In this Accredian Spotlight interview, we feature KS Pavan Kumar, an Senior Product Manager with over 11+ years of experience. He is currently associated with Razorpay. His insatiable quest for knowledge and upskilling led him to enroll in the Global Certificate in Product Management at Accredian.
Question 1: Which program & batch are you part of at Accredian & tell us more about your current work profile?
Pavan: I am enrolled in the GCPM program, June 2021 batch. I’m part of Razorpay as the Senior Product Manager for payment products. I deal with new age payments like UPI, IMPS, NACH and a few digital products.
Question 2: Walk us through your career journey & what got you interested in Product Management?
Pavan: I have a wide range of experience in banking payments and have worked with pioneer payments like NPCI, FSS, FIS, etc. Initially I started my career on the technical side. I then acquired functional knowledge and now I’m a techno functional guy who leads new products and with a zeal in building new products.
Question 3: What all Product Management concepts, frameworks & tools have you mastered in your program at Accredian so far?
Pavan: I learnt more on Agile Project Management, Building MVP- Artefacts, Persona Mapping, PRDs, etc. I have used PM tools like Asana and JIRA for tracking purposes and also many designing tools like lucid chart, whimsical, etc.
Question 4: What were some of the initial challenges when you got started on your Product Management journey and how did you overcome it?
Pavan: I was already working like a PM. With this course I completely molded myself into a proper PM who had a deep understanding of the Product Management life cycle, how to derive metrics and better GTM, etc.
Question 5: Who is your favourite faculty at Accredian and what did you learn from them?
Pavan: My favourite faculty is Sai. He is very clear while defining objects and has a lucid way of explanation with correlated examples.
Question 6: In your view, what is the goal of Product Management & how has it evolved in the last few years?
Pavan: The ultimate goal of a PM is to make products successful in the market. This will help increase the GMV.
Question 7: What are the current trends in Product Management that you are most excited about?
Pavan: I am most excited about-
- Digital products will be key to business growth
- The increased specialization of product roles
- Rise of the product operations manager
- Product management tools evolve faster than ever
- Building meaningful customer connections is more critical than eve
Question 8: Which are some of the Product Management blogs, podcasts, communities & channels that you follow?
Pavan: Few management blogs and pages that I follow are-
- The Product Management Blog
- The SVPG insights blog
- Product Talk
- Inside Intercom
- Productboard Blog
- Mind the Product
- Communities on LinkedIn, the Accredian group, Product slack community, Prodcuthood, etc.
Question 9: Please tell how your journey has been with Accredian so far and what are the elements that you liked.
I have had an incredible journey so far with the curriculum and a rich experience with the faculty in real time.
Question 10: What is your advice to anyone wanting to start a career in Product Management?
Pavan: Product management is a great role with divine ownership that will lead us to a great roadmap and this will be the most exciting role in future. So explore as much as you can and trust the process.
Hope you enjoyed reading this interview. If you want to read more such interesting student stories, check out Accredian Spotlight.
