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Growth Team: Celebrating Success and Embracing Change: Important Updates and Proposed Changes


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It would greatly benefit our future discussions if you thoroughly delve into the details of what you are currently reading in detail, would be good for our discussions later


I want to acknowledge the significant progress we have made. It's crucial that we take a moment to celebrate our accomplishments. Each one of you should feel a sense of pride in our current success and recognize that we are firmly on the path to even greater achievements. However, it is imperative that we do not become complacent and continue to strive for improvement every single day. Some important updates:

$0.6 M in GMV per month with the dollar depreciation (expected to cross $1M in another month or so  )
About ~$1M in ARR
~PKR.10 crore disbursed in profits.
PKR.~4 crore given away in bonuses to help people further their ambitions.
51% women – succeeding and moving towards becoming one of the few apps that has more women than men.
Introducing lending to super charge MSMEs in PK – Helping play our role in growing our suppliers and moving towards a Fintech play in the long run.
Do not put the weight of this world on your shoulders. Trust the process and take risks ~ Umair.
Yes i made a quote for this announcement
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This is my first time writing to all of you, and I would like to express my gratitude for your hard work. We have achieved great results so far, but I believe it is crucial for us to unite and propel further growth at a rate of 30% (M.o.M) or more in the upcoming days. As the Pakistani market experiences a decline in demand, we must focus on developing incentives that not only engage our member but also assist them in boosting their earnings during this period. We are trying to be build a cult following and they will only trust us – if we take care of them and make it the reason why we come to office daily. This will also mean that we put reseller feedback above all. When customers express that it is raining outside while you find yourself basking in the scorching heat of a blazing million-degree sun, we emphatically affirm their feedback by acknowledging, "Indeed, it is raining."
You should all take pride in the fact that we are constructing a product that empowers some of the most underprivileged individuals to earn money. These are people who lack investments but possess dreams. The legacy trader was also living his dream by selling products created by others, such as Unilever or P&G. Through his commissions, he/she could provide for his children and pursue his Pakistani dream. The 700 K+ retail shops in PK have played a vital role in generating opportunities for individuals in various neighborhoods. Our responsibility is not only to provide people with the finest initial e-commerce experience but also to assist them in establishing online or home-based shops, whichever suits them best. This will allow them to pursue a similar dream, but in the online realm.
This declining demand due to the current political and economic situation and the consequent tough times will provide us with valuable lessons, helping us come out of this even stronger than before, ready for better times. The past few days have taught me that we need to reconsider our growth model, which entails reevaluating the team structure and creating an organization that embraces experimentation, takes risks, and maximizes learning opportunities through every interaction. I am sharing with all of you the anticipated future organisational structure. It does not imply that many of you will be significantly affected. Instead, it means that more colleagues will be joining you on our mission. This expansion will lead to the growth of your teams and necessitate a greater level of attention to detail. We must focus on building processes of excellence and doing a deeper dive of everything. Generalists will become specialised and OKRs will be the early warning signals of something going wrong in a certain team.
While we could have continued working the way it is right now, it has become clear that we need to address some hard truths and make necessary changes:
Our business will have to adapt continuously to keep experiencing the S-Curve of growth
Retention will be crucial if acquisition does not increase threefold from this point onward.
We are not providing the best experience, or experimenting quickly enough to say we have it all figured out.
Experimentation will be the key to success and building the right culture of being bold in the organisation.

This is exactly why; some changes are being proposed. Which I will mention in the upcoming content of this writeup. Let me elaborate.

As we mature, we may experience unexplained backaches and side pains. Similarly, the macroeconomic challenges reveal the need for us to address certain areas, allowing us to progress and thrive. It is crucial for our team to take necessary steps in order to transform into a formidable force like the green hulk, especially during critical moments, and to avoid being caught off guard in the future.
Developing new macro and micro growth loops: Relying solely on the influencer model is not a sustainable approach - we need to rethink both how we work on it and what else we can do to help the growth loop run faster. Our current efforts involve micro influencers, SEO, and paid advertising. While we continue improving the above mentioned, we must transition towards fostering communities, exploring offline growth avenues, implementing referral programs, executing targeted campaigns on Facebook, launching retargeting campaigns, and utilizing affiliate links. In my opinion, it is crucial for us to also focus on generating a substantial amount of company-created video content as well as user-generated content. For all this to happen you all will have to improvise and think deeper. Jot down vectors of interest and experimentation that the company can implement. Remember - a startup gets investment to take bets and increase its chances of success by trying a lot of different things in shortest possible time. Marium has already started experimenting with the keywords we target using our influencer content and I believe that we are starting to see good results. Lets keep on pushing in this direction.
Stronger brand values and reseller trust: Until now, we have relied on influencers without working on establishing trust. To rectify this, we should engage in more brand-building activities that utilize local stories and artifacts, aiming to create a trustworthy image. A professor from IBA once emphasised that a brand is essentially a collection of promises . Hence, I believe it is imperative for us to enhance our customer service and advocacy efforts as well. Momina is working on a strategy for the same, which we should see in action from the month of June. My message to her is: What gets measured improves. We will have to make sure that their are strong KPIs and measurability baked into it. So we can drive actionable insights and results from the same. But we need to really push forward without thinking of the repercussions, we will learn and improve. Agility is of importance.
Improving customer experience - From conversations to problem solution matrix: Our goal is to provide better and faster service to our customers. However, our focus should not be solely on closing chats or handling a large volume of them; instead, we should prioritize solving problems efficiently. I believe it is more important to have 80% satisfied customers and only 20% of them being unhappy, rather than having 100% of customers who are not entirely satisfied. With this in mind, we are shifting our approach from counting the number of chats to emphasizing problem resolution. Saqib and Waqas are already working on it and will soon present their plan. As a result, you will notice some changes, and we may also require your assistance in any way possible. We should be here to reduce anxiety and minimise any negative experiences. This is only possible with a lot of automation and
Ultra PMF focus is the reason behind the upcoming launch of our new dashboard, "BOLT." Some refer to it as Dash Flash, and it will serve as a convenient tool for monitoring crucial key results. Our primary emphasis will be on achieving the "7 friends in 10 days" milestone while strategically concentrating on enhancing retention through an effective combination of factors. By doing so, we aim to reduce the dependence on our acquisition efforts. PMF is not possible without customer feedback and feedback cannot be surface level. We have to improve our information collection processes so that the actual information and insight can come out of it.
I encourage all of you to become risk-takers and embrace improvisation. Stay open to trying new approaches and develop your skill in turning ideas into valuable insights. Focus on rapid growth by learning and improving the success rate of your experiments. Ultimately, success in this context is about numbers. It means understanding which strategies bring positive results and which don't, and being willing to take calculated risks to find the right product-market fit.Bring actionable insight and being ultra focused on understanding what our consumers require and what their feedback is - will be the only thing that helps us blitzscale from here to 400 M PKR target that we have for year end.
Learn something new daily and be execution focused: Our triumph lies in the accumulation of knowledge, which can only be attained through taking action. In my approach, I advocate allocating 10% of our time to meticulous planning and reserving a whopping 90% for executing and refining our endeavors. Continuously refine, iterate, and enhance.
The ride will get bumpy and a lot more fun: In this challenging environment, we can expect things to become more demanding for all of us. Up until now, we've enjoyed a comfortable journey of growth. However, turbulence brings excitement, as it pushes us to execute more effectively, explore new avenues, and swiftly address critical issues. Moving forward, our key focus should be on laser-sharp attention to our Objectives and Key Results (OKRs), enabling us to move faster than ever before. It's time to empower yourselves, self-organize, and surpass previous achievements. Let's amplify the velocity and excellence of our execution. To put this into execution the whole leadership team is setting up a forum where weekly tracking will be done and the pace of work is deliberated - helping make sure that we keep delivering and any blockers are ironed out. Q3 OKRs are being worked on, please discuss the same with me if you face any problems or you know of serious blockers.
Change is the only constant and I expect all of you to embrace it. Be ready for big changes and improve our working model everyday. Only that will help us grow at the rate we want to.

I am reiterating the main OKRs for you all that we have to remember:
GMV @ 480 M by the end of Dec’23 / Expected to hit 220 M by the end of June
315,000 monthly Orders by Dec’23 / Expected to be around 120 K
Reseller 55400 active per month out of which 30% should be new / Expected to be around 24000 this month
Markaz Academy and Community playing a pivotal role in our growth and education targets.
2X our SEO traffic form here-onwards
Our proposed growth structure is provided below, if you would like any clarity about your role. Please let me know in the coming days.
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You can always discuss this with me. Leave your comments below if you want.

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Looking for your feedback - Thanks :)


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