Launch sequence active07
Days to national launch
Bengaluru · Consumer commerce · Tier 2 & 3 India
You are now Acting General Manager
The Autopilot Mandate
Take control of a multilingual shopping and embedded-finance launch already under pressure, from customers, merchants, investors and your own workforce.
The product
Saarthi Autopilot
An AI shopping agent in the Saarthi app and WhatsApp. Customers speak in eight Indian languages; Autopilot searches 680 merchants, compares products, applies discounts, selects financing and schedules delivery.
Company dossier
Commerce at Indian scale
What Saarthi does. It runs a consumer-commerce marketplace connecting 680 verified merchants with 4.8 million registered customers in India's smaller cities, through the Saarthi app and WhatsApp. 1.3 million of them shop or browse every month, and the business earns ₹240 crore a year with 420 employees from its Bengaluru head office.
The market need. In Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities, organised retail is limited and metro-first e-commerce platforms are built for English-speaking, card-ready shoppers. Customers want to shop in their own language, trust the price they are shown, and pay in instalments that match household cash flow. Local merchants need a digital storefront, national reach and working capital they cannot get on their own.
Product lines. Four revenue streams today, and a fifth on the way:
- Saarthi Marketplace: commissions on every completed order.
- Saarthi Pay: referral fees from embedded lending and instalment plans.
- Sponsored Discovery: paid merchant placements in search and recommendations.
- Saarthi Prime: a paid subscription for delivery and support benefits.
- Saarthi Autopilot: the agentic shopping assistant now being launched across all of them.
Tier 2 and Tier 3 India is where the next 200 million online shoppers live. Saarthi was built for them first.
Confidential board briefing
The launch is beginning to unravel.
Saarthi Commerce's next big growth bet is Saarthi Autopilot: a multilingual, agentic shopping and embedded-finance assistant inside the Saarthi app and on WhatsApp. A customer asks in one of eight Indian languages, and Autopilot searches 680 merchants, compares products, applies discounts, arranges financing and schedules delivery in a single conversation.
The board expects Autopilot to lift transaction volume, lower support costs and anchor a ₹600 crore Series C story. A national launch campaign is already booked. Merchants have trained staff, investors are arriving, and 420 employees are waiting for the final go-ahead.
Then, seven days before launch, the CEO is hospitalised. The board names you Acting General Manager and gives you operating authority over the product, budget and launch decision.
Over seven simulated days, you must make the calls that a real general manager cannot delegate: allocate scarce capital, confront the consent breach, diagnose conversion, rebuild product trust, face investors, steady the workforce and recommend whether to launch nationally, restrict the rollout or postpone.
Every decision changes the company's cash, customer trust, regulatory risk, employee confidence and AI capability. Saarthi Intelligence, the internal AI assistant, can help you examine evidence and challenge assumptions, but responsibility for every decision remains yours.
What is being assessed
Candidate details
Enter your details to assume operating authority. The simulation takes approximately 30 minutes and permits one attempt.
You may use Saarthi Intelligence during the simulation. The quality of your questions, verification, iteration, and final judgment will be assessed. Using the assistant frequently does not automatically result in a higher score.