to deliver end-to-end automation that meets the bank’s risk
standards, while also driving growth in the small business segment. A primary failure point is the
combination of legacy-hobbled technology design and insufficient customer mortgage
information. This makes it difficult for banks to truly automate lending.
At the root of these challenges is the fact that bank leadership often anchors initial automation
decisions in legacy technology systems that are not fit for purpose.

Just as frequently, business and product leaders insist that compliance and credit policy
decisions must be maintained separately, even as other process steps are automated.
Moreover, even when the lending platform is automated, available data often remains
insufficient to automate risk assessment. For example, financial or transactional credit data for
new-to-bank customers must still be provided at the beginning of the process, and then
manually verified in underwriting. The collective result of these challenges is that bank lending
to SMBs remains time-intensive, costly and potentially risky.

Business Context:
According to IFC’s estimate, there are roughly 12 million MSMEs with a finance gap of more
than $1.8 trillion in India. Most of these businesses have never received a loan from a bank.

Technology Capabilities to Improve Credit Score and Automate Risk Monitoring:

SMB lending is characterized by information inadequacy, because some businesses may have
incomplete or no credit history, balance sheets, income statements or transactional history.

Problem Statement:
Design a fintech product, ApnaLoan, targeted towards SMBs that aims to automate and
optimize end to end lending processes. The product should integrate loan origination,
underwriting and servicing capabilities, by applying advanced, discrete technologies that can be
managed in-house, like e-signature.