Braj Panda

Technology | Digital Transformation | Crypto | Mental Health | ex-McKinsey | ex-Berkeley-Haas

[Rahul Mathur @Rahul_J_Mathur]

If you’re a Product Manager working in India, I would highly recommend hearing Anuj Rathi’s interview on Lenny’s podcast.

Anuj has seen Product in India evolve from back-office / dev shop to true global product development over 15 years:
- 1st PM at Flipkart (e-commerce wave)
- VP Product at Snapdeal (discount e-commerce wave)
- SVP at Swiggy (food delivery wave)
& now CPO at Jupiter Bank (consumer FinTech wave)..

It is also the 1st time I’ve seen a homegrown Product leader be interviewed by Lenny. Bunch of points stood out (for both local & global audiences):

(1) India is a unique market 🇮🇳
- Language spoken isn’t homogenous even within a given state
- DPI (Digital Public Infra) in Identity, Financial Services, Payments & Healthcare change competitive dynamics
- Vast population (DAU farm) but with some pockets of real money (”India 1”)

(2) Being a full stack PM 🥮
- Being a PM is more than shipping the product & managing the lifecycle.
- You need to understanding competition, GTM, regulation (if applicable), complementary products, 3rd party Tech enablers etc

Being “full stack” doesn’t mean you are an expert at all the above; but you should have baseline knowledge & many “partners” in your company who have the expertise & you have a good / working relationship with them.

My cynical view here is that many PMs in India don’t get an opportunity to be full stack; they’re made to do SCRUM / backlog management full time. But, I hope this changes over time

(3) Anuj’s own 4BB framework
- A major challenge for Product leaders in Tech Orgs in India is to get buy-in to a definitive resource allocation plan from the CEO + other senior leaders.
- We’ve all been at the receiving end of the “11PM tube light moment which totally changes the roadmap”

💡Anuj overcomes this asking leaders to assign 100 project points across:
(a) Brilliant Basics (i.e. clearing Tech debt)
(b) Bread & Butter (i.e. backlog management / bug fixes / improvements)
(c) Bold Bets i.e. expanding product scope within the existing categories
(d) Breaking Bad i.e. expanding product scope into new categories (e.g. Swiggy entering quick commerce)

Anuj also covered topics like Speed v/s Excellence (I feel India prioritizes sheer Speed) and Intuition v/s Testing.

➡️Overall was a terrific show - got all the PMs I work closely with to add it to their “To Listen” list ⬇️

[hitrate jewshi @Hitarth_07]

Massive respect for these two blokes calling spade a spade. Every cricket lover should listen to this.

[Braj Panda @brajpanda]

@myntra And, @Myntra is the only entity in this country that doesn't recognize #aadhaar as a valid photo ID. Go figure!

[Braj Panda @brajpanda]

Never trust store credits with @myntra, instead opt for refund into original payment source. They randomly close accounts, and all credits vanish. Stealing in broad daylight.
Thankfully didn't lose much money. Chased @MyntraSupport for months, pathetic to say the least.

[Braj Panda @brajpanda]

@myntra You have been responding since 3 months now. Your team has asked for Photo ID 7 times. I provided 3 times. This has now become my fav hobby. What else is new?
#myntra @MyntraSupport can't do digital support it seems

[Braj Panda @brajpanda]

Edit of a different league

[Shilpa @shilpa_cn]

Kantara 2 😭🔥

#Maxwell

[Crazy Management Consultants @CrazyMgmtCons]

The Firm's latest recruiting video
Source: @LastWeekTonight @iamjohnoliver

[Braj Panda @brajpanda]

@myntra customer service is worse than many banks in India. Once you are used to customer service like Amazon's, it's hard to tolerate the shoddy job that most Indian retailers do.

[SwatKat💃 @swatic12]

India is not for beginners 🤣

[Gabbar @GabbbarSingh]

Bengaluru was a lovely place with greenery and breeze, for retirees to drive around in their Fiats to bookstores.

Suddenly a wife lent some money to his IITian husband, and now you have to wait 45 mins to travel 2kms.

[Braj Panda @brajpanda]

Totally!

[Anuj Rathi @anujrathi]

Chilling at an airport lounge used to be a status symbol 3 years back. Now with every credit card giving lounge access, sitting outside the lounge at a nearby cafe while looking at the lounge queue has become one

[Nasscom Insights @NasscomR]

Why organisations should adopt AIOps?

For Detailed Insights, Download Full Report for FREE here 👉https://t.co/GbkcM8Pphr

#AIOps #ArtificialIntelligence #MachineLearning #Automation #DevOps #DataScience #DigitalTransformation #BigData #Analytics #techtrends #UserExperience

[BHUSHAN MADKE MD🇮🇳 @rashlessdoctor]

Chennai Dhaka Flight

Chandrayaan 3 launch

[Crazy Management Consultants @CrazyMgmtCons]

Meeting before a meeting: Pre-meeting

Meeting after a meeting: Debrief

Meeting to discuss things: Problemsolving

Meeting with senior people: SteerCo

Meeting between two people: 1:1

Meeting in a small group: huddle

Meeting briefly: stand-up

Meeting in the morning: check-in

[Braj Panda @brajpanda]

@WillFindU This one hit hard.

[Braj Panda @brajpanda]

@WillFindU Isi baat pe arz hai…

Yeh sochna galat hai ki tum par nazar nahi ...
Mashroof main bahut hoon, magar bekhabar nahi

[Itihasika @itihasika]

What are the 4 Mahavakyas in Hinduism? Can you tell at least 2 without Google? If not then do read this short thread

There are 4 profound sentences that are supposed to paraphrase the essential message of the Vedas & these are called Mahavakyas

[Braj Panda @brajpanda]

Been lucky to have had many great mentors throughout my career, having sought them myself with a lot of effort, I find this list a nice cheat sheet for beginners.

[Michael Girdley @girdley]

My DMs are filled with variations of this question:

“Will you be my mentor?”

I say no to all of them.

Most of you are doing it wrong.

Here is my counterintuitive advice for finding good mentors/advisors:

[Braj Panda @brajpanda]

Finally! Someone had to state the obvious.

[Pete Cheslock @petecheslock]

Kubernetes has single handed set our industry back a decade.

Companies are going to die because they spend more time “managing Kubernetes” than building a product.