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Go live for 0 stock listings

Context :

For national and D2C brands like Relaxo, listing and order processing run on asynchronous tracks. Since supply arrival at warehouses is often unpredictable, online listings go live in advance.

Currently, listings require at least one inventory unit to go live, leading to issues such as premature activation, increased cancellations, and poor operational metrics.

This also adds operational burden on brand teams, requiring up to half a day of manual effort to manage out-of-stock listings and cancellations.

A streamlined approach is needed to enable listings to go live with zero inventory (marked as out-of-stock), ensuring readiness for seamless activation once inventory is available in the warehouse, thereby reducing cancellations and operational overhead.

Current flow -

Meesho Tech Flow :

Inventory as a Mandatory Field : Inventory is required for uploads, but some suppliers skip it in bulk submissions

If Inventory is Null : Inventory is automatically set to 1, allowing the catalog to go live

If Inventory = 0 : Product remains in "activation pending" status and will not go live until stock is manually updated via bulk inventory update by the brand (CSV inventory upload on Meesho’s panel)

Operational Handling by Brands to Prevent Premature Orders - Brands often assign operational resources to -

List the item with inventory set to 1 SKU

Manually monitor and mark the SKU as out-of-stock (OOS) once it goes live

Alternatively, upload with inventory set to 0, then perform a bulk stock update to mark inventory >1 when the product actually reaches the warehouse

Objective :

Minimise wrong orders and SLA cancellations for brands by letting 0 stock listing go live as OOS

Reduce manual overhead required by brands and Meesho’s ops in order cancellation, OOS movement and activation for pre mature listings

Impact :

Reduction in brand operational overhead by 1 FTE

Brand SLA related order cancellation drop by ~XX%

Proposed changes -

Inventory null cases - Update default inventory value to 0

Inventory 0 cases - Let the listings go live as an OOS catalog

Make sure the other checks in go-live flow remains consistent

PSM.valid is checked in go live flow which should not fail for 0 inventory

Make sure other reason for PSM invalidations like Supplier invalidation etc is still rejected in hygiene check

Post upload, product would get live / activated once inventory is replenished through -

Meesho seller panel

Meesho bulk inventory update

OMS inventory sync

Rollout -

Feature to be an A/B governed by a seller attribute to accurately determine impact on SLA cancellation and brand NPS.

Attribute’s default value to be first kept as ‘False’ and later changed to ‘True’ upon scale up.

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