Nishant Agarwal

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

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

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🚀 Becoming a 100X Product Manager with AI 💡 Skill spotlight: Storytelling — the superpower that transforms good PMs into legendary ones. 🛠️ Tool of the day: Google Storybook — your AI assistant for creating compelling product narratives. I tried creating this for LinkedIn Insighta, a product that would be a career counsellor for fresh college graduates. 📌 Why it matters: Great products don’t just sell on features; they sell on stories. As PMs, the ability to craft and share stories is what gets teams, customers, and investors aligned. 📖 Inspiration: Steve Jobs’ storytelling made Apple more than a tech company — it made Apple a movement. 👉 Try out Google Storybook, experiment with your product pitch, and share in the comments: How was your experience? What did you learn? ✨ Let’s learn together and make each other more productive in this AI-powered PM landscape. #ProductManagement #AI #Storytelling #GoogleStorybook #PMGrowth PS - Let me know how the story was. Will be sharing a detailed prompt that can help you write engaging stories for Google Storybook.

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

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Recently, whenever I ask someone to refine their written piece - generally a document / work message etc - they go to AI to do so. No harm in that, but one thing that gets skipped in this process is the clarity in your own understanding. When you write something down in a structured manner which is clear, concise, it gives clarity not just to the reader, but to you yourself. The more you do it, more deeply you understand what you're writing and can preempt what questions your audience will have. Communication in general is one of the greatest skills successful people have, with AI maybe the written communication skill can be covered, but the clarity that you get with it, is not. So take AI's help to beautify your communication or brainstorm what all to write, but try to do a few revvs of structuring it out yourself, it will deepen your thinking a lot. More coming on structured thinking in next few weeks.

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Excited to announce the launch of The Backchannel Podcast 🎙️ This all started with a late-night chat between me and Sumit Kumar Singh. We were talking about how the realest conversations in product and startups don’t happen on stage or in big LinkedIn posts. They happen in the backchannel: over coffee, in WhatsApp groups, and in those “off-the-record” calls. That’s when we said: what if we bring that format out in the open? No filters. No PR polish. Just candid stories and lessons from operators who’ve been there, done that. And that’s how the Backchannel Podcast (part of the PM Mixer - The product club) was born. For our very first episode, we sat down with Chetan Lohia , Lead Product Manager at Bumble Inc. , who’s been shaping how millions connect and build relationships worldwide. Here’s a small teaser from that conversation 👇 Full episode drops soon. Stay tuned.

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

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Wanted to share this story from the team at Entri... It’s an example of what gets my team so energized. As an alumni of the Google for Startups Accelerator, Entri built their Android app to tackle helping 400 million people in India boost their employability by overcoming language barriers. They integrated Gemini to create an AI Teaching Assistant and Interview Coach, delivering specialized learning in local languages. Entri saw a 20% jump in user retention. That shows what’s possible when building a user-focused experience on Android. ➡️ Full story: https://lnkd.in/gnKVSMGi ➡️ Google for Startups Accelerator in India: https://lnkd.in/gpZeMpwr

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When your Product Manager(Gautham Menon), Principal Search Engineer(Naveen Aiathurai), and Applied AI Engineer(Shamith Rao) walk into a room and accidentally drop a masterclass on enterprise search! 🗣️ At Atomicwork, we’re not just adding search as a feature, we’re building it as the brain of the whole operation. From unifying messy data across IT, HR, finance, and facilities to building a context-rich knowledge graph, our team is reimagining what it means to actually find what you’re looking for. Catch the behind-the-scenes of how we blend unstructured chaos and structured brilliance into a seamless AI-native search experience. Trust us—this isn’t your average “search bar” talk 🔥 Watch the full conversation herehttps://lnkd.in/gbEBiQbj . . #AISearch #EnterpriseIT #AIInIT #AI #AIMasterclass #Atomicwork #SearchExperience

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