Asian Digital SuperMovers: Recent Episodes

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Maliekah talks about:

1. The Indonesian consumer ecosystem and the venture space
2. AC Ventures and Industry Trends
3. Bukalapak, about their IPO journey and what does the IPO mean for the Indonesian venture ecosystem?
4. How does AC Ventures makes investment decisions?
5. How do homegrown VCs compete with international entrants?
6. Are Indonesian startups ready to scale outside Indonesia?
7. her views on Tokopedia and Gojek merger?

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Richard in his talk discusses;

1. Evolution of Digital Payments in China

2. Development of China’s Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC)

3. Key features and functionality of the e-RMB.

4. Impact on mobile Payment wallets and commercial banks

5. Impact on US Dollar Hegemony

6. Domestic Use cases vs Cross Border use cases

7. Comparisons with other CBDCs

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Steven is an entrepreneurial management professional with intensive product, project and people management experience and sharp business acumen in IT industry. In my 10+ years of professional journey, I have developed a mature and practical approach to developing and leading teams to focus on long-term and sustainable business strategies. Being a natural leader, Steven possesses excellent ability and skills to manage and drive teams to perform at their bests.1. More About Stevena. What was the most appealing career option to you when you finished your engineering?b. Tell me about your journey into Product Management? What triggered the interest in it as a career option?2. BNPLa. Explain and demystify BNPL for our audience?b. Why is BNPL such a phenomenon?c. What kind of expertise is needed for aspiring PMs? Is there a training or certification you recommend?3. Market Analysis and Competitor Benchmarkinga. With the evolving landscape in BNPL, how do you stay on top of all the news?b. How often do you refresh competitor benchmarking analysis?c. DO you have a reactive mode to manage your roadmap? Alternatively, how do you identify customer requirements to stay ahead of the curve?4. Becoming a PMa. How did the Exec MBA add to your skills? Do you recommend doing this to develop new skills, for all PMs?b. What are the challenges of working with a Startup/Enterprise Product Team/Big Corporate as a PM?c. Do you find some skills being transferable across domains? Is this an asset of a liability for us, PM’s5. Leading Product Teamsa. Building Product Teams: Is it hard? If so why?b. What are your successful hiring strategies?c. Hire for Attitude, Train for Skill?Rapid Fire· Technical PM/Growth PM/Data PM or just PM?· Like WFH or hate it?· Your favourite PM hack· What is a bigger high for you: identifying and creating a great product requirement or getting user feedback?· Which of the following have you not tried? IF/Zero Inbox /Digital Detox· Build in public: yay or nay?· Books or OTT?· Podcasts or Clubhouse?· Blogs or books to learn?· Your last used emoji?· A product blog you recommend to the audience· A podcast you always listen to?

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Rajive is a Management Consultant turned (successfully exited) Founder/Operator turned Venture Capitalist.About you and your journey to Cathay Innovation? How has the venture investment landscape evolved in the last decade in SEA? SEA is a heterogeneous market how do you access businesses from the region? Recently you had shared an article on ex-Garb employees who are not building successful new businesses- do see this as a step forward within the founder ecosystem in SEA?You are pro-buy now pay later economy why? You host Human Side of a VC series on CH- what have you learnt from those sessions?Rapid Fire

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Shiyan is an experienced operator and investor. Shiyan is a Singapore-based early-stage VC @ Hustle Fund, She was most recently VP of Business Operations & Corp Dev at NerdWallet (employee #10), growing annual revenue from $1M to $150M+. Prior to NerdWallet, she was an investor at Institutional Venture Partners, a growth stage venture capital fund with $7 billion of committed capital and Bridgewater Associates. Shiyan holds a BS in Biomechanical Engineering and a BA in Economics from Stanford University as well as an MBA from Harvard Business School.In her own words, she is a Mother, Wife, Enthusiastic reader and thrower of dinner parties. Questions to Shiyan1. More About you and how to become a PM from being in business dev and ops?a. Tell me about your journey into Product Management? How did the transition from business development to PM happen?b.What are the transferable skills you believe helped you become an excellent PM? What has prepared you best for a career in PM?c. Given your background, what are the top 3 skills that PMs must have to excel?2. Can we double click on something’s we discussed in the first segment? a. How important is having a technical background? Is it an enabler or an inhibitor?b. How did you earn the respect and trust of the cross-functional team, including engineering? What formula worked for you?c. Do you do self-audits? How do you measure your success as a PM?d. Last, outcomes vs activity? What do you advise PMs to do to focus more on the former to achieve success in their roles3. Now to the question, everyone wants to ask – How do you transition into VC? Is there a defined path to follow? What skills should be acquired? Who would be a great fit?4. About youa. Inspiration. What is a product you like so much; you spend time evaluating what went into making it? What did you like about it?b. Favourite books/blogs you recommend to expand your thinking, get inspired, be motivated to work harder, faster, better?5. Leading Teamsa. Building Product Teams: Is it hard? If so why?b. What are your successful hiring strategies? Does having an MBA bias your hiring decision?c. Hire for Attitude, Train for Skill?6. Diversity a. How do you define diversity and what measures do you take to ensure diversity has a seat at the board table while making people decisions?b. Rapid Fire• Like WFH or hate it?• What is a bigger high for you: creating a great product requirement or getting massive scale or raking in millions in product revenue?• Which of the following have you not tried? IF/Zero Inbox /Digital Detox• Build in public: yay or nay?• Books or OTT?• Singapore or San Francisco?• Android or ios?• What was your last used emoji?• A book you recommend to everyone?• A favourite dinner menu would be?• Podcasts or Clubhouse?• Blogs or books to learn?

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Shayak is a design executive with experience in building and leading design teams. He brings in a unique combination of corporate and entrepreneurial experience with multidisciplinary expertise in the product innovation process. Shayak is the Head of Design and a part of the leadership team at Practo - India's largest healthcare technology platform. Prior to this Shayak was heading Product Design at Commonfloor.com and was part of the core leadership team. Before that he worked at frog's team in India, facilitating design and delivery in coordination with frog's other offices worldwide. In 2008, Shayak co-founded Cheese, a User Experience design and development company steering it to a 100% YoY growth. Cheese was one among NASSCOM's Fastest 50 in 2010.

1. Is copying design a good idea?

2. What is good product design?

3. How do you communicate the tangible value of design to a company?

4. Is design just UX/UI?5. How much design is creativity vs data and feedback?

5. How does a design team need to think of working with a product team?

6. When you hire for your team: what do you look for?

7. Can anyone be in product design or you need specialised skills?

8. How is Amazon a design?

9. Is design the answer to onboard the next 500 million Indian?

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Basis began with the vision of bridging the knowledge and trust gaps that women face while making financial decisions. While the number of financially independent women are on the rise in today’s society, there is just as much the absence of consumable content around helping them make informed decisions about their money. This was a gap that Founder and CEO Hena wanted to fill, and thus Basis was born.

Founded in 2018 by Hena Mehta and Dipika Jaikishan, Basis aims at building a future where women can make financially well-informed and independent decisions for themselves. This can be achieved through curated learning modules and educational content, community based outreach programmes and goal focused groups guided by secure networks of women guiding one another.So no matter where you are in your financial journey, Basis will always be useful.

They talk about:

• Their entrepreneurial journey.
• How they came together to setup Basis
• What it is like to run a fintech in India, especially given the growing market
• Why is women fintech segment underserved and the opportunity

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Pramath is an entrepreneur, institution-builder, academic, executive, and philanthropist. He is the founder of Harappa Education, 9.9 Group, Ashoka University, Vedica Scholars Programme for women, and Naropa Fellowship. He was formerly the CEO of Ananda Bazar Patrika (ABP) Group, a leading media company, and a partner at McKinsey & Company. Drawing from his learnings through building successful educational institutions, Sinha went on to start Harappa Education in 2018 to address a core gap in the formal education system – honing cognitive, social, and behavioural skills required at the workplace.

In this conversation Pramath talks about:

• His career and how has been the journey?
• What is he solving for in Education, and for whom?
• Why was ISB- “An Idea who’s time has come”?
• What made him believe that a 1 year MBA can work in a market like India.
• Why Liberal Arts?
• Tell us about the Rule of Three? Why is it effective?
• What is Hararpa & Why do we need it?

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Building for Bharat with Achyutha Sharma, Meesho

Meesho is primarily building for Bharat. Bharat is India’s non-cosmopolitan smartphone-enabled consumer segment where every region has its own language/dialect and consumer behaviour.

We speak to Achyutha about:

• What does User Research mean to Meesho?

• How to build a User Research Practice?

• How does User Research translate into product offering?

• How to set KPIs and measure outcomes?

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Simon talks about:

1. About his journey into product management.
2. Becoming a Product Manager
3. How Otter.Ai help you in your everyday work as a PM?

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About Sidu:

Sidu is an engineer by training, a manager at a high-technology company by profession and an entrepreneur at heart. He is a programmer for pleasure, and has been building software for fun and profit for nearly 30 years.

Sidu's last startup, C42 Engineering, was acquired in 2015 by GO-JEK Indonesia (now Pt. AKAB), one of the fastest-growing startups in the world and Indonesia's first unicorn, growing from ~500 orders/day to ~7 million orders/day and $10B in GMV in just 4 years.

Monica talks to Sidu about:

About Sidu and his journey into product management having dabbled multiple roles including entrepreneurship as a product consultant, startup founder and Dev engineer.

What lead to his journey into PM and then heading engineering at Gojek and hiring a lean team.

How has Gojek grown to being a unicorn and giving more established players a real run for their money? 

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Simon is a Product Expert, Writer, Singer and New Yorker.

He talks about:

• His journey into Product Management.
• What does a typical day in your life look like?

Becoming a PM

• Which parts of your education best prepared you for a career in PM?
• What do you think about product certifications?
• How did you grow from being a PM into being a leader of people?
• What are some of the most important skills you acquired along the way?
• What type of person should consider a career in PM?

Measuring Success

• How do you track and measure success, meaningfully? Are there any metrics that you value more than others?
• Being measured by outcomes vs output? How do justify to yourself your efforts as a PM and then your direct manager about your contribution to the business?

Personal Brand and Communication

• How did you take to writing about PM and what would you suggest to someone starting out with ambition to write like you do?
• How important are your communication skills to your success in PM
• Does your having a passion other than building products help create your communication style and develop your personality?

Leading Product Teams

• What are some of the greatest challenges of being a product leader, and why?
• Building Product Teams: Is it hard? If so why?
• What are your successful hiring strategies?
• Hire for Attitude, Train for Skill?

Rapid Fire

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Neil Soni is the author of "The Startup Gold Mine" and an Innovation/ Growth consultant. Neil’s book "The Startup Gold Mine" is a playbook for corporates partnering with startups and curator of In this AMA, we talk him about:

1. How founders should think about corporate partnerships & M&A
2. How to navigate through the corporate landscape in an effect way
3. Landmines to avoid while presenting and negotiating with cooperates
4. Open Innovation Newsletter

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William is the founding partner at Frontline Ventures. He was the youngest VC partner for a European VC fund when Frontline was set up. Eight years later, Frontline has €250M under management and 100 investments.

We speak to him about building a venture capital fund and what he has learnt about investing in startups.

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Building for Asia’ Series on Product Management: Habit Building communities w/ TheProductfolks.

A discussion on building a volunteer-based product community. How "The Product Folks" community was created and how to drive engagement with the community via a product build.

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Monica host's Sugandha in a free wheeling conversation about her journey into Product Management and now content operations at Netflix , building habit forming products and building products with exponential customer experience and value.

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About Daman:

He has built and led/advised marketing/growth teams across multiple hyper-growth stage tech businesses in India: Milkbasket, WeChash, MobiKwik, LINE.

He has advised Whitehat Jr, Snapchat and many more.

We speak to him about:

Career Overview

Among all the industries you have worked in which has even the most challenging?

Why WhatsApp has such mammoth market penetration, and no one has been able to compete with them?

How is Growth different from Marketing?

How is a Brand Built?

Daman's thoughts on:

How do you think about the referral programs?

How to use Reviews for Copy creation?

Clubhouse's growth strategy?

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Our guest is Shravan Tickoo, the Product Guy at BYJU's. About him in words:

Hey, I am Shravan, a Product Manager by Profession & a Growth enthusiast/ Entrepreneur by Heart!

I tell a little truth about Product Management, with a tinge of humour to it. You find value with joy - that's the bonus you can find on my profile :) - Check out the next PM Story for sure :)

In the last 6 years+ of Product Management Experience, I have worked across diverse industries in the startup ecosystem i.e Flipkart, Blackbuck, Times Group, Edureka and Now BYJUs for driving growth and product adoption across diverse verticals

A passionate first principle thinker, I believe in the concept of collective conscience - which means if you contribute back to the ecosystem and help it grow, the ecosystem contributes back and helps you grow as a network effect. I help startups grow & build user-centric products with immense adoption, drive GTM and mentor product enthusiasts on learning the fundamentals of product mindset/growth mindset i.e first principle thinking, user empathy, business models etc

Currently, I work at BYJU's where I am focused on making learning fun for kids by building personalized & engaging products for kids, am a Product Mentor at the BigShyft Platform & also a mentor/founder @ The product tree ( 2500+ PM / Growth enthusiasts community & growing)

In my free time, I read and write blogs on value creation, GTM and the evolution of consumer-facing products. I am also an avid reader of books especially on Psychology, Growth Mindset and Scaling startups

If you want to talk more about product management, go to market strategy or just want to discuss an interesting problem that could be solved, just drop a connection request or just email me: shravantickoo23@gmail.com

PS: I have a large book collection - you can also hit me up for recommendations