IC projects
Due to the nature of working in a fast paced startup environment, I have more often than not had to give my dedicated bandwidth outside of leading teams and charters to pick up key projects in pipeline — usually those which were not part of the planned roadmap or which I've picked up as a design initiative
Unlocking additional assortment with split cart deliveries
Time frame
May 2024 - Jul 2024
Business need
Most customers currently order from dark stores with 7K–9K items. To expand assortment and improve customer experience, we plan to offer access to Mega dark stores with 15K+ items. This will help attract new customers and retain existing ones by offering greater variety and choice.
Goal
Introduce a clear “split cart” experience to show customers which items come from which store, ensuring transparency and ease of checkout. Objective is to increase average basket size and expose high ticket items
Complexity and constraints for this project
Execute in "Do More with Less"
Design with as minimal changes to frontend and backend as possible
Unserviceable scenarios
Second store unavailable if primary store is also unserviceable
Cross functional complexity
Involved 27 different teams for frontend and backend changes in the codebase
Pre-order user stories
1️⃣ Showing delivery times at item level
The customer will see items from two dark stores, with the delivery time acting as a key differentiator
Showing different times for items
2️⃣ Showing split deliveries in cart page
The objective here is to inform the user that they should expect separate deliveries (2 or more) after placing the order
Cart will have separate groups of items by time
3️⃣ Solving for different unserviceable and closed states
If primary store is unserviceable, we would not let user order from the secondary one. However if secondary one is unserviceable, user can still proceed to order from primary store. Such situations arise due to the tech constraints and extremely tight timelines to follow.
Different unserviceable scenarios
Post-order user stories
1️⃣ Showing multiple deliveries on tracking
User should be able to switch seamlessly between multiple tracking screens and know when their orders will arrive
Showing tabs to highlight multiple deliveries
2️⃣ Help page and refund flows
In case of issues specific to just one store, ensure that the current help and refund flows are not broken
Separate deliveries have different help & support flows
Impact and results
40% increase
in access to larger store assortment
15K+ daily orders
with items from 2 dark stores
I7K incremental
orders per day overall
Rs.6 incremental
Average Merchandise Value
Launch Pharmacy with prescription as first mover advantage
Time frame
Sep 2024 - Nov 2024
Business need
India’s pharma market is worth $40B, but online sales make up just 1%. Instamart can stand out by offering speedy delivery of prescription medicines, something no other player does today. This gives us a first-mover advantage and helps build customer loyalty by meeting urgent healthcare needs quickly and reliably.
Goal
Collaborate with a licensed third-party pharma company, PharmEasy, to surface medicines and prescription items from their inventory on our app. Ensure customers trust the authenticity of medicines on the platform and guide them on providing prescription after placing order in order to get their medicines delivered.
Approach for this project
Due to the super aggressive timelines to launch Pharma category, and the involvement of a third party (PharmEasy), we took a divide and conquer approach with product managers involved in this project
AM (Design)
Work on pre-order flows & product marketing assets
Prasanna (Design)
Work on post-order flows with focus on prescription uploads
Product managers
Share progress with PharmEasy for regular inputs & feedback
Pre-order for Pharma
My role was to guide the Sr Product Designer in defining the scope of work, design principles and reviewing iterative designs to arrive at the final flows. We also worked on UX copy and storytelling assets to make users aware of the prescription medicine category on Instamart
Snapshot of pre-order Pharmacy flows
Post-order user stories
For the first time on Instamart, all pharmacy orders were fulfilled by a dedicated pharmacist within the dark store. Additionally, PharmEasy’s on-call doctors are available to generate prescriptions for around 60% of customer orders, ensuring faster and compliant fulfilment.
Based on the new situation, I identified six different scenarios for pharma orders and made clear prototypes for ease of understanding and implementation by developers with minimal involvement from my side.
01
Customer orders pharma items which don't need prescription
Pharma items are delivered as normal Instamart orders
02
Customer uploads prescription within 5 mins of placing order
Pharmacist receives prescription
Pharmacist validates prescription
Pharmacist confirms order
03
Customer requests callback from PharmEasy doctor
PharmEasy doctor calls customer within 2 mins
Doctor generates prescription after call and confirms order
04
Customer doesn't upload prescription or request callback
Doctor initiates call with customer after 5 mins wait
DIscusses medical history and generates prescription
05
Customer doesn't pick up the call from PharmEasy doctor
Doctor attempts to call customer
If customer doesn't answer after 3 tries, doctor cancels the order
06
Customer prescription upload is rejected by pharmacist
Customer gets notified about prescription not valid
PharmEasy doctor calls customer to generate prescription
Impact and results
10% growth
Week on Week
2.2K incremental
orders per day from Pharma
+Rs 250 AMV
contribution from Pharma
4.5% of customers
order Pharma items regularly
Redesign Instamart track screen as an unification initiative
Time frame
Oct 2024 - Jan 2025
Business need
As part of the super app initiative, the company decided to bring all core experiences into one tech stack. This helped reduce tech debt, made it easier to reuse components, and allowed faster launches of new features and updates.
Goal
Unify the post-order tracking experience for Instamart and Swiggy Food by identifying common elements and leveraging shared DLS components. This will help streamline design efforts and reduce development time for future post-order features by 2–3 man weeks.
Design-led initiative
This was the final leg of the migration of Instamart from a web-app to a fully native app, as part of an organization-wide effort to streamline super-app offerings with the same tech stack — providing a cohesive and scalable experience across all offerings.
Design process for track screen migration
1️⃣ Identify differences between food and grocery order tracking
I broke down the key fundamental differences in why users would go to the food track screen vs Instamart track screen
2️⃣ Identify open questions & close scope
I adapted the food track to Instamart post order experience as a preliminary step. I then identified the open points from the exercise, and kept these ready for the kickoff meeting.
During kickoff, I initiated the conversation with product and engineering POCs to go through the entire set of flows and help me address all the open questions against each flow (marked in purple)
The figma file used for the first discussion with Product and Engineering
3️⃣ Design execution - MVP with DLS adherence
For the first milestone, we reused the food framework as it is was, to quickly unblock the engineeers.
I spent ample working time on ensuring DLS compliance at every token and component level, collaborating with the developers and the DLS designer to build and ship the new track screen with these components
DLS components for the unification exercise
Final designs handed over to engineering
Launch updates
70% less time
spent to build new tracking
10% of users
viewing new Instamart tracking
Rs.3 RPO
from reusing ads property on food
100% DLS
compliance vs 40% current
Milestone 2.0
In the second leg, I worked with the food track designer to incorporate changes that would work for both kinds of tracking — namely multi-action support, prescription upload for pharmacy and image support in map area.
I handed over the designs to the Instamart consumer team to take these forward for execution and fast followers
Updating the actions section
Incorporating further capabilities in the next milestone
Key takeaways
In our fast-paced startup with many projects, I often had to jump in and contribute to hands-on design work to ensure everything got done on time. It taught me how to balance my time and energy between doing the work myself and staying focused as a leader.
