Archana Choudhary

The role of product managers is evolving fast. I sat down with Saurabh Agarwal (VP Product Management - JioHotstar, ex-Google and LinkedIn) to decode what’s changing and what will not in the field of product management in the next few years. It was exciting to interact about his decade plus learnings on building products for 500 million+ Indians that most of us use daily along with uncovering how they came up with the ideation of the much revered Max-view feature in Hot-star, that went from idea to launch just in 6 weeks, as first ever vertical content consumption for live sports globally! Not just that, we covered the following elements in the conversation ✅ Engineer → PM → org-builder: how the scope and stakes grow ✅ Judgment vs data: when to trust instincts over dashboards ✅ The MaxView story: from insight → prototype → launch in ~6 weeks ✅ Product trade-offs at true billion+ internet scale ✅ Designing for India’s Next Half Billion (NHB) users ✅ Where AI is actually reshaping PM & design ✅ Why simplicity beats cleverness in execution He also dropped a bunch of timeless nuggets on velocity, taste, and building for constraints. Thanks to Rati and team at Product x People for the invite. Link to the full conversation in comments. #productmanagement

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A book is an introvert’s favorite friend and also the main source of their learning. Here are two of my all time bests: Outsiders ( Will Thorndike) - As they say, the CEO’s main job is to allocate capital (and bandwidth when there is no excess capital). Contrary to popular belief, bombastic and charismatic CEOs like Jack Welch of GE are not history’s best business leaders. Just as in cricket, the quiet champions let their bat (and ball) do the talking, in business, the greatest CEOs let their capital (and resource allocation) do the talking. Will Thorndike (also hosts probably the best podcast on business - 50X) tells us the stories of 8 such incredible CEOs and their exploits in this book. An absolute gold mine. The Hard Thing About Hard Things (Ben Horowitz) - This is probably the exact opposite of the above book in terms of scope and lessons. It talks about what it means to be a founder, when you have no capital, no nothing, and you set out to do something from absolute scratch. Anyone who has founded a company knows that the headlines are misleading. Only they know how close they are to demise all the time in spite of all the blood, sweat, hate, fear, nightmares, turmoil while trying to be upbeat and inspirational (it’s the biggest irony of entrepreneurship).  They don’t count the hours and think about work-life balance ( what would you call taking a shower while constantly thinking about how to make next month’s payroll or some other impossible problem - work? life?). The truth is, if you imagine the worst possible situation a founder goes through, you would still be underestimating the founder's struggle.  This book is for these founders, relatable and inspiring, scary and motivating at the same time. While we are on the subject, let me throw in a couple of terrific podcasts as well, for inspiration, reflection, and connecting the dots: https://lnkd.in/dXjhwm78 https://lnkd.in/dTScMn2k At Rebel, some of us learn through reading, and here is a list of books recommended by Rebels https://lnkd.in/dgbVjaPT

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Dismissing India as a MAU / DAU farm with no revenue potential for foreign companies is a broad generalization which lacks nuance. ElevenLabs' second largest market by enterprise revenue is India. That's because India is voice-first. India is a top-5 revenue country for Krafton, a major video game producer with hits like PUBG. That's because India is mobile-first in terms of gaming. Yes, India is tough to monetize but the opportunity exists for out-of-the-box thinkers who are willing to be patient.

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I delivered my first lesson in product management and 😨. It didn’t go as planned…. It was way better 🤩 Over the weekend, I served as a Product Management Facilitator for #NoCodeRequired2025. NoCode Techies put together this webinar to help “non-technical” folks explore no-code pathways in tech. Most of the attendees in the product management track were looking at transitioning So I shared one basic definition of product management: Solving problems using excellent design (not UI but UX) and technology. And then 3 things that streamlined my transition journey years back 💪 Play by your strengths: Product management = problem solving and decision making. Domain knowledge is at the foundation of this, as a transitioner. Choose a domain you have a strong footing in and focus. Mine was healthcare, education or recruitment/HR solutions. Domain knowledge can be tapped from academics, hobbies or work experience. 🎯 Choose your poison: There are so many business models that define how you product-manage: B2C, B2G, B2B, B2B2C etc. You can’t optimize for all of them while transitioning and so you would have to choose. One of the lowest hanging fruits is to build an internal product with automation tools (n8n, Zapier) and existing software (Excel etc). This gives you mileage for B2B/B2B2C products and sharpens your systems thinking skills. 🤖 Adaptability: AI usage is a must and that’s the new measure of adaptability. Whether you are sharing ideas with stakeholders, discussing your approach for a take home assignment or you’re evaluating how much of a good UX your product would have, AI comes in clutch. Zapier has a whole AI competency framework for recruiting. Shopify now “expects” you to vibe code your ideas during hiring processes. LinkedIn launched an Associate Product Builder program that blurs the boundaries between Design, Product and Engineering, optimized with AI. We had other discussions like the PM competency framework by Ravi Mehta which you can always plug into ChatGPT/Gemini and get coaching for starters before you reach out to a mentor. We finally gave a shot at building some resume bullets because often, you do product management in the past without knowing 🤓 Thanks for the opportunity Jess and Dorcas and glad to have collaborated with you Emmanuel and Dara. S/o to you: Isaac and Kingsley for availing your experience for the practical resume bullet building exercise. If you’re planning to transition into product management, this is your sign to start. #JayOnProd

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Meet the most intelligent bill scan ever built. Built for 99.9% accuracy. Say goodbye to OCR. Mysa AI doesn’t just extract data — it understands it. Trained on millions of vendor formats, it adapts to even the strangest, most unstructured bills — across 20+ Indian languages. Every scan makes it smarter, sharper, and more attuned to your workflows and bill types. Behind the scenes, a dual-engine architecture constantly validates LLM reasoning against ML precision, using calculations/tax parameters as ground truth — so the output data is always clean, reliable, verified, and compliant. #ai #llmscan

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This one might backfire badly, but needs to be said- Have India’s Gen-1 internet giants (our big tech) let us down? Look at how global tech giants used capital. It wasn’t always deep tech from day one. But all of them built a culture of tinkering beyond their core business. They experimented. They chased the unknown. Amazon started as a bookstore. A simple e-commerce play. But once well-capitalized, it didn’t just add more categories. It turned internal server capacity into AWS- a wild bet that created the cloud computing industry and powered startups across the world. And now at the forefront of AI as well. Meta (Facebook) began as a glorified text/photo-sharing app (social network). It poured billions into VR, AR, and now frontier AI- shaping entirely new computing paradigms. They have given entire programming languages. Google started with search, but never stayed there. It built Android. Waymo. DeepMind. Patient, infrastructure-level moonshots- often developed in labs far from quarterly targets. Alibaba and Tencent did the same. They could’ve just optimized commerce and social. But they also ran deep-tech labs exploring AI chips and quantum computing. The common thread: Once they had capital, they asked: “What are the fundamental, difficult problems we can solve that no small company can even attempt?” They didn’t just consolidate the present. They created new futures. And then there’s us. Our internet giants are exceptional operators. Efficient. Ruthless. Data-driven. But also- frustratingly predictable. Where are our moonshot labs? Our deep-tech R&D that isn’t mapped to a quarterly roadmap? Do we even have true R&D, or just product development by another name? Flipkart saw payments → bought PhonePe. Zomato saw quick commerce → acquired Blinkit. Paytm saw payments data → built adjacent lending. Smart moves. But mostly consolidation. Revenue capture in already-validated spaces. Leveraging existing user bases to enter proven adjacencies- not to create from first principles. It’s not a lack of money or talent. It’s a lack of patient imagination. When you command billions in capital and top-tier talent, your job isn’t just to buy the flowers others planted- or even to plant adjacent ones. It’s to cultivate new soil. To solve problems that need hundreds of engineers, years of no ROI, and the courage to fail publicly. That’s what true R&D looks like. That’s what builds resilient ecosystems. The US and China’s giants, often from humble beginnings, became architects of future industries. Ours mostly became dominant players in existing ones.

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Last week, I had an eye-opening conversation with the Product Head of a fast-growing AI-powered design platform from Europe. They'd just launched in India, and honestly, I was impressed: ⚫ Intuitive product with world-class UX ⚫ Strong funnel metrics ⚫ Solid user engagement But here's what was alarming: their adoption numbers were terrible. "We can't figure it out," they told me. "People sign up, but so many just drop off at the final step. Maybe Indian customers aren't ready for products like ours yet?" Then we looked at their payment data. Success rate: Just 62% The culprit? They were using the same payment setup that worked perfectly in Europe: card-only payments. Here's the problem: In India, card penetration is under 12%. Most people pay seamlessly via UPI. This team had mastered the hard parts—they built a product people genuinely loved. But 4 out of 10 customers were hitting a wall at checkout. The fix was simple: We rebuilt their payment flow to prioritize local payment methods. The results? ⚫ Success rates jumped within weeks ⚫ Renewals followed suit ⚫ India transformed from a "tough market" to one of their fastest-growing regions The takeaway: You can have the best product, the smartest GTM strategy, and brilliant marketing - but in India, if you don't solve for payments, you're scaling with a leaky bucket. This is exactly why we built Razorpay the way we did - to help global companies succeed in India from day one. P.S. If you're interested to learn more, check out https://lnkd.in/g_tvdYUK Also, you can go through the case study of how we helped a global giant like Hostinger arrive and thrive in India: https://lnkd.in/gfWuRERe Paulius Lapėnas Harshit Shrivastava Ritwik Kadu Tejas Gowda Akanksha Bawa Akshith Rao Rishi Kumar

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Immediate Reaction of Layoffs is Imposter Syndrome ! If you got impacted by layoffs, remember 1. There are so many reasons a company has to do layoffs. It’s part of business and may not be related to your performance. 2. If you were marked Under Performer in last few Appraisal Cycles - there could be multiple reasons for that.. poor leadership, high complexity of work, bad environment, lack of learning, personal situation etc etc and not all of these would be in your control. So, give yourself a Benefit of Doubt and Keep Going 🙌 Not all Companies are same..Not all Managers are same..Not all projects are same. Things will work out for sure 👍

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