Tell me about a time you influenced a team without authority on a problem like remembering essentials before they run out and handling substitutions

Problem Statement Description

Zepto operates in a quick-commerce environment where busy households expect everyday essentials to be available, remembered, and delivered quickly with minimal effort. In this behavioral question, you are being asked to share a real example of influencing a team without formal authority in a context similar to improving replenishment, basket completion, or substitution handling.

Your story should show how you aligned people across functions such as product, design, engineering, data, operations, category, customer support, or store teams when there were competing priorities or unclear ownership. The focus is not on proposing a feature, but on demonstrating how you drove progress through credibility, customer insight, structured thinking, and stakeholder management.

The experience should consider:

- The customer or business problem you were trying to solve, such as forgotten essentials, incomplete baskets, stockouts, or poor substitutions.

- Why the problem mattered for users, operations, and business outcomes.

- Who the stakeholders were and why you did not have direct authority over them.

- How you built alignment using evidence, customer feedback, data, experiments, or operational insights.

- The resistance, trade-offs, or constraints you faced, including cost, inventory accuracy, picker workflows, or customer trust.

- The specific actions you took to influence decisions and move the team forward.

- The measurable or observable impact of your influence.

- What you learned and how it would apply to a fast-moving quick-commerce product environment like Zepto.

The goal is to present a concise, credible story that demonstrates ownership, influence, collaboration, and customer obsession in a high-velocity product setting where execution depends on many teams working together.