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CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION 4
Difference Between a Program Manager, Product Manager & Product Owner: 4
What is a Product: 5
Product Lifecycle: 5
TARGET GROUP 6
USER PERSONA 7
CUSTOMER JOURNEY MAP 8
PRODUCT REQUIREMENTS DOCUMENT (PRD) 10
WIREFRAMES/MOCKUPS/PROTOTYPING 11
MINIMUM VIABLE PRODUCT (MVP): 12
METRICS 14
Monthly recurring revenue (MRR): 14
Average revenue per user (ARPU): 15
Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV or LTV): 15
Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC): 15
Daily Active User/Monthly Active User ratio: 15
Session duration 16
Traffic (paid/organic) 16
Bounce rate 16
Metrics to Keep Users Interested: 17
Retention rate 17
Churn rate 18
Metrics to Measure Product/Feature Popularity: 18
Number of sessions per user 18
The number of user actions per session 18
Metrics to Evaluate User Satisfaction: 18
Net Promoter Score (NPS) 19
Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) 19
Customer Effort Score (CES) 19
Indirect metrics to measure Customer/User satisfaction: 20
Customer Lifetime Value 20
Customer Churn rate 20
Final recommendation while choosing metrics: 20

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THEORETICAL FRAMEWORKS 21
BUS (Business Objectives – User Problems – Solutions) 21
STAR (Situation – Task – Action – Result) 22
HEART (Happiness – Engagement – Adoption – Retention – Task Success) 23
AARRR (Acquisition – Activation – Retention – Referral – Revenue) 25
CIRCLES 27
LEAN Canvas 28
SOFTWARE LIFE CYCLE MODELS 29
Waterfall Model 29
Agile Model 31
PRODUCT PRICING 33
What are Pricing Strategies: 34
Top 7 Pricing Strategies: 34
Pricing Strategy Examples 35
APP TEARDOWN 36
E-Hailing: Uber 36
E-commerce: Flipkart 40
Food-tech: Zomato 45
EdTech: Udemy 50
Fintech: Paytm 53
GUESSTIMATES 59
Estimate the fleet size of Vistara Airlines 59
Estimate the number of schools in Mumbai 61
Calculate the number of queries answered by Google per second 64
Estimate how much it costs to run Flickr for a 20GB user 65
What is the Revenue for the board game Monopoly® sold in India per year? 66
Guesstimates for practice 67
PRODUCT IMPROVEMENT CASE 68
INTERVIEW EXPERIENCES 70
WEBSITES FOR FURTHER READING 79
REFERENCES 79

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INTRODUCTION
The process of strategically directing each stage of the product lifecycle, from research
and development to testing and positioning, is known as Product Management. The goal
is to create technical customer products that meet both user needs and corporate goals.

A product manager describes what success looks like for a product, pinpoints the
consumer need and identifies larger business objectives that a feature or product will
address, and rallies a team to make that vision a reality. A product manager is often
called the ‘Mini-CEO of the product’ as the product strategy, success metrics & other
critical decision making is done by him/her.

Difference Between a Program Manager, Product Manager & Product

Owner:

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What is a Product:

Any item or service that satisfies customer needs can be called a product. A product
can be a physical or a virtual entity. Physical product examples can be found all around
us whereas virtual products can be services or experiences like software, education,
etc.

Product definition can change based on the industry we are looking at. For example, for
an internet-based company, a product can be a combination of functionality, design,
content, and monetization. For an e-commerce company, product definition can include
fulfillment, packaging, customer service, etc. A person responsible for managing such a
product throughout its lifecycle is the product manager.

Product Lifecycle:

• Introduction: This is the initial phase in the product life cycle. In this, the focus is on
rapid adaptation to the latest customer insights and market expectations. As the
product is new, generating demand is the major challenge. Communicating the
product benefits to the targeted audience and creating awareness are the main goals.

• Growth: Once the product establishes itself in the market, next is the growth phase.
This phase typically sees increasing profit margins and cost-per-unit declines with
increasing volumes. Product managers should ensure the product is priced
competitively to sustain growth. Product roadmap prioritization needs to be done in
this phase.

• Mature: In this phase, new customer growth slows down, and new players start
coming into the picture. The main challenge is thus retaining the customer base.

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• Decline: Every product will eventually enter this phase. It is important to understand
the reason behind the decline and if the decline is industry-wide due to the launch of
some replacement solution or if the decline is limited to only your product. Trying to
rescue the declining product is another responsibility of a product manager. If the
product is beyond rescue, then required steps should be taken so that long-time
customers are transitioned to the new alternate options smoothly.

TARGET GROUP
A target group refers to a group of potential customers to whom a company wants to
sell its products and services & fulfill their needs. Target markets are used to gain a
better understanding of a company's current and potential consumer base. Once a
target market is identified, it can affect a product's price, promotion, and distribution.

For instance, target groups may be useful when a company is looking to expand its
operations to an international audience. Meanwhile, a company may choose to tweak a
product, such as through its packaging, to attract a health-conscious subgroup.

Example of a Target Group:

Consider a health product company that is working to build its distribution channels. To
determine if its health products will sell, it researches its primary consumers.

It discovers that most of its consumers are in Switzerland, between the ages of 35-55.
Consequently, it may focus on advertising efforts in Swiss health-focused websites
which then cater to this audience.

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USER PERSONA

User personas are realistic representations of the individuals you are attempting to
assist. These frequently consist of a one-page character study that includes a name,
picture, bio, and a list of particular objectives. They are created through the direct and
indirect observation of actual or potential consumers.

User personas are divided into four types in order to better prioritize design teamwork:

I. Primary user personas are the main targets of experience design. Teams usually
agree on 2-4 main personas, where each one stands out from the others. For
instance, a ride-sharing app might separate the principal identities of riders and
drivers because they have related but different aims. Drivers and passengers
may be distinguished using major identities for an in-car entertainment
experience.

II. The needs of a secondary user persona are primarily, but not totally, met by the
major personas' requirements. Secondary personas in the ride-sharing app
example can include organizations or HR departments that want to coordinate
moving sizable groups. You might want to re-evaluate the project's scope or the

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 division of the principal personas if your team has more than four secondary
personas.

III. Frequently, those who buy a solution won't be the ones to use it. A customer
persona, which is typically seen as a secondary persona to be aware of, captures
this consumer group. Unless, for instance, they need an admin interface, in which
case they can also be primary.

IV. Served personas are the ones for whom the solution is used; they are not the
solution's actual users. For instance, an MRI patient is serviced by the machine's
design even when they don't use the machine interface. Served personas are
viewed as secondary personas and offer a means to think about the bigger
picture while making design decisions.

CUSTOMER JOURNEY MAP

CJM is a directed graph, on which the path of the consumer of the provided service is
displayed using points of contact. The CJM records the details of the interaction with
the service.

That is, CJM displays exactly how the consumer interacts with the service - which
points of interaction exist, through which channels the interaction is carried out (web,
mobile application, offline point of presence, etc.), as well as what happens inside each
point of contact.

Let us look at a simplified CJM example:

You see four stages, each representing a different point in time during the customer
interaction with your company/product. In the process of consuming a service
(achieving a goal), they must interact with different products. At each point, an act of
service takes place with a certain level of quality

The overall experience of service usually depends on the quality of service at all points
of contact. The principle of the weakest link is at work - one unsuccessful interaction

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casts a shadow on the entire service. Therefore, each touchpoint must be worked out
with maximum quality.

In general, you should always implement the system so that any point of contact
motivates the consumer to go to the next step (principal "Push"), and the next point
pulls the consumer from the previous point of contact (operation "Pull"). The push-and-
pull principle contributes to a smoother customer interaction with the service.

The tasks that CJM solves:

a. Creation of continuous UX: Creating continuous UX throughout the entire service

consumption.
b. Increase in consumer conversion: By lowering barriers, as well as by reducing losses
during the transition from one point of contact to another point of contact, more
consumers will reach the goal.
c. Increased customer loyalty: Retention rate - the number of returning consumers
grows if we have designed and implemented a service without barriers.
d. Increasing the responsibility of the company's specialists: Each point of interaction
has its responsible employees from the side of the company. After we have mapped
all the touchpoints, all employees in the company can see who is responsible for
what and how they are doing their job (if we set up KPIs for each touchpoint). This
increases the level of responsibility.
e. Accelerate the development of multichannel services and products and improve the
quality of development: All parties involved in the development more fully see how
the service is being carried out, and also see all the potential weaknesses of the
service and can intervene in their development in time.
f. Create exciting new interactions: There is an opportunity to come up with and
implement new innovative features (Example: Continuing to listen to an audio
recording when switching from one Apple device to another)

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PRODUCT REQUIREMENTS DOCUMENT (PRD)

The Product Requirements Document describes all aspects of a new idea required or
desired to make its realization a success.

A PRD typically starts with a title page that contains general information such as the
project name/code, company and division, responsible manager, date of creation, and
version of the document.

The body of the PRD begins with a description of the project’s objectives. This includes
the overall vision for the product and high-level goals for the company paired with
success metrics, Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), and a timeframe wherever
possible.

The PRD then goes on to describe the sources of the requirements: the stakeholders
and their role in the product life cycle (PLC), as well as use cases, demonstrating the
envisioned use of the product’s key features by real people in real situations.

In short, the structure of a PRD looks like this:

▪ Title section: Project title and/or code, Responsible manager(s), Date of creation,
Document version
▪ Introduction: Background Information / Context, Problem Definition / User Needs
▪ Objectives: Vision, Goals, Product Positioning
▪ Stakeholders: Users, Purchasers, Manufacturers, Customer Service, Marketing &
Sales, External Partners, Regulatory Instances
▪ Use Cases: User Story #1, User Story #2
▪ Aspects: Hardware, Software, Design, User Experience, Interactivity,
Customization, Manufacturing
▪ Open Questions / Future Work
▪ Milestones
▪ Resources
▪ Appendices
▪ Glossary / Explanation of Terms

PRD Example - Apple Airpods Pro - PRD

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WIREFRAMES/MOCKUPS/PROTOTYPING

To decide where to put each kind of content and design feature, you need a Wireframe.
Additionally, the creation of this kind of deliverable is crucial at the beginning of the
product design process to generate fresh ideas, particularly if the product is being built
from the start.

A Mock-up is a kind of high-fidelity static design diagram, that demonstrates

information frames and statically presents content and functions. Unlike a wireframe, a
mock-up looks more like a finished product or prototype, but it is not interactive and not
clickable. It is rather a graphic representation. This can be helpful, for example, to
provide investors with a picture of how a finished product can be and help team
members review their project visually.

A prototype is already very close to the finished product. Here, processes can be
simulated, and user interaction can be tested. A prototype looks very similar to the
finished product. Early prototyping can save a lot of development costs and time so that
the work of back-end product architecture will not be in vain because of unreasonable
user interface design. A prototype is an excellent tool to obtain user feedback and test
the product.

Popular wireframing tools: Figma, Balsamiq, Adobe XD, FluidUI.

Icons: Flaticon, IconArchive, FreePik, IconFinder, SoftIcon

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MINIMUM VIABLE PRODUCT (MVP):

The old way of doing things was to release the first version of the product after several
months of investment, to offer an almost finished product.

The MVP or the Minimum Viable Product is a method that aims to first release a product
with only the most expected function (the Killer Feature or the function that kills) by a
target audience and to offer a product as quickly as possible to confront it with the
market.

Once the product faces the market, you can improve and enrich the product through
Agile development methods.

With an MVP, the goal is to validate this idea quickly, not to advance too much on the
project, and realize too late that his idea was not the right one, was too early.

For example, Bill Gates released the first tablet PC in 2002. It was a failure because the
technology was not ready and the usefulness was not obvious. Steve Jobs released the
iPad a few years later and it was a huge success.

A little later, when Microsoft released the Surface, everyone thought it was a copy of
the iPad when it was the other way around. And so far, the Surface has not convinced
against the iPad.

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Examples of Minimum Viable Product (MVP):

The most successful minimum viable products don’t stay startups for long. You’ve
undoubtedly heard of most of these — although you may not have known that they
were once MVPs.

1. Dropbox: Starting as a demo video, Dropbox explained the benefits of storing data
in one place. The feedback from users helped the then startup receive the funds it
needed to develop its offerings.

2. Amazon: Most people know that Amazon began as an online bookstore. You may be
unaware, though, that Jeff Bezos started by buying books from distributors and
shipping them to customers every time his online store received an order. The high
book sales meant it made sense to keep adding more products to the store, then
acquire warehouses, and finally provide each user with a personalized experience
on the website.

3. Foursquare: When users began using Foursquare, it had just one feature. People
would check in at different locations, which allowed them to win badges. The
gamification made people excited about using the service. Only once Foursquare
had a solid user base did it expand to become a full city guide.

4. Zappos: The most famous example of a Wizard of Oz MVP is Zappos. To test his
business idea, founder Nick Swinmurn took photos of shoes he found at stores to
see if anyone would be willing to purchase a pair without trying it on first. It turned
out that consumers liked this model.

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METRICS
Metrics are quantifiable measurements that enable businesses to define and track the
success of a product or business activity. There are numerous types of metrics. Some
of these will be discussed below.

Monthly recurring revenue (MRR):

These metrics measure a product’s total revenue in one month. To calculate them,
consider the MRR at the beginning of the month, add gained revenue from new
subscriptions, and subtract churned revenue from lost customers.

• New MRR – MRR from new accounts

• Reactivation MRR – A subcategory of New MRR from previous accounts who
have come back to your service
• Expansion MRR – MRR from existing accounts upgrading to a higher pricing level
• Churned MRR – lost MRR from cancelled accounts

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Average revenue per user (ARPU):

It allows you to track revenue generated per user on a monthly or annual basis. These
metrics are required to define future service revenue if your pricing plan is changed or
a promotion is implemented.

ARPU = Monthly recurring revenue / Number of accounts that month

Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV or LTV):

These metrics allow you to estimate how much money a user will generate over time.
LTV shows the average profit made by one user before canceling a subscription. This
KPI's purpose is to show you how much you can spend to attract a new customer at an
early stage, based on the likely profit from one person. To calculate it, first determine
the average duration of a customer's lifetime (the amount of time a customer uses a
product before discontinuing use) and the average revenue per user.

Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) * Average customer lifetime = CLTV

Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC):

This metric includes all costs associated with attracting customers, such as marketing,
sales teamwork, and advertising. These costs can sometimes include the salaries of
marketing and sales professionals. Typically, customer acquisition cost entails
establishing a specific time frame and total revenue.

CAC = Sales & marketing spend for a period / No. of customers generated in that period

Daily Active User/Monthly Active User ratio:

Aside from revenue, the most valuable metric of productivity growth is the number of
users or subscribers over a specific time. However, the number of people who have
subscribed to or bought your product is not a primary KPI. What matters most is the
number of active users. These metrics track the number of unique visitors or users you
have per day (DAU), week (WAU), or month (MAU).

Daily Active User (DAU): Number of active users per day. An “active user” is one who
signed in to an account and performed some valuable activities.

Monthly Active User (MAU): Number of active users who complete valuable activities
per month.

DAU/MAU = # of Daily active users / # of Monthly active users

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Session duration

This KPI is the most straightforward way to track digital product usage. The best way
to calculate it is to take the total amount of time users to spend on your product, divide
it by the number of users, and average the results. Google Analytics computes this
figure for you.

Traffic (paid/organic)

This KPI is mostly applicable to websites, whereas we use the number of users for
applications and software. It displays the total number of people who discovered and
visited the website. While organic traffic refers to visitors who found a webpage through
a search engine, paid traffic refers to visitors who found it through a paid source, such
as paid search, social media ads, or sponsored content.

Bounce rate

Bounce rate measures web traffic analysis by representing % the age of visitors who
leave the website after viewing one webpage. For the calculation of bounce rate, only
the # of pages viewed on each visit should be focused on.

Bounce Rate = Total visits where only one page was viewed / total entries to the page

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Metrics to Keep Users Interested:

Retention metrics can help you determine whether you’re marketing and customer
service efforts are paying off. You know how much it costs to attract a new user if you
know your Customer Acquisition Cost.

Retention rate

Customer retention rate (CRR) is the percentage of customers who remained with the
company after a certain period. You can base your calculations on the number of app
downloads or first logins.

Retention rate = Customers at the end of the calculated period – New customers
/Customers at the start of the calculated period x 100

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Churn rate

The retention rate is the percentage of users who stayed, whereas the churn rate is the
percentage of users who left. Customer churn (the number of users who canceled paid
subscriptions) and revenue churn are the two types of churn rates (the amount of
revenue lost due to customer churn). To calculate the customer churn rate, divide the
number of customers lost during a given time by the number of customers at the start
of that time.

Customer churn rate = Customers lost / Total customers

Metrics to Measure Product/Feature Popularity:

Number of sessions per user

This metric aids in understanding key user behavior: how frequently users return to the
site. It is possible to track it using statistics that show the number of logins or site visits.
This KPI reveals a product's popularity – if the audience engages with it repeatedly.
Unlike traffic or session duration, the number of sessions per user represents an
average for a specific group of people over a specific time.

The number of user actions per session

This KPI appears to be like the previous one, but it tracks more than just the number of
times a user opens an app. It shows which actions a user performed and which features
(if any) they used while using the app. This metric is used to determine the popularity
of a particular feature since its introduction and when compared to a specific period.
You can also compare these metrics of churned and retained customers to get a sense
of what attracts users to your product.

Metrics to Evaluate User Satisfaction:

Indirectly, churn and bounce rates, traffic, and retention rate reveal customer
perception of your service or product. Direct customer feedback is the most effective

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way to determine whether customers are satisfied. Surveys can be used to obtain
metrics such as net promoter score, customer satisfaction score, and customer effort.

Net Promoter Score (NPS)

This metric counts the number of loyal

customers who are likely to recommend a
product (promoters) as well as those who
despise it (detractors). To calculate NPS,
have users rate your product on a scale of
0 to 10. Detractors would give it a score of
0 to 6, neutrals a score of 7-8, and
promoters a score of 9-10. The NPS
formula is as follows:

NPS = % of promoters – % of detractors

Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT)

It assesses a user's overall level of content or discontent with a specific product or

service feature. Users are typically asked to rate a product or service on a scale of 1-3,
1-5, or 1-10. It is calculated by adding all the scores and dividing the total by the number
of respondents. CSAT as opposed to NPS is used to assess satisfaction with a specific
feature. Other metrics are used to assess customer experience, such as the Customer
Effort Score (CES). A customer survey, like the CSAT, is required to determine how easy
it was for users to find necessary information about a product.

Customer Effort Score (CES)

It measures the effort put in by a customer to do business with any company. To

calculate this score, a CES survey is conducted, which asks the user how easy or
difficult it was for customers to accomplish a certain goal with the company (obtaining
issue resolution, Product replacement/return, support from the customer service team)

CES score = (Sum of all scores) ÷ (Number of responses)

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Indirect metrics to measure Customer/User satisfaction:

Customer Lifetime Value

Customer Lifetime value (LTV) estimates how much revenue a customer represents to
a business over the life of that relationship. This is a critical metric for a company trying
to gauge the cost efficiency of acquiring new customers and supporting them over time.

Customer lifetime value = Average dollar amount of a purchase x Number of customers

purchases per year x Average length of customer relationship in years

Customer Churn rate

Churn is a measure of how many customers stop using a product. The churn rate is
calculated as follows

Customer Churn rate = Customers lost in a period/Customers at the beginning of a

period

Final recommendation while choosing metrics:

• When selecting your main KPIs, prioritize those that reflect user needs
• Align user, product, and business objectives
• Concentrate on the average index rather than the total
• Concentrate on specific periods (week, month, day)
• Highlight KPIs that have a long-term impact on revenue growth

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THEORETICAL FRAMEWORKS
BUS (Business Objectives – User Problems – Solutions)

The "bus framework" is a product management methodology that helps teams prioritize
and organize their work. The framework is named after a bus because it conceptualizes
the product development process as a journey with multiple stops along the way. The
bus framework involves dividing product development into three distinct phases, each
represented by a different stop on the "bus": Discovery, Development, and Delivery. By
using this methodology, product managers can ensure that their team is aligned around
a common goal and that the product is designed and launched with customer needs in
mind.

“How would you improve YouTube?” For such product improvement questions, BUS
Framework offers a three-step approach

Business Objective:

Knowing the business context and objective helps you make better design decisions. If
the interviewer wants you to “Design a phone”, then it's crucial to understand the
specific business objectives we are trying to fulfill. E.g.,

● Sell a large volume of phones with a low price point

● Go for a premium market
● Having a user in mind for the phone (e.g., teenagers, business users)

User Problems:

● Select a user type: Deaf users, elderly users, users with mobility issues, etc.
● List user problems: E.g., a problem with deaf users is the inability to hear the
phone ringing or voicemails, can’t hear to the other person talking online can’t
hear the sound on videos received from friends
● Prioritize user problems: Depending on how painful the problem is prioritized

Solutions:

● List solutions
● Prioritize Solutions
● Summarize

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STAR (Situation – Task – Action – Result)

The "STAR" framework is a product management methodology that helps teams define
and communicate the value proposition of a product or feature. The framework is named
after the four key components that make up a compelling value proposition: Situation,
Task, Action, and Result.

The Product Vision Question - Can you tell me an example of a product or feature idea
you generated and how you made sure that it was reflected in the final version?

● The Team and Stakeholder Management Question - Can you tell us of a moment
when you made sure that the concerns of sales-oriented and development-oriented
teams were aligned?
● The User Question - What are your favorite techniques to include the voice of the
user in your team deliberations?
● The Business Intelligence Question - How would you react if the competition began
providing the same services at a lower cost?
● The Product Failure Question - What have you done in a situation of serious technical
or commercial failure for a product or feature?

Example:

The Interviewer Says “Tell me about a time when you had to be very strategic to meet
all of your top priorities.”

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Your Response:

Situation - “In my previous sales role, I was put in charge of the transfer to an entirely
new customer relationship management (CRM) system—on top of handling my daily
sales calls and responsibilities.”

Task - “The goal was to have the migration to the new CRM database completed by Q3,
without letting any of my own sales numbers slip below my targets.”

Action - “To do that, I had to be very careful about how I managed all of my time. So, I
blocked off an hour each day on my calendar to dedicate solely to the CRM migration.
During that time, I worked on transferring the data, as well as cleaning out old contacts,
and updating outdated information. Doing this gave me enough time to chip away at
that project, while still handling my normal tasks.”

Result - “As a result, the transfer was completed two weeks ahead of the deadline and
I finished the quarter 10% ahead of my sales goal.”

HEART (Happiness – Engagement – Adoption – Retention – Task Success)

The "HEART" framework is a product management methodology that helps teams

measure and improve the user experience of a product or feature.

Kerry Rodden, Google’s ex-lead UX researcher, developed HEART Framework to help

Google’s UX design teams narrow their focus to only a few key user metrics and to
quantify those metrics so they could evaluate them objectively.

Product teams use HEART as a prioritization Framework when they have more ideas or
requests for features and enhancements than their cross-functional team can work on
in a given timeframe. By using the HEART framework, product managers can gain a
comprehensive view of the user experience and identify areas for improvement. The
framework is a kind of UX metrics scorecard that’s broken down into 5 factors.

Happiness - How do users feel about your product? Happiness is typically measured by
user satisfaction surveys, app ratings and reviews, and net promoter score

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Engagement - How often are people coming back to use the product? Engagement can
be measured by the number of visits per user per week, session length, or key action
as the number of photos uploaded or songs listened to per user per day

Adoption - How many people complete the onboarding process and become regular
users? Adoption is measured by the number of new users over a period or the
percentage of customers using a new feature

Retention - What percentage of users are returning to the product? Retention is

measured by churn

Task success - Can users achieve their goal or task quickly and easily? Task success is
measured by factors like efficiency (how long it takes users to complete the task)
effectiveness (percent of tasks completed), and error rate

How to use the HEART Framework?

▪ Set Goals: What do you want to happen?

▪ Define Signals: What is the thing we need to measure to get closer to the goal?
For example, for Twitter, if a user starts writing and editing a tweet but closes it
before publishing, it’s a signal of failure for task success
▪ Choose Metrics: How will signals manifest as metrics?

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Try this question | What new feature would you design for the Amazon Echo? Click here
for the Solution

AARRR (Acquisition – Activation – Retention – Referral – Revenue)

AARRR (Acquire, Activate, Retain, Refer, and Revenue) is the acronym for a collection
of five user-behavior key metrics that product-led growth organizations monitor. AARRR
achieves two objectives: it teaches organizations how to focus exclusively on the
metrics that have the potential to significantly impact their company's health. Second,
assist these companies in using the appropriate data to assess the effectiveness of their
product management and marketing activities, and then improve the ineffective ones.
By using the AARRR framework, product managers can identify the areas of the product
or feature that need improvement, and optimize the product for better performance.

The framework is known for measuring the effectiveness of your customer funnel. Of
the 1000 people that visit your website, how many end up as recurring paying
customers? Without the framework, it’s hard to determine where in the funnel you might
lose them. Did your ad give a wrong impression? Is there a bug in the mobile version of
your website that makes it impossible to visit the homepage? Is it too complex to sign
up? The AARRR framework helps you to measure every step of the customer journey
and helps you to identify leaks and potential loopholes.

Acquisition

● People visit your website

● One metric that matters is to grow the number of app downloads. It's a
measurable result of targeting the right audience with messages in your ads &
copy
● Click-Through Rate, Conversion Rate are other metrics

Activation

● They have a great first-time experience

● AHA- moment: The exact point in time when a user understands the value they
get from a product or service
● E.g., Facebook discovered that a user is most engaged when he/she connects to
at least 7 friends in ten days

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Retention

● Users come back

● The Metric that matters is the retention rate, as it is the best indicator for people
coming back to your app
● Other Metrics could be Churn rate, Daily Active Users, and Monthly active users

Referral

● Users invite others

● Number of apps installed through referral matters the most, as this is a
measurable result for users inviting others via application
● Other metrics could be Net Promoter Score (NPS), Number of invitations sent to
invite friends, Number of app installs per invite

Revenue

● Users buy your product

● One Metric That Matters is the average order value because this is a measurable
result for users spending money inside your application and a conformation that
they understand your value proposition
● Other metrics for this phase could be Average order value per user, Customer
Lifetime Value (CLTV)

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CIRCLES

Product managers may prioritize their development efforts and make sure that the most
crucial features are delivered first by utilizing the Circles structure. Assuring that the
product is built with the end user in mind and balancing the needs of many stakeholders,
including customers, investors, and internal stakeholders, may also be done by teams
using this framework. A product management concept called "Circles" helps teams
prioritize and concentrate their efforts on the most crucial features or activities. Product
managers assess their comprehension of questions pertaining to design using the
CIRCLES approach. Ultimately, this framework aids product managers in
comprehending the why, how, and what that went into the creation of their product.

“Redesign the Facebook Newsfeed for the Web” or “How would you improve Pinterest?”
In such Product design questions, interviewers look for six key elements in a strong
response. These are Goals and metrics, Target Personal & Pain Points, Prioritization,
Creativity, and Development Leadership.

The CIRCLES framework serves as a checklist for product managers and helps them to
cover all the prerequisite areas of consideration while at the same preventing a
disconnect between the business and the customers.

The seven linear steps of the process from the CIRCLES acronym:

Comprehend the situation - The 5 W's & H also help product managers in asking the
right question in the Comprehend Situation stage and gather information about the
problem before jumping to a solution or some conclusion.

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 • What is it?
• Who is it for?
• Why do they need it?
• When is it available?
• Where is it available?
• How does it work?

Identify the customer - Start the second step of the CIRCLES Method™ by listing
potential customer personas.

Report the customer’s needs - As a <role>, I want <goal/desire> so that <benefit>.

Cut through prioritization - In the interview, you do not have time to discuss all use
cases. So, you will have to pick one. When you make your choice, it’s an opportunity to
showcase your ability to prioritize, assess trade-offs and make decisions.

List solutions - Come up with at least 3 possible solutions to cater to the user’s need.

Evaluate trade-offs - Gauge the pros and cons of each identified solution above.

Summarize your recommendation - As a final step, provide a summary of your

recommendations. You can also state why your solution is preferable over other
alternatives.

LEAN Canvas

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Lean Canvas is an adaptation of Business Model Canvas by Alexander Osterwalder
which Ash Maurya created in the Lean Start-up spirit (Fast, Concise, and Effective start-
up). Lean Canvas promises an actionable and entrepreneur-focused business plan. It
focuses on problems, solutions, key metrics, and competitive advantages.

SOFTWARE LIFE CYCLE MODELS

Waterfall Model

The classical waterfall model is the basic software development life cycle model. It is
very simple but idealistic. Earlier this model was very popular but nowadays it is not
used. But it is very important because all the other software development life cycle
models are based on the classical waterfall model. Waterfall project management is a
sequential approach that divides the SDLC into distinct phases as follows:

Requirement Gathering and analysis − All possible requirements of the system to be

developed are captured in this phase and documented in a requirement specification
document.

System Design − The requirement specifications from the first phase are studied in this
phase and the system design is prepared. This system design helps in specifying
hardware and system requirements and helps in defining the overall system
architecture.

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Implementation − With inputs from the system design, the system is first developed in
small programs called units, which are integrated into the next phase. Each unit is
developed and tested for its functionality, which is referred to as Unit Testing.

Integration and Testing − All the units developed in the implementation phase are
integrated into a system after the testing of each unit. Post integration the entire system
is tested for any faults and failures.

Deployment of system − Once the functional and non-functional testing is done; the
product is deployed in the customer environment or released into the market.

Maintenance – Some issues come up in the client environment. To fix those issues,
patches are released. Also, to enhance the product some better versions are released.
Maintenance is done to deliver these changes in the customer environment.

Only once the prior phase has been finished can the subsequent phase begin. A
deliverable or a document has to be approved between stages.

The following are the benefits of the waterfall methodology:

• Straightforward planning and design due to the agreement on deliverables at the

start of the project
• Better design with a whole-system approach
• Defined scope of work
• Easier costing
• Clear measurements of progress
• Defined team roles
• Technology is understood and is not dynamic
• Dedicated resources can work in parallel for their specific tasks

Newer development methodologies were created because of known disadvantages of

the waterfall, including

• Rigid structure to allow necessary changes

• No allowance for uncertainty
• Limited customer engagement, resulting in poor satisfaction
• Sequential approach is not ideal for a large-sized project where the result is too
far in the future

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 • Not a good model for complex and object-oriented projects.
• It is difficult to measure progress within stages.
• Cannot accommodate changing requirements.
• Testing is done only in the latter phases of the project.

Agile Model

The Agile model believes that every project needs to be handled differently and the
existing methods need to be tailored to best suit the project requirements. In Agile, the
tasks are divided into time boxes (small time frames) to deliver specific features for a
release. An iterative approach is taken and a working software build is delivered after
each iteration. Each build is incremental in terms of features; the final build holds all the
features required by the customer.

The Agile Manifesto was written in 2001 by proponents of lightweight software

development, which aimed to combat traditional project management processes. A few

months later, the authors added a set of 12 Agile principles as an extension to the
Manifesto.

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Agile methods are being widely accepted in the software world recently. However, this
method may not always be suitable for all products. Here are some pros and cons of
the Agile model.

The advantages of the Agile Model are as follows −

• Is a very realistic approach to software development

• Promotes teamwork and cross training
• Functionality can be developed rapidly and demonstrated
• Resource requirements are minimum
• Suitable for fixed or changing requirements
• Delivers early partial working solutions
• Good model for environments that change steadily
• Minimal rules, documentation easily employed
• Enables concurrent development and delivery within an overall planned context
• Little or no planning required
• Easy to manage
• Gives flexibility to developers

The disadvantages of the Agile model are as follows −

• Not suitable for handling complex dependencies

• More risk of sustainability, maintainability, and extensibility
• An overall plan, an agile leader, and agile PM practice are a must without which
it will not work
• Strict delivery management dictates the scope, functionality to be delivered, and
adjustments to meet the deadlines
• Depends heavily on customer interaction, so if the customer is not clothed ar,
the team can be driven in the wrong direction
• There is a very high individual dependency since there is minimum
documentation generated
• Transfer of technology to new team members may be quite challenging due to
lack of documentation.

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On the surface, it is easy to see why Agile and Scrum can often be confused, as they
both rely on an iterative process, frequent client interaction, and collaborative decision-
making. The key difference between Agile and Scrum is that while Agile is a project
management philosophy that utilizes a core set of values or principles, Scrum is a
specific Agile methodology that is used to facilitate a project.

PRODUCT PRICING
Pricing is defined as the amount of money that you charge for your products, but
understanding it requires much more than that simple definition. Baked into your pricing
are indicators to your potential customers about how much you value your brand,
product, and customers. It's one of the first things that can push a customer towards,
or away from, buying your product. As such, it should be calculated with certainty.

33
What are Pricing Strategies:

Pricing strategies refer to the processes and methodologies businesses use to set
prices for their products and services. If pricing is how much you charge for your
products, then pricing strategy is how you determine what that amount should be. Some
of the more common pricing strategies include

1. Value-based pricing
2. Competitive pricing
3. Price skimming
4. Cost-plus pricing
5. Penetration pricing
6. Economy pricing
7. Dynamic pricing

Pricing is an Under-utilized Growth Lever:

Many companies focus on acquisition to grow their business, but studies have shown
that small variations in pricing can raise or lower revenue by 20-50%. Despite that, even
among Fortune 500 companies, fewer than 5% have functions dedicated to getting
pricing right. There's a missed opportunity in the business world to see immediate
growth for relatively little effort.

Because most businesses spend less than 10 hours per year thinking about pricing,
there's a lot of untapped growth potential in optimizing what you charge. Getting your
pricing right is a more powerful growth lever than customer acquisition. In some cases,
it can be up to 7.5 times more powerful than acquisition.

Top 7 Pricing Strategies:

Let us now take a closer look at the seven pricing strategies that were outlined above.

Value-based pricing: With value-based pricing, you set your prices according to what
consumers think your product is worth. We are big fans of this pricing strategy for SaaS
businesses. Example: Apple

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Competitive pricing: When you use a competitive pricing strategy, you are setting your
prices based on what the competition is charging. This can be a good strategy in the
right circumstances, such as a business just starting, but it does not leave a lot of room
for growth. Example: Pepsi and Coca Cola

Price skimming - If you set your prices as high as the market will possibly tolerate and
then lower them over time, you will be using the price skimming strategy. The goal is to
skim the top off the market and lower prices to reach everyone else. With the right
product, it can work, but you should be very cautious using it. Example: Tech giants like
Samsung, Sony, Apple, Tesla

Cost-plus pricing - This is one of the simplest pricing strategies. You just take the cost
of creating your product and add a certain percentage to it. While simple, it is less than
ideal for anything but physical products. Example: Restaurants

Penetration pricing - In highly competitive markets, it can be hard for new companies to
get a foothold. One way some companies attempt to do so is by offering prices that are
much lower than the competition. This is penetration pricing. Example: Reliance Jio

Economy pricing - This strategy is popular in the commodity goods sector. The goal is
to price a product cheaper than the competition and make the money back with
increased volume. While it is a good method to get people to buy your generic soda, it
is not a great fit for SaaS and subscription businesses. Example: Retail giants like
Costco, Target

Dynamic pricing - In some industries, you can get away with constantly changing your
prices to match the current demand for the item. This does not work well for
subscription and SaaS businesses, because customers expect consistent monthly or
yearly expenses. Example: Indigo, Amazon

Pricing Strategy Examples

Real-world pricing strategy examples are the best way for a business to better
understand the above-listed pricing strategies. Evaluating other businesses'
approaches can be a good starting point but keep in mind that your strategy should be
based on math, market research, and consumer insights.

For now, let us look at some of the pricing strategies:

35
Streaming services - Have you noticed that you pay roughly the same amount for
Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+, Hulu, and other streaming services? That is
because these companies have adopted competitive pricing, or at least a form of it,
called market-based pricing.

Salesforce - When Salesforce first came out, they were the only CRM in the cloud. (It
was not even called 'the cloud' back then!) Armed with ground-breaking deployment
and a target customer of a large enterprise, Salesforce could charge what it wanted.
Later, after they had grown, they were able to lower prices so smaller businesses could
sign up. This is a classic example of price skimming.

Dollar Shave Club - At one time, you could not turn on your TV without an ad for Dollar
Shave Club telling you how much cheaper they were than razors at the store. Although
that level of marketing and advertising is unusual for the pricing model, they were
nevertheless employing economy pricing. It worked out well for them. They were
acquired by Unilever in 2016 for a reported $1 billion.

APP TEARDOWN
E-Hailing: Uber

E-Hailing

The global ride-sharing market is projected to grow at a CAGR of 16.6% during the
forecast period, from an estimated USD 85.8 billion in 2021 to USD 185.1 billion by 2026.
Ride-sharing services were the most preferred services before the pandemic, as they
offered a convenient and cost-effective means of personal mobility with the help of a
transportation network system. Another advantage was that they helped to reduce
travel costs and eliminated the need for individuals to own a vehicle. One more benefit
was the possible reduction of traffic congestion which might have been achieved by
2022–2023, without the impact of COVID-19. With time & need, the mobility service
providers (MSPs) devised different models of ride-sharing services such as e-hailing,
private vs. corporate car sharing, carpooling, car rental, and so on. The users had the
option to choose from this wide variety of options based on their needs, distance
traveled, and personal comfort. However, owing to the pandemic, the ride-sharing
market has become one of the most impacted industries in the automotive space. The
key reason was the global lockdown back in 2020 for almost 2-4 months (varied by
country/city), and the second wave of COVID-19, which has further impacted the

36
business in Q1 of 2021 in most countries. Another reason is, with the pandemic, many
IT companies have adopted a work-from-home culture, which has decreased office
travel.

Though the pandemic has impacted most of the MSPs (for instance, Uber generated a
revenue of USD 11.1 billion in 2020, with a decline of 21% as compared to revenues in
2019), it has also made the MSPs change the business models or offerings; the ride-
sharing players have gained momentum in segments such as e-commerce, food
delivery, and last-mile delivery.

About the App

Uber Technologies, Inc., commonly known as Uber, is an American technology

company. Its services include ride-hailing, food delivery (Uber Eats), package delivery,
couriers, freight transportation, and, through a partnership with Lime, electric bicycle
and motorized scooter rental. The company is based in San Francisco and has
operations in over 900 metropolitan areas worldwide. It is one of the largest firms in the
gig economy.

Uber is estimated to have over 93 million monthly active users worldwide. In the United
States, Uber has a 71% market share for ride-sharing and a 22% market share for food
delivery. Uber has been so prominent in the sharing economy that changes in various
industries as a result of Uber have been referred to as “Uberisation”, and many startups
have described their offerings as "Uber for X".

Like similar companies, Uber has been criticized for the treatment of drivers as
independent contractors, disruption of taxicab businesses, and an increase in traffic
congestion. The company has been criticized for various unethical practices and for
ignoring local regulations, particularly under the leadership of former CEO Travis
Kalanick.

37
Business Model

App Critique

Step 1:

The user must be able to find a way for the Uber driver to come to their location and
pick them up. The mapping of the input field is in a good location at the top of the screen
and is marked in terms users will understand “where to”.

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Step 2:

Upon clicking in the “where to” box you can enter a destination or choose a recent
location from a dropdown field. This box uses a blinking blue line as a signifier, which
affords the user to input their location. You will also notice the “home” field is auto-
generated to your current location

Step 3:

If you input a reasonable location, such as my commute from my apartment in Vaishali

to Gazipur you will get immediate feedback with a screen that maps your intended ride.
This visual conceptual model of your uber ride affords that if you click confirm you will
get picked up from your current location and brought to your destination.

Strengths:

• The user-centered design has been at the forefront of design and offers easy and
quick execution to the main objective of ordering a taxi with the ‘where to?’ option
center of the screen that detects the user's location automatically and clearly.
• Can be adapted for each user offering favorite locations such as a home address
saved in the user’s account.
• Start-up page is clear and minimal, offering straightforward questions to register or
log back in. This avoids confusion giving a seamless flow to the user.

39
 • This keeps the main interface space clear of unnecessary options users may not
need each time they order a taxi, so even though it is accessible, it is not distracting
for the users.

Weaknesses:

• It may be argued that the app can be hard to navigate for the older generation that
does not have a smartphone or does not use online apps or websites regularly,
leaving a large audience unable to use Uber.
• The color scheme can be argued to be plain and disengaging as a result of the recent
change from having a colorful overlay before the update, to a neater and more stylish
design. Looking at color theories, black and grey are associated with luxury and
sophistication, which gives a design a minimalistic feel. Although Uber has a big
audience of business users that would engage with the corporate style, the general
public had been overlooked.

E-commerce: Flipkart

E-Commerce

E-commerce business allows companies and individuals to buy and sell things online. It
can be divided into four major types:

1. Business to Business (B2B) – IndiaMART, Udaan

2. Business to Consumer (B2C) – Amazon, Flipkart
3. Consumer to Consumer (C2C) – OLX, Etsy
4. Consumer to Business (C2B) – freelancer, Desk

The Indian e-commerce industry is expected to grow to $200 billion by 2026. Increasing
smartphone penetration is playing a significant role in it. Also, various Government
initiatives like Digital India, Start-up India, and Make in India are acting as growth drivers.
Q4 2020 saw around a 36% increase in e-commerce order volume. Personal care,
beauty, and wellness is the largest sold category in the Indian e-commerce market.

Today, almost every possible item or service is made available through e-commerce
platforms. It is giving tough competition to traditional brick-and-mortar stores across
multiple regions. Many businesses have started to maintain a presence in both e-
commerce and offline shops to get the benefits of both business models. The main

40
advantages of the e-commerce industry are convenience and increased selection. The
ability to shop at any time and choose from selections across the globe made e-
commerce the first choice of many people, especially the younger population. The
industry still has a few inherent drawbacks like the inability to touch the products before
buying them or the lack of instant gratification as one has to wait till the product arrives
at home.

About the Company & App

Flipkart was founded by Sachin and Binny Bansal in 2007. It is headquartered in

Bangalore, Karnataka. With initial investment from the Bansal brothers, Flipkart started
as an online bookstore website. Business growth led to funding from multiple
businesses like Accel India, Naspers Group, etc. In 2018, US retail giant Walmart
acquired Flipkart for $16 billion. Myntra, PhonePe, Ekart, and Jabong are some of the
subsidiaries of Flipkart. In 2014, the company changed its logo and identity design. In
2017, it started with the Private Brands business e.g., MarQ, SmartBuy, and Perfect
Homes. By bridging the need gap effectively, these brands are offering customers
immense value in terms of selection, price, and trust. They are also promoting the
growth of local manufacturing and SMBs.

Flipkart often provides the lowest prices as compared to the market with a selection
from thousands of sellers. It has easy-to-use UI features to browse, compare, and buy.

Some of the important features of the Flipkart app are:

• 24x7 customer service

• Flipkart Assured - badge for high-quality products
• Sell on Flipkart as a seller

41
Business Model

App Critique

Login: Simple login page with two login options:

• by mobile number
• by email

For login with mobile number option, mobile number is auto-detected followed by
automatic capture of verification code. This option is easy as the user doesn’t need to
remember the app password.

42
1. Home Page:

Strengths: The home page provides easy access to Suggested items, deals of the day,
and Special Offers pages. Placing product categories at the top, directly in front of the
user’s eyes, is a good design choice. Consistent blue-yellow color palette with simple
and elegant icon suit.

Weaknesses:

• It may be argued that Flipkart’s home page looks unorganized compared

to Amazon’s home page
• A bit cluttered interface with multiple options like a super coin, video, and
quaint one place

43
2. Search:
• Easy to use the search feature at the top of each screen. The search feature also
provides the ‘Discover More’ option with a few options at the bottom.
• Some pictures with random/dark color backgrounds convey a less uniform
design language.

3. Share feature popup UI is in line with the design of other application screens.

44
 4. Checkout

Strength - Clear 3-step checkout process with the step number mentioned at
the top

Weakness - Free delivery eligibility text is difficult to read due to a lack of

highlighting.

Food-tech: Zomato

Food Tech

The food-tech market in India is valued at INR 289.36 Bn in 2019 and is expected to
reach INR 1,868.19 Bn by 2025, expanding at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR)
of ~39% during the 2021 - 2025 period. The food tech market in India is an emergent
but fast-growing market that has experienced remarkable growth from 2015 onwards.
The majority of the key players are startups and are at nascent stages of growth.

Some of the main players that operate in the market in India are Swiggy, Zomato,
BigBasket, Jubilant Foods, Freshmenu, and Licious.

Market Insights

Rapid urbanization, growth in the number of working youths, and increased adoption of
the internet and smartphones are a few of the significant factors that propel market
growth.

Lucrative offers and discounts provided by various aggregators on their apps and the
ease of doorstep delivery are further driving the market. However, the dominance of
unorganized players across tier-I and tier-II cities and the significantly low penetration
of the internet in tier-III cities deter its growth.

45
Segment insights

Based on product type, the food tech market in India is broadly categorized into two
segments - online food delivery and online grocery. In terms of revenue, the online food
delivery segment dominated the food-tech market, accounting for 67.13% of the overall
revenue in 2020. The online grocery segment is expected to witness high growth during
the forecast period and is likely to dominate the market by the end of 2025, accounting
for ~55.10% of the sector.

COVID-19 impact analysis

During the initial stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, the market experienced a setback
mainly because the online food delivery market was severely impacted by the
nationwide lockdown. The frequency of online food ordering declined initially because
consumers were concerned about their health and the availability of delivery agents due
to the scarcity of jobs and migration of labor. However, many food service startups
expanded their businesses beyond restaurant food delivery to target new customers
and retain existing customers with other types of delivery services.

Furthermore, the increased penetration of the internet in tier II and tier III cities since
the pandemic has helped these companies reach out to more people and expand their
delivery services. The importance of online transactions and other online activities was
realized during the pandemic, both by customers, as well as investors. This will help the
food-tech market to grow throughout the forecast period.

About the App

Zomato is the fastest-growing restaurant discovery website, established in 2008 by

Deepinder Goyal and Pankaj Chaddah. Initially, it was named Foodiebay but in 2010, it
was renamed Zomato. It provides not only information related to nearby restaurants but
also provides facilities such as online ordering, table reservations, and management.
Zomato currently serves 10,000 cities across 36 countries having 1.2 million popular
restaurants with 80 million foodies every month. It is available in 10 different languages
and has 10 million reviews with 18 million bookmarks. It gives a platform to the restaurant
owners to serve a large number of users good quality food.

46
Business Model

App Critique

1. Login Feature: Zomato goes for simplicity, and

provides options for login, i.e., via Mobile number
and OTP or Facebook, Google, and Email. Providing
multiple options to the customers helps users to log
in quickly from low network coverage areas as well.

47
 2. Account: Zomato’s account page is very engaging. It even has a profile of the
user. Checking it, many people have maintained their profile page, where they
write reviews about restaurants, and add photographs. You can follow your
fellow foodie companions. Eating and updating reviews add up to the stats.

Zomato has 3 key tabs tabs,

a. Delivery: Order food from restaurants at home

b. Dining: You can check amazing restaurants near you or anywhere, decide and
rate the place, book a table, read and write reviews
c. Zomato Gold: To get limitless dining privileges
d. BlinkIt: After its recent acquisition of Blinkit, there is a link that redirects to
the Blinkit app as well

3. Home Screen: Zomato’s home screen has high contrast, saturated colors and is
exceptionally captivating. It has very little negative space.
4. Food Display: Zomato advertises and takes up a lot of space to display the food
places available. The users at one point will get tired of scrolling and may or may
not settle with any restaurant.

48
5. Search: The search bar is available on top of the home screen. By placing images
and a few options, it has a clickbait that would want the users to click on a type
of cuisine/restaurant, even if they aren’t looking for anything specific.

6. Filter/Sort: Low discoverability — It is really difficult to find the filter options.

Zomato has more food choices in the filter.

49
EdTech: Udemy

EdTech

EdTech is the process of bringing IT tools into the classroom to make learning more
engaging, inclusive, and personalized. Tablets, interactive online courses, and even
robots that can take notes and record lectures for students who are ill are now
commonplace in today's classrooms, which have evolved from the cumbersome
desktop PCs of the past.

This flood of educational technology is transforming classrooms in several ways:

Students may easily stay engaged by using engaging types of learning with EdTech
robots. The ability of IoT devices to create digital classrooms for children, whether they
are physically in school, on the bus, or at home, is being lauded.

The Covid-19 outbreak created a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for India's educational

technology ("EdTech'') sector. The traditional face-to-face interaction between a
teacher and students suffered a setback, and a paradigm shift to the unconventional
mode of online learning occurred almost instantly. This shift focused attention on the
EdTech industry, which then received the necessary financial and policy impetus to
thrive throughout the fiscal year (FY) 2020-2021. The previous fiscal year saw a massive
inflow of investments, acquisitions, and the emergence of new start-ups, attesting to
the EdTech sector's meteoric growth.

About the App

Udemy, Inc. is a massive open online course (MOOC) provider geared at working adults
and students in the United States. Eren Bali, Gagan Biyani, and Oktay Caglar formed it
in May 2010. The platform includes over 40 million students, 155,000 courses, and
70,000 teachers delivering courses in over 65 languages as of April 2021. Over 480
million people have enrolled in courses. Students and professors hail from more than
180 nations, with two-thirds of the students residing outside of the United States.

Students enroll in courses primarily to improve job-related skills. Some courses can be
used to get technical certification credit. Udemy has made a concerted attempt to
recruit corporate trainers who want to offer courses for their company's employees.
There are around 155,000 courses on the internet as of 2021. Udemy's headquarters

50
are in San Francisco, California, with offices in Denver, Ireland, Ankara, Turkey, São
Paulo, Brazil, and Gurugram, India.

Business Model

App Critique

Login: Simple login page with one login option – which is by mobile number. For login
with mobile number option, mobile number is auto-detected followed by automatic
capture of verification code

51
1. Home Page:

Strengths:

▪ Simple and clean UI. Also, the home page provides easy access to
Suggested courses, and featured courses. The page is neatly organized
with all the courses which are suggested based on the courses which are
in demand or those which are similar to the one you have enrolled in.

2. Search

Strength: Easy to use the search feature at the

bottom of each screen. The search feature also
provides ‘Top Searches’ and browse categories
options with many different suggested categories.

52
 Weakness: Some icons of categories such as finance and accounting were
blurred which gives a less professional look. Having a common look for all item
icons in the search result would make it look better.

4. Share: Share feature popup UI is in line with the design of other application
screens

Fintech: Paytm

Fintech

India is amongst the fastest growing Fintech markets in the world. Of the 2,100+
FinTechs existing in India today, over 67% have been set up in the last 5 years.

The Indian Fintech market is currently valued at $31 Bn and is expected to grow to $84
Bn by 2025, at a CAGR of 22%. The Fintech transaction value size is set to grow from
US$ 66 Bn in 2019 to US$ 138 Bn in 2023, at a CAGR of 20%.

The Indian Fintech ecosystem sees a wide range of subsegments including Payments,
Lending, Wealth Technology (WealthTech), Personal Finance Management, Insurance
Technology (InsurTech), Regulation Technology (RegTech), etc.

The industry has seen cumulative investments into domestic FinTechs of more than $10
Bn since 2016.

53
As of May 2021, India’s United Payments Interface (UPI) has seen the participation of
224 banks and recorded 2.6 billion transactions worth ~$68 Bn representing a jump of
15x from just 3 years ago for the same period in 2018.

About the App,

Paytm has become something of a phenomenon in India. With a catchy name and a very
recognizable brand identity, Paytm has become one of the most used and accepted
phone-based services across the country in the past 9 years, garnering a user base of
over 200 million people.

App Critique

1. Main-Menu seems cluttered

The way UX has evolved, we have been moving in the direction of minimalism
forever. Up until about 15–20 years ago, the rule of thumb used to be you should
be able to get from anywhere to anywhere in an interface with a maximum of 2
clicks or selections. The problem with this practice was that designers ended up
putting too much content on every screen to fit everything into a 2-click radius
from everywhere, making the interface too overwhelming for the user. Soon, this
rule lost its significance and interfaces everywhere made a shift towards
minimalism.

Paytm’s home screen itself presents a truckload of options, many of which are
avoidable as I will show you ahead. This creates a poor user experience, as the
user is overwhelmed with options and doesn’t see a clear path of flow of control
or any sort of hierarchy or prioritizing in terms of which functionalities are more
important than the others.

2. Pay and Scan

Both of these options do the same job and are accessible at the highest level of
navigation (“Pay” is technically not at the highest level of navigation but when a
user opens the app to make a payment, the homepage is the default screen so
practically “Pay” can be treated as top-level navigation).

54
3. Shopping and Mall

Again, both options do the same job and are practically accessible at the same
level of navigation.

4. Poor Information Architecture (Inadequate Navigation Menus)

The purpose of navigation menus is to envelop options and buttons that aren’t
essential to display to the user at that point. They help reduce clutter and set up
an obvious hierarchy of functionalities. Navigation menus can be dropdown
menus, hamburger menus, etc. Information architecture is the sorting of content
and functionalities into menus and hierarchies.

The concept can be illustrated with an example. Imagine a designer needs to

design a website with the following list of features:

Instead of creating a link to each of these functionalities on the top-level

navigation menu at the top of the website, the designer creates a hierarchy as
shown below and adds a link to only “Home” in the top-level menu, adds a link to
services in Home, and so on

Paytm has been unsuccessful in capitalizing on the benefits of a robust

navigation menu system. Paytm has laid out all the possible second-level options
on the top level itself. For example, Paytm has a feature called “Recharges & Bill

55
Payments.” It’s possible to recharge your phone balance, pay your electricity
bills, etc. in the Paytm app itself.

The options “Mobile prepaid”, “Mobile post-paid”, “DTH” and “Electricity”, all
come under the Recharges & Bills Payments feature. Upon tapping on any of
these, we find this screen:

In this screen, we have the choice to go to any of the top-level options (which
had individual buttons on the previous screen). “Mobile”, “DTH”, “Credit Card”,
and “Electricity” are all available here in the segmented control at the top of the
screen. It would make for a much richer experience if the (first) home page wasn’t
crowded with so many secondary options and the home page just had one button
for “Recharges & Bill Payments”, after which we find this screen and choose the
type of payment we wish to make. Similarly, the Paytm Travel options “Train
tickets” and “Bus” in the second row of the above image can be enveloped into
a single button for Paytm Travel on the home screen, and all the secondary
options in a segmented control on the “Paytm travel” screen.

There are only two levels of navigation — cramming the page with too many
options at the same time. My proposed version of the sitemap in this same
section with a multi-leveled hierarchical structure would be:

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A portion of the home page of Paytm’s current information architecture (sitemap)
looks something like this:

There are only two levels of navigation — cramming the page with too many
options at the same time.

The proposed version of the sitemap in this same section with a multi-leveled
hierarchical structure would be:

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 Here there are 2–3 levels of navigation, providing fewer options at once.

Paytm should work towards filtering the volume of options so that the user is
exposed to only a small number of choices at any given point in the experience.

Web design practices in the app’s design

▪ It is evident that the mobile app has been heavily modeled after the Paytm
website. Lesser emphasis on transitions, less fluid interface, lack of device-
specific optimization, and even more cluttered interfaces — these are all practices
employed in web design.
▪ Web design and app design have some very different requirements because of
the difference between the contexts of the two platforms.
▪ For instance, at the bottom of the home page, there are 4 “footer” links. This is a
design convention encountered in almost every website. This convention does not
normally apply to mobile app design. This seems to have been taken right out of
the website. The Paytm app home screen is a long scroll view presenting a lot of
horizontal scrolling collection views which offer details and items and services
Paytm provides. It has been designed to showcase to the user a preview of what
to expect from the entire app. This, again, is a web design practice. Apps are built
to be more functionality-oriented and less content-oriented. Apps show rather
than tell.
▪ It seems like this is the fundamental problem with the entire app’s UX design. The
Paytm design team has confused web design practices with app design practices,
producing an experience that would’ve worked much better on the web. It is no
wonder that the Paytm website is perfect by conventional UI/UX Web design
standards.
▪ The two primary parameters of any app are usefulness and usability. Usefulness
has to do with how useful the core functionalities of the app are— how useful is
the idea? Usability has to do with how well-executed the app is — how intuitive it
is, and how good the experience is. When it comes to usefulness, Paytm has sold
it. The app’s idea and functionalities are extremely useful and are an obvious
success. The usability of the app, however, needs work in some areas.

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GUESSTIMATES
Estimate the fleet size of Vistara Airlines

Preliminary questions:

● Do I need to calculate both international and domestic fleet sizes? (Interviewer:

Count only the domestic one as of now).
● Should I consider only active aircraft or also ones under maintenance?
(Interviewer: Only the active ones)

Overall Strategy

Would like to first estimate how many flight routes Vistara operates in. Then we can see
what would be the frequency of each route and accordingly find the no. of aircraft
required to service the route. Finally, we can sum up the required aircraft for each route
and get the result.

There are two types of cities –

▪ 6 Metros - Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, Chennai, Hyderabad, Bangalore

▪ 30 Tier-two cities

This would lead to three types of direct routes

▪ Metro to Metro: 15 routes

▪ Metro to Tier two: Total of 6x5=30 routes

We can assume that every metro has 5 tier-two orbital cities, for example, there is no
direct flight from Mumbai-Chandigarh. It is routed via Delhi. Hence Chandigarh is an
orbital city of Delhi. We will assume there are direct flights only between a metro and
its orbital tier-two cities, not between a metro and different metro’s orbital tier-two
cities.

And Tier-two to Tier-two (direct flights are rare since they are usually routed via Metros
and hence accommodated in the previous two types of routes), there may be some
flights that have multiple stopovers. We can consider them to be equivalent to two

59
flights (if there is one stopover) under the types of routes mentioned above and
continue with the analysis.

STEP - 1: Estimating # the flights it would take to cover a Metro-Metro route

Let’s assume flights can run between 6 am to midnight. A high-intensity metro route like
Mumbai to Delhi, based on experience, there is a flight of Vistara departing every hour.
If I assume that a flight leaves from Mumbai at 6 am. It reaches Delhi at 8 am. Then there
is a 1-hour turnaround time which includes maintenance of the aircraft. Then the flight
leaves from Delhi at 9 am. Similarly, after reaching Mumbai, the flight is ready to depart
at Noon am simultaneously a flight departs from Delhi, reaches Mumbai at 8 am, and
after a 1 hr. turnaround time departs from Mumbai at 9 am.

This would mean that we need 3 flights departing from Mumbai at 6 am, 7 am & 8 am
and 3 flights departing from Delhi at 6 am, 7 am & 8 am to achieve a 1-hour flight
frequency from 6 am to Midnight. Therefore, a route like Mumbai-Delhi requires 6
flights.

However, all Metro-to-Metro routes are not this busy. Mumbai-Delhi is the busiest route.
If we take Kolkata to Hyderabad, it is a less busy route and the flight frequency would
be more like 1 flight per 3 hours by Vistara. This would mean a requirement of only 2
flights to cover the route.

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On average, we can assume a requirement of 4 flights per metro route leading to an
average frequency of a flight every 1.5 hours. This would mean 4*15=60 aircraft on the
Metro-to-Metro route.

STEP 2: Estimating # flights it would take to cover a Metro-Tier-two route

Coming to the 30 Metro-Tier-two routes. A typical route would be Delhi-Chandigarh.

These routes have a low frequency. The journey time is less than an hour. A flight
departing at 6 am from Delhi will reach Chandigarh at 7 am, would depart from
Chandigarh at 8 am, would reach Delhi at 9 am, and would again leave from Delhi at 10
am.

Hence with one flight, we can achieve a flight frequency of 4 flights per day. Based on
experience (You can ask the interviewer for his experience, and make the interview
conversational) even 4 flights might be too much and Vistara may be having just 3 per
day to save on operating expenses. Additionally, in aircraft might be catering to two
low-frequency Metro --Tier 2 routes, however, we will neglect that and assume each
route will have one dedicated aircraft at least. That leads to 30x1=30 Aircraft. Hence,
we have a total of 60+30=90 aircraft of Vistara meant for domestic routes in active
service.

Estimate the number of schools in Mumbai

Preliminary questions

● Are we counting both government and private schools? (Interviewer: Yes)

● Are we looking at all standards from Junior Kg. to the 12th Std.? This would give
us an age group of 4 (Interviewer: Yes, you are spot on)
● Should we include junior colleges as well in schools? (Interviewer: No, do not
include them)
● Should we consider NGOs as well? What about local-level teachers teaching
without any school (for very poor students)? (Interviewer: Consider only
establishments where students go for an education. The establishment can be
run by anyone, government, NGO, or private)

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Overall Strategy:

We have the following formula:

#Schools in Mumbai = (#School going children in Mumbai) / (Avg. # Students per school)

We will first estimate the (#School going children in Mumbai) and then the (Avg. #
Students per school).

STEP - 1: School-going children in Mumbai

We can divide the population across age groups and then across income segments. We
know that India is a young country has 50% of its population below the age of 25. Since
Mumbai has a population of 20 Mn, this would mean 10 Mn people are under the age of
25. Assuming an equal distribution, this gives us 400,000 students each year till the age
of 25.

Depending on their age and family income segment, different percentages of children
would go to schools. The following are general characteristics being applied to a group
and there will be exceptions. Middle-class families send all their children to school.
Some children may be home-schooled but we can neglect that.

The lower middle class sends children to school up to 10th Std. But because of our
patriarchal society, some girls may not be sent to school. In the lower middle-class
segment, several students only complete their 10th Std. examinations and do not study
further, though that trend is changing.

Most BPL families are too poor to send their children to school. These are usually
children of construction workers, vegetable vendors, or even beggars. However,
several NGOs and government schools are accommodating them. These children have
a slim chance of attempting their 10th Std. exams and almost none at attempting the
12th Std. exams.

Note that the Upper Middle Class (10% of the population) has the same relevant
characteristics as the Middle Class and hence it has been lumped in the Middle Class
for analysis.

62
We can say that of the 0.4 Mn students aged 17 - 18 almost 50% would be going to
Junior Colleges and the rest to CBSE, ICSE, and other schools. Hence, we get the total
school-going children to be 2.4 Mn + 1.9 Mn + 0.4 Mn*50% = 4.5 Mn

STEP – 2: Avg. # Students per school: We can divide schools into Large Schools (30%),
Medium Schools (50%), and Small Schools (20%)

If we just count the schools around IIT Bombay, Powai (Mumbai), there would be about
10 schools of which 3 are large, 5 are medium and about 2 are small. You can take any
area you want as a reference. Try to choose one which has a good mix and that you
think might be close to an average.

Large schools typically have 40 students in each class. They have 5 divisions per class.
There are variations but we can say generally they teach students from Jr. Kg to 12th
grade. This would mean a total of 40 x 5 x 14=2800 students.

Medium Schools do not tend to space out their students across divisions as large
schools do. They typically have around 50 students in each division and about 3
divisions in total. These schools generally teach students from Jr. Kg to 10th grade. This
makes it a total of 50 x 3 x 12 = 1800 students.

Small Schools teach about 30 students at a time. They have fewer divisions, let’s go
with 2. They also teach a small age group of students either only Jr & Sr. Kg or 1st to
5th Std. Let’s say they teach students across 5 age groups. This is an approximation as
many times small schools like those run by NGOs lump students across ages in the same
class. We get the total number of students as 30 x 2 x 5 = 300 students.

63
Hence an average school has 0.3 x 2800 + 0.5 x 1800 + 0.2 x 300 = ~ 1800 students.
Hence the Total # Schools = 4.5 Mn/1800 = ~2500 schools.

Sanity Check

As a sanity check, we can see how many schools we get per square kilometer and if
that number is reasonable. We know that Mumbai has an area of 600 sq. km. I would
expect about 2 schools per sq. km. This takes the number of schools to around 1200. It
seems like we made certain overestimations. Let’s go over the numbers once more.

Our average school’s student strength looks all right at 1800, which could not be higher.
Our Population distribution numbers seem right too.

Within the income segments, the middle class and BPL assumptions seem right. We may
have overestimated the number of students from the LMC category. In the age group
of 4-16, 80% of students may have gone to school at some point in time, but not through
all the grades in between.

Calculate the number of queries answered by Google per second

Preliminary questions

● Mode of searches is Manual via mobile, desktop, app, web, and home device.
Ignoring any robot/auto API-based searches.
● Geographically, do we need to look at the global population?

Analysis

We'll do a top-down approach.

Global Population = 8B

Less, Geographies excluded: China, Half of Russia (people here don't use Google as
their primary search engine); Less approx. 1.5B (remaining 6.5B)

Less, only 50% of people are connected to the internet (remaining 3.25B)

Less, Google market share with Bing, AOL, and other regional engines: Let's assume it
to be about 65% - 70%; Less approximately 1.05B.

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We are left with 2.2B people who are potentially using Google search as their primary
search.

Usage Frequency

We can segment them by their frequency of usage. I would say there are 3 types of
searchers: Aggressive, Active, and Passive

Passive searchers are those who don't use the internet to search on daily basis (kids,
our moms/dads, majority of the rural population). Assuming this type represents the
majority = 50% = 1.1B people

Active people would search once a day. Assumed to be 25% of the population = 550M
people

Aggressive searchers are super active searchers who might search 4-8 times a day.
Assumed to be 25% of the total population = 550M people

Total searches per day= 550*1 + 550*6 = 3.8B searches per day = 3.8B / 24 hours / 60
min / 60 sec = ~ 44,000 searches per second

Estimate how much it costs to run Flickr for a 20GB user

Candidate - Just a quick clarification, when you say 20GB user, are you saying that the
user is using 20GB of storage, or have they bought a plan, which allows them up to
20GB of storage?

Interviewer - The latter.

Candidate - I assume you want me to calculate the costs of actual usage. That is if they
signed up for a

20GB plan, and they use something less than 20 GB. That’s the number you want?

Interviewer - Yes.

Candidate - And you want me to estimate costs per year or month?

Interviewer - Per month.

Candidate - Okay. Let’s say that each Flickr user uploads 10 pictures per week.

Each picture is roughly 5 MB in size.

65
Multiply 10 by 5 MB each. That’s 50 MB each week. That’s about 2.5 GB of storage for
the year. But what we need is the average cost at any given point in the year. So, let’s
just take the midpoint, and the average user, in its first year has about 1.25 GB.

Let’s talk about storage costs. I’ll estimate storage costs to be 10 cents per GB per
month. That’s roughly how much Amazon S3 charges for storage. We’re storing 1.25GB
per user, so multiply that by $. 10 per GB/mo. gives us 12.5 cents per month. Per year,
that’s $1.50 per user.

From a bandwidth perspective, we usually show the optimized version of the photo.
Let’s assume optimization can reduce file sizes by 40 percent. So rather than see the
full 5 MB, let’s say the user sees a 2MB version.

Assume each picture gets viewed on average 10 times per month. So that’s 10 x 2 MB
each, so 20 MB gets transferred.

We assumed that the user uploads 10 pictures per week. That’s 520 photos per year.
Let’s take the midpoint again, and we get 260 photos. So that’s 5.2GB per month.

Let’s say the bandwidth costs are 12 cents per GB per month. If we round our 5.2GB to
5GB, we get 60 cents per month per user.

What is the Revenue for the board game Monopoly® sold in India per year?

Preliminary questions

● Is there an Indian version of Monopoly®? (Interviewer: “Yes.”)

● If yes, how long has it been on the market in India? (Interviewer: “The Indian
version has been on the market since 2006. Before that, the British version was
sold in India.”)

From this, perhaps the interviewer might further explain that in India there is a children’s
version and a regular version, and she would like you to estimate the revenue of the
children’s version, which targets 8–15-year-old children.

Once the question is clarified, identify the variables to apply to this problem. The
population of India: Approximately 1.2 billion people.

Percent of the population that is aged 8-15 in India: Assume 15%. Total population of 8-
15-year-old children: 180 million.

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Assumed percent living in areas where the board game is available for sale: 50%
Assumed percent of such children playing board games: 20%

Assumed number of board games purchased per child in this age range per year: 2

A potential question at this point for the interviewer: How popular is Monopoly compared
to other games? (Interviewer: It is gaining a lot of interest and is a popular board game
with an estimated 10% share.) The average price for Monopoly®: Assume Rs 600 (The
interviewer will probably provide the number; otherwise, you might need to estimate
based on U.S. prices and dollar-rupee exchange rates)

Using these estimates, the annual Monopoly® sales in India are as follows: 180 million

× 50% × 20% × 2 × 10% × Rs 600 = Rs 2.16 billion annual Revenue.

Interviewer: If the exchange rate is U.S. $1 to 60 Rupees, how many dollars is that?

2.16 billion ÷ 60 = $36 million.

Total Revenue for the children’s version of Monopoly® in India per year appears to be
approximately $36 million. Note that because of the large chain of assumptions made,
this estimate could be off significantly; in particular, the estimate is highly sensitive to
the percentage breakdown assumptions for the relevant demographic (percent of 8–
15-year-olds living where the game is available; percent of those individuals who play
board games; the number of board games purchased by those customers annually; etc.)

Guesstimates for practice

1. How would you estimate Google AdSense revenue?

2. How much storage is required to store all the images on Google Maps?

3. Estimate the number of bicycles required to start a bike-sharing operation in a

big city.

4. Estimate the number of Uber rides.

5. If you are opening a new Walmart branch, how would you decide how many cash
registers are needed for the store?

67
PRODUCT IMPROVEMENT CASE
Suggest a killer feature to improve LinkedIn. And what metrics would you track
to determine success?
Candidate - There are a lot of different reasons why people use LinkedIn.
Professionals could be looking for jobs or career development opportunities.
Recruiters could be looking for new candidates. Salespeople could be looking
for new contacts.
For me, the persona that resonates most is the professional. I’m always searching for
conferences and courses focused on professional development. That’s the scenario I’d
like to explore.

Interviewer - Go ahead.

Candidate - When I think about the conference scenario, I think of three use cases:

1. As a potential conference attendee, I want to find new conferences so that I can

attend.

2. As a conference attendee, I’d like to see who else is attending the conference,
so that I can keep a list of people to network with before, during, and after.

3. As a conference attendee, I’d like to have the conference materials easily

accessible for reference.

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So, here’s my solution: a conference page hosted on LinkedIn. It would have conference
details, such as event name, date, location, cost, and links to the conference agenda.

Right below it would be registered attendees. Users can click to contact via LinkedIn’s
messaging system. And below that would be linked to pre and post-conference slide
material.

LinkedIn’s revenue opportunities with this new conference page could include:

● Conference organizers pay monthly subscription fees

● Get revenue share on all conference fees.

● Collect a small transaction fee on all registrations

Interviewer - Interesting. Let’s talk about getting conference details data. How would
you do it?

Candidate - Three ideas come to mind:

1. Conference organizers can post details manually.

2. Build a crawler to index the web and parse conference data

3. Define a conference data format and have conference organizers upload the

data to LinkedIn, either in a text file or a server-to-server API call.

Interviewer - How would you determine if this new feature is successful?

Candidate - There are a couple of metrics I would consider:

a. Acquisition: How many conference organizers have we signed up for the

service? This measure tells us whether the feature is compelling enough and
worth spending their time on.
b. Engagement of the conference organizers who have signed up, how many
conference pages have they created? How often? And for the conference
attendees, how often do they visit the site? What kind of positive behaviors
have they undertaken, whether it’s contacting or connecting with other
conference attendees? Or downloading presentation materials? We want the
feature to add value to both organizers and attendees.
c. Monetization. Lastly, how much money are we making? I wouldn’t want us to
waste time working on something that’s not contributing to either short-or-
long term revenue potential.

69
INTERVIEW EXPERIENCES
Interview 1:

Guesstimate The market size of the US Healthcare Sector

Case Interview ● A generic application is losing users over a quarter, do an

RCA (Root Cause Analysis) to identify the issue
Problem
● Build an application around an ailment of the
Statement
Candidate’s choice

● For the first case, the Candidate went through the entire
structure of the application, stating the basic blueprint of any
application like Amazon or WhatsApp. And then suggested
checking on the parameters reflecting the sudden fall in
users using the blueprint, and conversion funnel, and
Your approach monitoring the app for a week, at least. For additional
structure, he/she went through the Product management
to the case lifecycle

● The candidate built an AI-based Mental Health application,

wherein there were real therapists
involved as the AI models got trained

Interview 2:

● Why Product management

● What can a PM do to be respected by engineers?
Interview ● A short discussion about the roles and responsibilities of PM
Questions
(Non-case- ● Asked to explain a project in detail
related)
● Situational questions about resolving conflicts
● Favourite product, strengths, and weakness

70
Case Interview ● If the candidate has access to all healthcare data, how will
he/she use it to come up with a feature/product for patients
Problem
Statement ● Given 150 products, how will the Candidate present to
senior management which product to go ahead with

Guesstimate Number of mugs sold in India in a month

Interview 3:

● Strengths?
Interview ● Why product management after IT?
Questions
(Non-case- ● Questions on leadership aspects at work
related)
● Netflix – as a product, rate it, compare it with Prime

Case Interview ● A start-up from the EdTech industry is losing its sales and
subscriptions over the past year due to Covid. Suggest ways
Problem to implore the situation, and describe the metrics to evaluate
Statement your suggested solutions.

Guesstimate Calculate the total number of people flying over Bangalore in a day

Interview 4:

Interview ● Favourite App? If DAU is going down, what could be the

Questions reasons?
(Non-case-
related) ● Coding question: fizz-buzz problem – complexity analysis

71
 As PM of Google: Estimate the infrastructural cost of
Guesstimate
launching Google photos in India

● The candidate mentioned that he/she has used google

photos as an app to see photos clicked, and nothing else so
what are google photos?

● Interviewer replied cloud storage -> Got the hint, cloud

facility is needed -> data center cost -> Linked India’s PDP
bill coming (public data protection) and so long term better
if built in India.

● Consumer segmentation age-wise and income-wise

-> He/she created a table and said people have different
Guesstimate
phones which means different sizes of photos etc.
Approach
● Structure your answer: Scope, approach, equation and
variables, final calculation.

● Categorized photos and videos from WhatsApp, clicked,

deleted, policy for deleting from the cloud, old photos, etc.
synced

The Candidate then discussed the approach and wrapped the

question

Round 1:

● PPT Submission Round

● As a ProdMan, Create the design of a mobile application (the
context was given for user & industry)
Case Interview
Round 2:
Problem
List 5 metrics as a Zomato CEO you would want to monitor daily
Statement
Round 3:

● As PM of YouTube, explain the rationale behind the ‘skip ads

feature’ to a new PM
● How YouTube decides which ads to be made skippable

72
 Round 1:

● For the ppt Submission round, the Candidate saw LinkedIn

winning solutions (last 8 solutions).
(https://www.linkedin.com/school/pmschoolx/pos
ts/?feedView=all)

● The Candidate went through the judging metrics excel also -

which is available on the LinkedIn page

● Talk to someone to get consumer insights – The Candidate

talked with parents to understand their perspective on the
given case.
Your approach
to the case
Structure of the Presentation:

● Executive Summary + Table of Contents

● Introduction
● Consumer Personas
● Consumer Needs
● Features
● Evaluation of Features
● MVP
● Key Feature
● Monetizing the Product & Feature
● Key Metrics
● Market Size Estimation

Round 2:

The interviewer and interviewee debated on many things and

some of the candidate’s ideas were rejected. The candidate’s
answers were not completely correct but they were well
structured. First, identified key Stakeholders: restaurant +
customer

Then tried to think of some key metrics:

● No. of orders
● 1 rating and uninstallation
● CLTV = ARPU * Average Customer Lifetime * Average
orders per week for all customers
● Revenue per restaurant
● Urban and rural divide (newly entered regions vs old)

73
Round 3:

YouTube 1st question Approach:

● The candidate defined the ‘skip ads feature’ and then used that to
build his/her rationale.
● Interviewer helped to build the Ans that was - acquisition cost of the
customer for YouTube > 0 i.e., YouTube must attract customers to
use YouTube, people don’t come automatically, if they would have
come automatically, YouTube can force them to see ads.
● Dig deep, feel free to ask the interviewer – make it a conversation
with a friend.
● The interviewer asked competitors of YouTube -> most will say ‘daily
motion’ etc.
● The candidate stuck with the fundamentals of the definition:
Competitors: Anything that gets affected negatively by your
product/service.
● Listed competitors such as Instagram and then said that YouTube is
also a social platform so WhatsApp and Facebook are also
competitors etc. and then the interviewer said ‘you’ve hit the nail on
the head’ -> YouTube fights for customer’s time and not only videos

YouTube 2nd question Approach:

● Quality of ad
● Customer centricity – individual user profile-based ad
● Length factor (7-sec ad make non-skippable)
● Region (in Bihar, can make Bhojpuri Ads non-skippable)
● Covid-19 mandatory info by WHO
● Profitability/Ads by Tesla & Walmart are not skippable as they give
huge money to YouTube
● Views on video: if the video will be watched at any cost by the user:
let the ad be non-skippable

74
Interview 5:
25-30 minutes
● Why Product Management?
● Do you want to ask anything?

Round 1 (1 hour):
1st 4 questions 30 minutes. 5th question is 30 minutes.
1. Tell me about yourself.
2. Questions on my work ex.
Interview
3. Tell me something that is not in your resume?
Questions
(Non-case- 4. Which is your favorite app/website?
related)
5. Which is the worst app according to you?

Round 2: (25-30 minutes):

● Introduce yourself?
● Don't give me a bookish answer. Tell me something else.
● Asked a lot of questions about my start-ups.
● Do you want to ask anything?

Case Interview
● Over the last quarter the number of messages sent over
Problem WhatsApp has reduced by 10%. Dissect the situation and
identify the reason for the same.
Statement

Interview 6:

● Tell me about yourself

● What would be some key metrics for an e-commerce

Interview
application?
Questions
(Non-case-
● Setback in one’s life and how did you overcome it?
related)
● Favourite app and why? Describe its features. How would you
improve it? Competitor Analysis.

75
 Round 1:
Mini case:
● The candidate was asked to assume that he/she was the
prod man for an application and was given 5 different
enhancements that are lined up to be added to the product.
What would be the candidate’s priority order for them?

Product design case:

● The candidate was developing a pop-up ad tool that the
clients will be able to add to their website to show their
Case Interview visitors different promotions.
Problem
Round 2:
Statement
Product case:
● Root cause analysis. Swiggy prod man, orders have been
down over the weekend. Analyze.

Strategy case:
● The case was that the candidate is in the strategy dept for
Airbnb. The peak season is approaching especially for hill
station destinations like Kullu-Manali etc. But there is also an
impending 3rd wave looming. What can Airbnb do so its
business stays in the green during this period?

Round 1:

● For the Mini case, weigh both impacts on the user +

development effort to evaluate, and be ready to justify why
this one is at position X

● For the product design case, Follow the CIRCLES

framework roughly, which might deviate a little in the
Your approach discussion, but helps keep you guided.
to the case
Round 2:

Product Case:
● The Candidate should ask lots of clarification questions. Try to
get some numbers/metrics from the interviewer. Go through
the RCA framework. Take through the user journey, and see
from which point we are getting drops in the usage rate in the
funnel.

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 ● Even if the candidate thinks he/she has reached there, try to
get even more specific. The candidate could conclude in
his/her case that the filters were where they had the problem.

But then the actual solution was that the veg/non-veg filter
is not working. So, 20% of people drop off

Interview 7:

● Tell me about yourself?

● Why product management and why MBA?
Interview
● What are your values and give examples from your life to
Questions
(Non-case- showcase them.
related)
● PM question on product lifecycle, MVP tests, what is product
management, and the role of product manager was asked.

● As a PM of Amazon Prime, how will you improve it as

Case Interview compared to its competitors?
Problem
● As a PM of your favorite product, how will you improve its
Statement
user engagement?

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Interview 8:

Interview Questions
● Tell me about yourself
(Non-case-related)

Round 1:

As a Microsoft/Zoom member, how can you make work from

home more productive, you can develop a new product or
make changes in the existing products (My rationale or the
thought process behind those pain points which I had
mentioned for the case study were asked in the next round)

Round 2:

● To create an application from scratch for hoteliers,

guides, and small vendors in tourist places to increase
Case Interview
their revenue as it had taken a hit during the Covid time
Problem Statement
● I have started a new company and I am the CEO the
above application is our first task that has to be done so
please present the Cost Analysis or a rough breakup
(rough idea about when the break-even point will be
reached and what would be the initial investment
required, etc.)

Round 3:
Create an application for Uber as it wants to penetrate tier
3 and tier 4 cities in India

Round 2:

● I always followed the CIRCLES framework and

presented my approach and ideas to him

Your approach to ● There were 2-3 follow-up questions and it was more like a

the case discussion of the RCA framework. Take through the user
journey, and see from which point we are getting drops in the
usage rate in the funnel.
Even if the candidate thinks he/she has reached there, try to
get even more specific. The candidate could conclude in his/her
case that the filters were where they had the problem.

78
WEBSITES FOR FURTHER READING
1. https://pmschool.io/
2. https://www.productmanagementexercises.com/
3. https://igotanoffer.com/blogs/product-manager/product-manager-interview-questions
4. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLBa-xZ_7YhjRBJJ7WpXZrdHEL05qlY5Uf
5. https://www.theproductfolks.com/

REFERENCES
The content in this compendium has been gathered from various publicly available
sources. Some of the sources are as follows:

https://igotanoffer.com/blogs/product-manager/product-design-questions

https://uxplanet.org/the-bus-product-design-framework-4e9fb6f81bcf

https://www.aha.io/roadmapping/guide/product-management/product-managers-other-teams

https://www.thebalancecareers.com/what-is-the-star-interview-response-technique-2061629

https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/google-s-heart-framework-for-measuring-ux

https://clevertap.com/blog/google-heart-framework/

https://medium.com/@ginoarendsz/an-introduction-to-the-aarrr-framework-b8570d6ae0d2

https://growthrocks.com/blog/aarrr-framework/

https://www.profitwell.com/recur/all/pricing-strategy-guide/

https://canvanizer.com/new/lean-canvas

https://medium.com/@steve_mullen/an-introduction-to-lean-canvas-5c17c469d3e0

https://medium.com/@Vincentxia77/wireframe-vs-mockup-vs-prototype-selection-of- prototyping-tools-
febf826cdd98

https://copylove.medium.com/customer-journey-map-8a5ac61d6b5e

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https://medium.com/sozial-monster/everything-you-need-to-know-about-customer-pain-points- to-
make-more-money-f4ec4160e2c5

https://www.aha.io/roadmapping/guide/product-strategy/how-should-product-managers-define- user-
personas

https://medium.com/@claudiofuen/what-is-product-management-dfb5ead4d86c

https://www.mindtheproduct.com/becoming-industry-agnostic-product-manager/

https://igotanoffer.com/blogs/product-manager/product-design-questions

https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/mobility-on-demand-market-198699113

https://uxplanet.org/the-bus-product-design-framework-4e9fb6f81bcf

https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/india-food-tech-market-report-2021-2025-
featuring-key-players---swiggy-zomato- bigbasket-jubilant-foods-freshmenu-and-licious-
301271435.html

https://bstrategyhub.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Business-model-canvas-Flipkart.png

https://thetycoonmindset.com/special-situation/zomato-understanding-the-business-model-of- food-
tech-space/

https://bootcamp.uxdesign.cc/swiggy-or-zomato-food-ordering-and-delivery-app- b4922da4029e

https://thoughtoverdesign.com/work/flipkart

https://www.apptunix.com/blog/how-does-udemy-work-business-model-revealed/

The Product Manager Interview Book

https://www.productmanagementexercises.com/2425/calculate-the-number-of-queries-answered-
google-per-second

https://blog.logrocket.com/product-management/12-agile-manifesto-principles-how-to-adopt-them/

https://project-management.com/agile-vs-waterfall/

https://www.productplan.com/learn/product-management-vs-program-management/

https://www.productplan.com/learn/responsibilities-product-owner/

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DECODE and CONQUER - Answers to Product Management Interviews by Lewis C. Lin

Case Interviews Cracked Book by Sankalp Kelshikar & Saransh Garg

https://formlabs.com/asia/blog/product-requirements-document-prd-with-template/

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