The full-stack PM | Anuj Rathi (Swiggy, Jupiter Money, Flipkart)

When Anuj Rathi began his product management journey at Flipkart in 2010, the landscape of Indian tech was fundamentally different. There were no playbooks for the Indian consumer, no established product culture, and very few mentors. Over the last decade, Rathi has not only witnessed the evolution of the Indian startup ecosystem but has been a primary architect within it, holding leadership roles at Swiggy, Jupiter Money, and Snapdeal.

Building for a population of 1.4 billion people—where language changes every 15 miles and price sensitivity is acute—requires more than just standard Silicon Valley frameworks. It demands a rigorous, "full-stack" approach to product management that blends behavioral psychology, aggressive prioritization, and systems thinking.

In this deep dive, we explore Rathi’s unique mental models for building high-growth products, from the "Lazy, Vain, and Selfish" user framework to his contrarian take on why OKRs fail in marketplaces.

Key Takeaways

• The "Lazy, Vain, and Selfish" User: Modern users aren't looking for new apps; their time is already allocated. To win them over, you must address their laziness (reduce friction), vanity (social proof/status), and selfishness (immediate value).
• The 4BB Prioritization Framework: Move beyond simple roadmaps by categorizing work into four strategic buckets: Brilliant Basics (tech debt), Bread and Butter (core features), Big Bets (growth drivers), and Breaking Bad (existential pivots).
• Divergent "Working Backwards": Don't just write one Amazon-style press release. Write three divergent versions to force leadership to make distinct strategic choices before a single line of code is written.
• Full-Stack Influence: The best PMs own outcomes, not features. This requires influencing the entire stack—from engineering architecture to the marketing message that acquires the user.
• Marketplace Dynamics: In three-sided marketplaces (e.g., food delivery), standard OKRs often cause friction. Success requires prioritizing stability and making hard choices about which side of the marketplace (supply or demand) takes precedence.

The Unique Complexity of Building for India

The narrative that India is simply a volume play misses the nuance of the market's complexity. While the "Jio Revolution" brought hundreds of millions of users online via affordable data, the challenge lies in the diversity of that user base. Unlike the relatively homogenous markets in the West, India presents a fragmented landscape of languages, cultures, and economic tiers.

Rathi notes that the traditional request-response model of management—treating software building like factory manufacturing—doesn't work in this environment. The modern Indian product leader must navigate extreme price sensitivity (where users scrutinize delivery fees of less than 10 cents) while building infrastructure that scales to millions of concurrent transactions.

"India has 1.4 billion people... but even the official languages count is so high. They say in India, every 15 miles the language changes, and the people and their culture change. So your traditional ways of thinking about products—'who am I building for'—is very different."

This environment forces product managers to strip away assumptions. You cannot simply port a US-based playbook to a market where a significant portion of the user base might be transacting digitally for the first time via the Unified Payments Interface (UPI).

Designing for the "Lazy, Vain, and Selfish" User

Product managers often suffer from the curse of knowledge: they care deeply about their product and assume users will too. Rathi argues for a radical shift in perspective, adopting a framework originally articulated by Scott Belsky. To build effective onboarding and activation flows, you must assume your user has three inherent negative attributes:

1. Lazy: They have no time to figure out your UI. If you don't blow their mind immediately, they leave.
2. Vain: They are creatures of habit. Asking them to switch from their current solution to yours is an insult to their current choices unless you provide immense social or personal status.
3. Selfish: They do not care about your business goals. They only care about "What is in it for me?" right now.

This framework is particularly vital for the "marginal user"—the one who isn't already a loyalist. Rathi applied this at Swiggy and Jupiter by aligning the product narrative strictly with the user's selfish desire.

The "Show Don't Tell" Methodology

To address these user traits, Rathi advocates for a "Show Don't Tell" approach. Instead of abstract requirement documents, teams should visualize the entire journey—from the specific marketing hook that caught the user's eye to the exact pixel they see upon app launch.

This often takes the form of "The Wall"—a physical or digital space where the end-to-end journey is mapped. It prevents the disconnect where marketing promises one value proposition (e.g., "10-minute delivery") and the product delivers a generic onboarding experience. By visualizing the user's emotional state at every friction point, teams can design for the lazy, vain, and selfish reality of the consumer.

Strategic Planning with the 4BB Framework

Prioritization is often treated as a tactical sorting of a backlog. Rathi elevates this to a strategic conversation using the 4BB Framework. This model categorizes resource allocation into four distinct buckets, allowing leadership to make conscious trade-offs.

• Brilliant Basics: Often called "tech debt" or "maintenance," Rathi rebrands this to emphasize its importance. These are the non-negotiables that keep the platform stable and scalable. Without investment here, you have no foundation.
• Bread and Butter: This is the standard PM work—feature enhancements, bug fixes, and iterative improvements that keep the current business humming.
• Big Bets: These are high-effort, high-reward initiatives that require cross-functional alignment. These are not just features; they are strategic shifts that require a "working backwards" document to validate.
• Breaking Bad: These are existential pivots or moonshots. This is when a company decides to fundamentally change its identity, such as Swiggy moving from food delivery to a broader "convenience" company, or a startup pivoting its core offering.

"If I gave you 100 focus points, how much will you put in each of these buckets? It gets down to product managers eventually prioritizing between these four... but really, it is a product strategy call."

By using these buckets, product leaders can present clear scenarios to executives. For example: "We can invest heavily in 'Breaking Bad' to capture a new market, but it will mean reducing 'Brilliant Basics,' which increases the risk of downtime. Is that a trade-off we are willing to make?"

Operationalizing "Working Backwards"

While many companies cite Amazon’s "Working Backwards" process (writing the Press Release and FAQ before building), Rathi adds a layer of divergence to the practice. He asks his teams to write three alternative press releases for a single problem.

This forces the team to explore divergent strategies before converging on a solution. Perhaps Option A solves the problem via a subscription model, Option B solves it via a marketplace expansion, and Option C solves it through a strategic partnership. By articulating all three as finished narratives, leadership can compare the *outcomes* rather than just the features.

This method also serves as a powerful alignment tool. The FAQ section of these documents must address the concerns of cross-functional stakeholders—legal, compliance, operations, and engineering—ensuring that the "Full-Stack PM" has considered the implications of the product across the entire organization.

Marketplace Dynamics and the Failure of OKRs

Rathi offers a contrarian view on using Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) within complex, three-sided marketplaces (Consumer, Supplier, Logistics). In these environments, metrics are often zero-sum. Optimizing for lower delivery costs might hurt driver earnings; increasing restaurant commissions might reduce supply.

Why OKRs fail in this context: If the consumer team has an OKR to reduce fees, and the logistics team has an OKR to increase driver pay, the teams are fundamentally at odds. The goals conflict by design.

Managing Multiple Empathies

Instead of isolated OKRs, Rathi suggests using "Big Bets" that encompass the entire ecosystem. A metric shouldn't just be "increase conversion"; it must be a composite goal that accounts for system stability.

Furthermore, marketplaces must eventually decide who they serve first. While Amazon is famously customer-obsessed, other marketplaces like Alibaba focus heavily on seller empowerment. Rathi advises that once a marketplace is stable (liquidity is secured), the company must explicitly define its hierarchy of values. At Swiggy, for instance, they clarified that while they value partners, the "End Consumer" comes first.

The Anatomy of a Full-Stack Product Leader

Rathi believes that many people in product management today should perhaps not be product managers. The role requires a specific combination of traits that goes beyond writing user stories.

The Triangle of PM Competence

• Raw Smarts: The ability to identify and solve problems from first principles. This includes domain knowledge, but primarily relies on high-velocity decision-making.
• Drive (Grit): The curiosity and learnability to push through obstacles. This is the "manager of one" mentality where the PM refuses to accept "no" as an answer for user hurdles.
• Influence: PMs are in the business of influence. You must influence engineers to build, designers to create, and users to change their behavior.

Diagnosing Leadership Failure

When teams fail to deliver, Rathi uses a simple diagnostic framework to determine the root cause. As a leader, you must look at your team and ask one of three questions:

1. Can't Do (Capability): Does the person lack the skill? If so, the solution is coaching or reassignment.
2. Won't Do (Motivation): Is there an alignment issue? Do they disagree with the vision? This requires deep connection and vision-setting.
3. Not Set Up To Do (Environment): This is the leader's failure. Have you created an organizational structure or technical environment where success is impossible?

"If it's a setup issue... apart from what product managers can do, almost 70-80% of problems why things don't happen are a setup issue. Product leaders or other leaders have not thought through what OKRs are doing to my company."

Conclusion

The transition from a feature-factory mindset to a strategic, full-stack approach is essential for modern product leaders. Whether it is adopting the "4BB" framework to manage technical debt or visualizing the "Lazy, Vain, Selfish" user journey to improve activation, Anuj Rathi’s methodologies prioritize truth over comfort.

Success in product management, particularly in complex, high-stakes markets like India, requires a blend of paranoia and preparation. As Rathi summarizes, you must creatively imagine an amazing future, work backwards to define the path, and then remain paranoid about execution. In a world of infinite distractions, only the rigorous survive.