Define metrics for missing assortment on Flipkart and plan how to close those gaps
Company: Flipkart
Role: Product Manager
Category: Product Design & Strategy
Difficulty: medium
Interview Round: Other
You are a product manager at Flipkart. Explain how you would measure selection gaps on the marketplace, meaning cases where shoppers come for something Flipkart cannot offer them, and how you would decide which gaps matter and go about closing them.
```hint Look for traces of unmet demand
Shoppers leave signals when they cannot get what they want. Think about which of those signals Flipkart can see on its own platform, which it has to look for outside, and which shoppers never leave at all.
```
### Clarifying Questions
- Does a selection gap mean only products that are not listed at all, or also listed products that are out of stock, cannot be delivered to the shopper's PIN code, or are priced well above other sellers?
- Should I cover the whole marketplace, or one category such as mobile phones, fashion or groceries, where gaps behave differently?
- Is the main goal more sales, better shopper retention, or keeping pace with a specific competitor's range?
- Should gaps in tier-2 and tier-3 towns, where delivery reach is thinner, be treated the same way as gaps in large cities?
### What a Strong Answer Covers
- A working definition of a selection gap that separates its different causes, including how to tell a true gap from a product that exists but cannot be found.
- Concrete signals and metrics, on and off the platform, to detect and size gaps, with the blind spots of each.
- A method for ranking gaps by lost demand, strategic value and the cost of closing them.
- Fixes matched to the cause of each gap, with owners and a way to measure whether the fixes worked.
- Guardrails so that closing gaps does not hurt product quality, delivery promises or seller economics.
### Follow-up Questions
- The zero-result search rate went up right after you onboarded thousands of new sellers. How can both be true, and what would you check?
- How would you estimate the sales lost to one specific gap, given that Flipkart never sees the purchases that did not happen?
- How would you tell a genuine selection gap apart from a search relevance problem where the product is listed but shoppers cannot find it?
Overview: A Flipkart product manager question on how to detect, size and close selection gaps, where shoppers want products the marketplace cannot offer them. It tests defining a selection gap precisely, designing signals and metrics for unmet demand, prioritizing gaps, and choosing fixes for different root causes.