You guessed it right. This blog could not be farther from the 2015 hit drama Spotlight, about the serial killer. But it is about something way better... the success of our sellers.

My Seller Growth team decided to document the achievements of some of our most impressive sellers whose lives were changed for the better after they started selling products on Meesho. And wouldn’t you know it — we received endless gratitude and goodwill.

From identifying the right suppliers to narrating their success stories in the best way possible, our mighty team had a short and exciting journey while pursuing this project. In this blog, we document the thinking, strategy, and pains that my team undertook to make it a reality.

As a bonus, you’ll also be seeing some behind the scenes looks. Who doesn’t like some exclusive content, eh?

Hop on!

Humble beginnings

It all started with a conversation I’d had with my Creative Director Shubham Mazumdar in 2021. The idea was simple: let’s talk about our sellers’ hard work. They ensure the quality of their products and care about both their catalogues and Meesho’s dedication to maintaining the quality and speed of our sales.

However, we weren’t able to pull it off then due to pandemic-related restrictions. We did it in 2022, though!

Our whole process was divided into 3 steps:

Step 1 : Scout stories, conduct interviews

Straightforward plans are often more difficult to execute. We started with a survey and asked our sellers to tell their stories.

Some of the questions were: How did your journey on Meesho start? What were the challenges you faced?

A whopping 2,000 people had their own stories about selling online on Meesho.

We had decided on cutting this down to 5. That would require a laborious shortlisting process.

This part of our journey took the longest time, 8 months. This timeline was further complicated by Covid restrictions.

After reading their stories, we curtailed the list to 550 sellers. We conducted calls and interviews, following which we did a deep dive.

We finally had our final 5.

These 5 sellers came from Hisar, Delhi, Ahmedabad, Kolkata, and Tiruppur. The idea was to cover as wide a geographical expanse as possible.

Step 2 : Storyboarding and planning

If you’ve ever even tried to shoot a reel before, you’ll understand the frustrations and risks that come with an uncontrolled environment.

Pre-planning was crucial — if nothing else, then to minimise any risks.

We were going to capture the sellers in their natural habitat. That’s really tough since things like lighting, sound, and the environment can’t really be controlled.

We had to remain authentic while making sure everything was aesthetically pleasing.

This is where my team’s Art Directors Sahil Rao and Sourav Khan came in clutch. During our storyboarding, we asked sellers to send videos of their warehouses and other locations. The idea was that I’ll take the interview, and we will record their answers. Eventually, my part would be cut out, and we’d make a film out of it.

We only had two days to shoot at each location — time crunch was our best friend throughout this trip. An annoying, difficult best friend.

Meanwhile, our writers like Amanpreet were constantly trying to build a good narrative with the story to help the art directors on the project.

Step 3 : Execution with adventures

We can pre-plan everything — but our world exists in an uncontrolled environment.

We had no time to recce because the two days of shoots were divided into two parts. It was all gas, no brakes!

Day 1 was all about interviewing the sellers. This is when I spoke to sellers and we shot all the bytes. We understood how they started building their business, their journey of selling online, and how their experience has been.

Day 2 was about capturing the environment. We wanted to add some shots of places where they work and how they work.

Since we were shooting real sellers, we had to visit factories, and manufacturing units to get some good shots — all while capturing them in their natural element and causing minimal disruption!

Here’s the deal: these sellers aren’t celebrities. And they definitely weren’t used to a camera, which naturally made them nervous. This was our first real hindrance.

In fact, it would have made me nervous too — and I’ve been doing this for 6 years!

Let me tell you a quick hack for this problem: don’t tell them the camera is on.

I kept asking our sellers questions, and they naturally responded. The actual, meaty part of the interview went well!

Everyone’s used this trick sometimes: especially with kids and injections. It works for them, it worked for us.

Our second major hindrance: though we had pictures of the places we are going to shoot, we had no idea about the spatial restrictions.

We actually had to set up lights with two cameras in a 12x10sq ft room in Hisar. While executing these challenges, solutions on Google don’t exist. You instantly have to evaluate what is the best possible way and move forward.

In this case, Sahil Rao and the production team always came to the rescue. They had the solution ready even before I’d realised there was a problem.

Sahil seemed like a real-life Dr Strange at that moment.

Once I relayed the problem to Sahil, he started the conversation by giving me three solutions. (Seriously, what a delight this team is to work with!)

The third hindrance which we continued to face was time, or the lack thereof.

In one instance, I was interviewing one of the sellers at their factory. The pre-prepared questions prepared were not adequate.

I called Amanpreet during our water break and told her to give me 10 more good questions about these specific sellers in the next 20 minutes.

You won’t believe it, I had them on my phone in 14 minutes.

While talking about the execution of the films, I’d be remiss to point out one major thing: a small set of people were on the road, conducting interviews.

However, the rest of the creative team are the real firefighters.

We have a team of 11 people — enough for a football team. Imagine this: while the team is playing the game, two players are out on the bench. You’re forced to continue the game with just 9 players. You still have to play the game — our creative team was doing that for 15 days.

An ambitious project like this can only be conquered when you have a team which is ready to defend for you and you are ready to shoot for them. And I had that team with me.

Here are some BTS shots from our shoot:

What was the impact of these videos?

Our biggest achievement was direct and organic: CNBC, a national news channel, aired our movie on International Women’s Day.

If the story is authentic and pure, it will always find a way to reach out to the people. We firmly held that belief from day one. That’s why we didn’t go for toothpaste-type videos, where an actor is pretending to be an expert and reading from a script.

These are real people with real stories, and I’m glad we got a chance to talk about these successes.

More than anything, such stories will inspire more people.

People, especially those working in startups, always ask about the Return on Investment (ROI) on such a project., I always tell them: you’re focusing on the wrong ROIs.

You need to have Return on Inspiration from such content in order to calculate the Return on Investment.

This is for people to inspire them to think of growing and to enable them with technology to build the business they want.

Suman, who comes from Hisar, has been able to purchase her own house by selling on our platform. Moreover, her income from Meesho recently got her kid admitted into an international school — a lifelong dream of hers.

You know why it is a huge change? Because now Keshav, Suman's kid will get inspired and will do something even bigger. That is how we are going to change people’s lives in this country — one story at a time, affecting multiple lives. The knock-on effect will keep continuing.

We call this the Meeshofication theorem: 1 to many, many to too many.

This is what the end result looked like. Hope you enjoy it, and the story behind it!

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