Vikrama Dhiman's Blog

Recently, I interviewed the Chief Products Officer, Make My Trip, Amit Somani at the Scrum-India NCR Meetup. The meetup was held at Xebia India Labs, Gurgaon (great hosts as always).

The talk was on the theme "Product Manager 2.0 : Beyond Product Ownership". It was a rich talk and touched on a variety of aspects of Product Management - right from hiring to culture to growth to metrics. The talk video is available below. It goes roughly like this:

1. First 3 minutes : Journey of Amit Somani to CPO, MakeMyTrip.com
2. Next 6 minutes (up to about 9 minutes): What does it take to crack a Product Manager Interview at Make My Trip
3. Next 4 minutes (up to about 13 minutes) : Where should Product Managers be recruited from
4. Next 7 minutes (up to about 20 minutes) : Product Management at Google
5. Next 6 minutes (up to about 26 minutes) : Why is the culture of building and excellence so less in India?
6. Next 4 minutes (up to about 30 minutes) : Role of Product Manager in an Agile and Scrum world
7. Next 6 minutes (up to about 36 minutes): Integration of Product and Services side in B2C portals like MakeMyTrip, and the role of Product Managers
8. Next 2 minutes (up to about 38 minutes) : What's the conversion rate for users to customers at MakeMyTrip, and is this a Product Manager metric
9. Next 3 minutes (up to about 41 minutes) : What is the role of Research in Product Management, and what role do Product Managers play in Positioning
10. Next 2 minutes (up to about 44 minutes) : Why is it hard for companies to be customer focused unlike say Google
11. Next 6 minutes (up to about 50 minutes) : Does Indian culture comes in the way of Innovation or following your passion
12. Next 3 minutes (up to about 53 minutes) : Does Domain Knowledge matter for Product Managers?
13. Next 4 minutes (up to about 57 minutes) : Who makes the best Product Manager?
14. Next 3 minutes (up to about 60 minutes) : How do you decide if a product has reached its shelf life?
15. Next 4 minutes (up to about 64 minutes) : When should a startup look to hire a Product Manager?
16. Next 4 minutes (up to about 64 minutes) : How would you respond to Product Managers, who say that "They did not have the authority to get things done"
17. Last few minutes : Book recommendations

Its been a while since I wrote something, on this space in particular. I have been super busy helping build the best way to learn online as well as helping Scrum India community take shape via meetups at NCR/ Delhi and Bangalore. A quick summary of what happened in last 6 months:

April: Nothing really happened in April other than a quick one-day visit to the inTuit campus in Bangalore to meet and train some of their team members in Scrum.

May: May saw yet another visit to Bangalore for the first Scrum India Meetup at Bangalore. The meetup was hosted by SAP Labs and was a great success with over 50 Scrum enthusiasts turning up on a Saturday. Om Band of SAP really helped us organize the event successfully.

June: A long pending Mumbai visit finally happened. It was fun and nostalgic to visit Directi office again. And, needless to say it is always a pleasure to meet the oBox team! Everyone, Reinwald, Kirit, Gunjan, Anooj, Dushy, Rajeev are rockstar professionals :) June also saw the second NCR Scrum India meetup. The meetup was hosted by Xebia and was a smash success. We have almost 40 participants and I made some new friends. Abhay from Xebia - bow to you buddy!

July: This was a difficult month. The co-founder and COO of author Gen, Harbir Khurana, passed away after a sudden heart attack. He was 37. He was the main reason why I joined author Gen back the second time. Every day I see his empty cabin and feel an emptiness that will take a long time to fill. A quick trip to Hyderabad also happened. It was amazing to see the growth of the city - it keeps getting better.

August: Yet another Bangalore visit. Fourth this year. This time on the request of Mercedez Benz software development team to help them with their Scrum pilot. We also had the second Bangalore Scrum India meetup at Aricent campus on Outer Ring Road. It was fun to see Pratitha and her team organize this meetup for the Scrum community. The end of August was testing again. Father of one of my closest friends passed away. I pray for the departed soul and my friend's family every day. Sometimes, I wish I had spent more time with uncle while he was with us.

September: Hopefully, this space would be alive a bit more.