Licious CTPO urges Indian developers to adopt business-first outlook to tech
Licious CTPO Ajit Narayanan explained how building tech and efficiency at hundreds of touchpoints across its meat supply chains arose as a business need.
Ajit Narayanan, Chief Product and Technology Officer, urged developers and engineering leaders to look beyond tech development in isolation and adopt a mindset to understand how their technical work drives business outcomes.
Addressing an audience of developers, technologists, engineering leaders and founders during a fireside chat at DevSparks 2024, YourStory's flagship developer summit held in Bengaluru, Narayanan advocated for an approach where technology works in tandem with business to drive outcomes
"It is easy to think of engineering first, then product, and then business outcomes. However, to solve real problems, you need to think business first, and then translate that into product and tech. Not just leaders, but all developers should be able to think how their technology is driving business outcomes," he said, adding that this insight had come from his own journey—from tech to building products, and finally working in business.
"Today, the code is basically the business. However, at the same time, there are increasing levels of abstraction for coding. This means developers who focus only on code could get boxed in as new products in the market abstract away the complexities that define their work," he said.
Therefore, he reiterated, it is critical to think solution-first, and then build the right tech for it. "Otherwise, you may get replaced by something that can achieve a higher level of abstraction," he added.
Narayanan also added that this thinking is applied at Licious, explaining that building tech and efficiency at hundreds of touchpoints across its meat supply chains arose as a business need.
Licious' approach to tech
As Licious aimed to deliver fresh meat of standardised quality, it needed to build an incredibly complex framework where cold supply chain technology worked in tandem with accurate demand prediction models, as well as with logistics, and several other variables.
"Delivering meat of predictable quality across the year is complex. There are even different types of meat, such as seafood, red meat etc. We need to be able to predict demand across 100 SKUs (stock-keeping units) at dark stores throughout the country, and then meet the demand by placing inventory accurately. Even minor wastages have an impact on the P&L," he said.
First, the meat reaches Licious' processing centres as raw material. From there, it is transported to dark stores, and then reaches end users through ecommerce or grocery delivery apps. "This entire process has to happen within the three days of shelf life of meat stored at four degrees," Narayanan added.
To build this at scale, the startup has integrated technology at each touchpoint across its supply chains, he claimed, adding the startup is "automating everything that's logically possible" and attaching metrics to every innovation to show a quantifiable impact.
"Our devs are made aware of the business impact of the tech they build," he added.
Edited by Kanishk Singh