Field Notes 2: Jobs to Be Done (JTBD)

In a previous article, I had used the case study of Kheyti , an ag tech startup co-founded by my former student Saumya . , to illustrate how product managers can quantify the value proposition of their products. In this article, I continue the discussion of product management themes by illustrating how the Jobs to be Done (JTBD) framework can help product managers to define, refine, and adapt the target customer and the value proposition of their products.

When Kheyti was founded seven years ago, the highest-level Job to be Done was:

As a smallholder farmer, I want to increase the yield and reduce the impact of adverse climate conditions on my crops, so that I can get a higher and more predictable income from my land.

Defining the Target Persona: During their customer discovery, the Kheyti founders identified several pain points that prevented farmers from achieving the desired outcome (higher and more predictable income). These include - lack of access to irrigation, poor quality of inputs (seeds, fertilizer, pesticides), adverse climate conditions (drought, storms, excessive heat, hail, etc.), poor farming practices, and lower price realization while selling produce. The Kheyti team understood that farmers needed much more than an affordable and effective greenhouse. To really deliver on the farmer’s JTBD, Kheyti needed to provide access to water, capital to buy the greenhouse, training and consultation from agronomists, and market linkages to sell the produce. Therefore, Kheyti set out to create a “full-stack” solution that included all these value-added services.

However, Kheyti quickly realized that providing access to water was beyond their scope. Irrigation is a very capital-intensive undertaking, and it is best funded by the government. So Kheyti narrowed its target persona to small farmers who had access to water for irrigation. After five years of strenuous efforts to provide access to financing, Kheyti came to the realization that they could not sustainably provide access to financing for greenhouses. Banks were unwilling to lend money to small farmers, and subsistence farmers had too much risk to afford to pay regular installments. So Kheyti reduced the cost of the greenhouse and further narrowed its target persona, limiting itself to small farmers who had access to irrigation and could afford to pay for the greenhouses themselves. The revised target persona is reflected in the evolution of the Job to be Done:

As a smallholder farmer with access to water and financing, I want to increase the yield and reduce the impact of adverse climate conditions on my crops, so that I can get a higher and more predictable income from my land.

Elaborating the Job to Be Done: Once the target persona had been decided, Kheyti’ s customer discovery focused on refinement of the Job to be Done. A product manager should start with the biggest picture JTBD, and then work towards defining more precise sub-jobs that are actionable for developers. “Increasing yield and reducing variability” is an overly broad definition of the JTBD. This higher-order job can be elaborated into many sub-jobs:

• Reduce damage caused by pests so I can reduce the use of pesticide to protect my crop
• Prevent tomatoes from touching the ground so that fruits do not get damaged by ground contact
• Reduce the impact of hail and rain on the crop so that my crops do not get damaged by adverse weather
• Provide partial shade to the crops so my crops do not get damaged by excessive heat
• Reduce evaporation of irrigation water so I need less water to irrigate the crop
• Reduce labor required to maintain the crops so that I can grow more crops with the same labor force.

Each of these sub-jobs were used to design the key features of the greenhouse, while keeping the costs low. For instance, trellises force the plants to grow vertically, so the fruit does not touch the ground. The greenhouse has a mesh to keep pests out, and sticky pads to trap pests that do enter the greenhouse. The design is lightweight, yet robust enough to withstand storms. It is easy and quick to install (2 people, 2 days), and very affordable (less than one-tenth the cost of comparable greenhouses available in the Indian market).

Modifying and Pivoting the Jobs to Be Done: A famous venture capitalist saying goes – “I have yet to see a business plan that survived its first full contact with the customer.” Kheyti thought it had a good handle on the target person and the JTBD. But they continue to learn and be surprised about the real jobs to be done for their customers. Here are three examples of such learning:

Just biding my time: To Kheyti’ s surprise, some farmers were not too motivated to adopt the greenhouse, despite the compelling value proposition. Kheyti found an interesting reason. Farmers whose fields were within an hour or two of a major city like Hyderabad had seen their land prices rise exponentially, fueled by urban expansion. They had little interest in farming innovation as they were just biding their time before they sold their land to a real estate developer! So, the JTBD of the farmers in urban proximity was: “I want to maintain my fields with minimum effort so that I can sell my land for a high price.” In contrast, farmers in remote areas were much more motivated to innovate, as they were in it for the long haul.

Balancing my portfolio: Despite the increase in yield and income, farmers did not want to expand their acreage of vegetables beyond 10% to 20% of their total land. I asked one farmer why he grew sugarcane and cotton on 80% of his land, while limiting his tomato crop to 20%. He had a surprisingly nuanced answer. Sugarcane is a crop that provides a stable, predictable yield and does not require any labor for harvesting, as the crop is sold in the field and harvesting is done by customers. Cotton is quite profitable and stable, but it is very labor-intensive to harvest. Sugarcane and cotton produce only one crop a year. On the other hand, vegetables can produce up to 3-4 crops per year, and they can be extremely profitable. But the variability in prices is extreme (tomatoes can sell for ten rupees a kilo one month and one hundred rupees the next month!). So, the farmer diversifies his portfolio by blending a stable but lower income from staples with a higher but more volatile income from vegetables. For the farmer, sugarcane and cotton are like the Fixed Income component of the farmer’s portfolio, producing a stable but lower yield. Vegetables are the Equity component of his portfolio, producing higher returns but with higher risk. His JTBD: I want to grow a portfolio of crops (using vegetables grown in a greenhouse as a higher risk and higher return crop) so that I can balance risk and return from my farm.

Just the seedlings, please: When Kheyti ventured into new geographical markets like Madhya Pradesh, they found that farmers had larger landholdings, with up to twenty-five acres of vegetables, as opposed to a few acres in Telangana. These bigger farmers had a very different use for the greenhouse – they used the greenhouse as a nursery to grow seedlings for the larger farm, instead of growing crops to maturity in the greenhouse. For a 15-acre vegetable farm, a farmer would typically spend 250,000 rupees on seedlings. Instead, he could buy a greenhouse for 100,000 Rupees, buy seeds (or small seedlings) for another 100,000 Rupees, and raise his own seedlings. He could effectively pay for the entire greenhouse as an operating expense in one nursery season of 45 days! For these farmers, the JTBD was: I want to grow my own seedlings cost-effectively and quickly, so that I can reduce the cost of inputs for my farm.”

The Kheyti team continues to learn about their persona and the Jobs to be Done as they expand their customer base and enter new geographical markets. By staying focused on the Jobs to be Done, the company can ensure that they are continually listening to customers, understanding the real customer needs and pain points, and adapting the value proposition of their greenhouse product.?