Do we even need Product Managers

If you are a Product Manager, especially in India, you’re probably going through a crisis of faith and existence. As a career, Product Management in India has gone through multiple eras — in the early days, PMs struggled to explain to people what they actually did. Think about all the people you’d imagine who work at a software company. Marketing. Engineering. Sales. Analytics. Design. You can explain what they do to your grandmother. However, the one exception to the rule is Product Management. It’s the only function where the people who do it struggle to explain to their parents what they do. Then, suddenly, there was a gold rush when everyone wanted to become a Product Manager. And now, there’s an existential crisis — partly driven by the reduced funding and attrition, the rise of AI, and the changing nature of products themselves, more and more leaders are asking the question: Do we even need Product Managers? In today’s episode of Two by Two, hosts Rohin Dharmakumar and Praveen Gopal Krishnan interview two accomplished product leaders in India. First, there’s Chandrashekhar Vattikuti (CPO and SVP at InMobi, ex-Yahoo, Microsoft) and Shreyas Srinivasan, Chief Product Officer at Paytm*, and also founder of Paytm Insider. During the discussion, they trace the origin, the evolution and the crisis that Product Management as a career faces in India. They try to figure out why and how Product Management became a science and stopped being an art. They try to answer what makes a great product manager and how to find one. And they also ask the question that CEOs and Founders are asking themselves — do we even need Product Managers at all? Welcome to Episode 13 of Two by Two. Two by Two is also a newsletter, where every Friday, a short, storified version of the latest episode is sent out to subscribers for free. You can sign up for the Two by Two Newsletter here. (Listen to the free highlights only episode on Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts) Further reading: Product Managers used to be creators. Now they are mostly bureaucrats Who killed the art of Product Management in India? Who made the Frauduct Manager? Episode referenced: Google Pay: Big. Successful. Vulnerable New episodes are released every Thursday. Follow the show wherever you get your podcasts and tell us what you think of the show. You can write to us at [email protected]. *Paytm founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma is an investor in The Ken.