Careers in Product Management

Introduction: What to Expect from Product Management Roles

 

Welcome to the session on ‘What to Expect from Product Management Roles’. In the last session, you got an overview of the Product Management program and the UpGrad learning platform that you’ll be using throughout the course.

In this session

Even though it has grown to be an important role in product companies, product management is still a fairly nascent field that needs to be understood well. Therefore, an understanding of exactly who a PM is, and the different roles involved in product management, is vital. A product manager is responsible for every aspect of his/her product, from product roadmap to detailing product features to analysing the performance of these features. There are also various hard and soft skills required to be an efficient product manager. Lastly, you also need to comprehend how the role of a PM varies according to the context of the company.

Session Objectives

By the end of this session, you will be able to:

• Understand the role of a product manager
• Grasp the hard skills and soft skills needed to be a PM
• Comprehend the different scenarios of product management

Pre-Reads

• Why Companies Need Product Managers
• The Role of a Product Manager - Everything and Nothing with Josh Elman of Greylock VC

People you will hear from in this session

Industry Experts

Punit Soni
Ex-Chief Product Officer at Flipkart
Punit Soni is a seasoned product leader focused on the mobile sector, and specialises in all aspects of product development including crafting strategy, building teams and executing to go to market. Before Flipkart, he worked with Google and Motorola.

Vishwesh Jirgale
Principal Engineer Manager - R&D at Microsoft
Vishwesh Jirgale specialises in developing mobile applications across mobile platforms, enterprise mobility, SaaS-based mobile solutions, and setting up and running offshore development centres.

Anish Tripathi
AVP - Product Design at BookMyShow
Anish Tripathi has worked with multiple reputed organisations in tech and design roles. At BookMyShow, he is responsible for the core user experience and has been instrumental in revamping the website. Prior to BookMyShow, he was the director of user experience at Media.net, where he defined and designed the Yahoo Bing Network Contextual Ads Platform.

Akshay Rajwade
Chief Product Officer at Nearbuy
Akshay Rajwade has previously been associated with Flipkart as the director of mobile products, where he was responsible for the product development across Flipkart’s consumer-facing mobile application platforms. Currently, he leads products for Nearbuy.

Ashwin Venkatraman
Chief Operating Officer at Furlenco
Ashwin Venkatraman has previously worked with InMobi as product head for all their publisher-side products. He specialises in internet technologies, mobile and internet advertising, product management and strategic partnerships.

Mangesh Dalvi
Director  – Product Management at Myntra

Mangesh Dalvi is the director of product management at Myntra.com. Previously, he was associated with Xiaomi, and also spent four years at Cleartrip.com building the transactional products for flights and hotels.

Varun Jain

Ex-Product Lead at Myntra
At Myntra, Varun Jain built and grew mobile apps and led the product group for user engagement and growth. He also has entrepreneurial experience in education technology and payments.

Anshumani Ruddra
VP - Products at Practo
Anshumani Ruddra is a mentor and advisor to a number of startups. He has successfully managed large products and has previously led diverse teams of developers, artists, game designers and product managers at Zynga. At Practo, he is responsible for all central products.