As discussed in my previous post about responsibilities of a product manager, product management continues to remain the less spoken about profiles in the otherwise large Indian IT industry. With the growing number of products in the Indian webspace, the demand for experienced PMs is likely to peak in 2012-13. But there’s still time! For now, Product management in India is less concrete (in terms of the role), and holds huge potential as precisely summarized by Gopal Shenoy here. That post echoes the thoughts of quite a few Indian product managers. Here are my comments to few of the points:
@ #2:They manage products sold in the US
This seems quite obvious given the fact that a lot of product companies in India are either outsourced product development or developing enterprise products for global top companies and US/Europe are their biggest markets. Thus, most young PMs there will report to account managers or senior PMs posted on-site. Having said this, one cannot ignore the outburst of internet product companies catering to the local market, mainly into eCommerce & social.
@ #3: Too many titles for the same profile
Totally agree! Quite a few of us are left out of the product management mainstream because of varying titles conferred upon us: program managers, business analysts, software consultants, and what not. But no matter what how they’re referred to, they’re all doing the same thing – and some don’t even know they’re developing products (more on this, coming soon).
@ #4:Engineering & Proj Mgmt folks moving into Prod Mgmt
There’s more to it. Not just development folks, but there are freshers, folks from quality and even some from business who are keen to move in. Those who have understood the challenge & responsibility want to get at it on account of passion & enthusiasm, and not just a career ladder or salary booster.
@ #5: “They are confident, fearless and hungry“
When I think of Gopal saying that to me, my reaction is not other than that of crayon Shin Chan when he says, ‘Don’t praise me so much’ (which sounds funnier in the Hindi dubbing when he says, ‘Itni taarif bhi mat karo!‘) But that goes without saying for all of us – we are all way too passionate about our products!
Read the original post by Gopal Shenoy and some very interesting comments here: http://productmanagementtips.com/2011/02/09/india-product-management/