Pallas Pharma: Plenty of Demand, Nothing to Buy

Product Management

hard45 min0 submissions

McKinsey

Scenario

Pallas Pharma runs a specialty pharma marketplace in US, live in 30 cities.

Last month: 121,565 active buyers, 13,695 active sellers, 597,762 searches, and an overall fill rate of 51%.

That average conceals a wide spread. The three largest cities fill at about 92%. The bottom half of cities fill at around 23%.

Growth marketing has been buying buyer-side installs, because buyer acquisition is cheaper and the install numbers look good in the board deck. Supply acquisition is manual and slow.

Supporting data

scale

searches: 597762
active buyers: 121565
active sellers: 13695
buyer to seller ratio: 8.9

liquidity

cities live: 30
overall fill rate pct: 51
top 3 cities fill pct

bottom half cities fill pct

acquisition

buyer side: paid, scaling
seller side: manual, flat

Your task

Advise the general manager. Your answer should provide:

Analysis — which side is constrained, where, and what the fill rate really says.
Risks — what happens if you keep acquiring on the current side.
Recommendation — which side, which cities, which mechanism, and the metric that proves it.

State any assumptions you make.

Ready to move forward? Up next: Northwind Energy: Plenty of Demand, Nothing to BuyNext question

How you'll be graded

80 points, 60% to pass.

recommendation15
market analysis25
risk assessment20
financial analysis20

Hint

Reveal suggested structure

Liquidity is local. Find the constrained side per geography, stop acquiring on the long side, and concentrate supply until density crosses the threshold.