Institute of Management Technology (IMT), Nagpur had the opportunity to host Mr Sanchit Kargaonkar, Technical Program Manager, Mastercard and Mr Arindam Nath, Ex-Senior Product Manager, Airtel X Labs, for the Product Management Workshop sponsored by – The Product Geek on February 6, 2021

The following is an excerpt of an interview with them-

Q1) With the pandemic being an inflection point in the way business is done, do you see product management taking more of a digital direction?

Ans.  Mr Sanchit Kargaonkar- Before pandemic also the overall product management was getting into digital direction but the pandemic has accelerated the process. During the pandemic there were a lot of companies which had no other option rather than going digital because that was the only available channel through which they could reach out to customers.

         Mr Arindam Nath - Now people has lesser access to physical conveyance or meeting people or going into a place where they can do business or do shopping, etc, every business is trying to have attention of people through applications or any digital medium. Number of businesses are already at the the digital front and many new businesses are following the trend. So product management as a career option and practice is going to evolve really faster than the past few years.

Q2) How different are product and brand management? Does a marketing bent of mind help in this field?

Ans. Mr Sanchit Kargaonkar - Product management history aligns with the brand managers pioneered by FMCG companies. Product management practices find its root in brand management. Having a marketing mind-set is very important for a product manager as it helps in getting the edge and surviving the competition.

        Mr Arindam Nath - Product management is a discipline that has lot to do with trying out new experiments and being creative about the products and design which is necessary for a marketing mind-set. Initially when marketing was not done digitally then also there were many creative marketing campaigns but the digitalisation has provided a new beginning to the same.

Q3) How does a bad product management impact the growth of a product?

Ans. Mr Sanchit Kargaonkar - A bad product management might not cause the complete failure of the product but it can hamper the growth. Product management is the later phase; a product is started with an idea and initial problem solving. Most of the companies do not have product management as a practice because they might not be in a stable phase in their initial product launching phase.

          Mr Arindam Nath - If the product processes are not set up properly it might lead to the failure of product. But product management is not solely the reason for failure of a product. If a product can't keep up with the current market trend or it lags in certain segment that might also be responsible for the failure of product as it will lose traction and slowly it will move out of the league.

Q4) With everything now being conducted online, how has your experience been with IMT Nagpur?

Ans. Mr Sanchit Kargaonkar - There was hardly a minute spent in technical glitches. It worked better than a physical channel as there were few quizzes conducted with the polling session and every student participated willingly.

         Mr Arindam Nath - Lot of the things were already in place and use of technology was done perfectly, despite having more than 150 participants there were no glitches and everything was well managed.