Guest Lecture Session by Mr Amit Sanyal, AVP & Joint Head – Consumer Value Solutions at Mahindra Comviva.
On August 2nd 2014, TAPMI students the witnessed the home coming of one of its own alumnus, Mr Amit Sanyal, who visited the TAPMI campus to deliver a guest lecture for the students. Mr Sanyal is 2003 batch pass out from TAPMI and has been associated some very big names in the industry. He started his career as the Senior Product Manager for Sify Technologies Ltd. After this he joined Bharati Airtel Ltd., and moved up to the rank of DGM-Makreting. He is presently working in Mahindra Comviva as AVP and Joint Head – Customer Value Solutions.
Mr Sanyal started the lectures with some excerpts from his past and shared insights about product management along with subtle nuances of the trade. He said that the Product Management process comprises of three basic steps, Idea Generation à Concept Building à Development. He also explained that the Product Manager has to balance between the User Experience, Business and Technology.
He then went on to explain about the responsibilities of a Product Manager, speaking about the responsibilities they have. Handling channels is not a part of a Product Manager’s work, they are mainly involved with the delivery of the product to the market along with getting reviews about the product and gauging the product performance.
Mr Sanyal then spoke about the steps involved in preparing a business case, with the first and foremost task of ascertaining the cost. The right price of the product has to be ascertained, for eg: if the price of a recharge voucher has to be ascertained, then the average call duration and lowest priced voucher available in the market is looked at before finalizing the price. Then only the base margin is added.
He spoke at stretch about the importance of a product manager in the telecom industry, which mostly revolves around the customer. The product and services at offer has to be aligned with the customer’s needs and wants, only then can the customer associate him/herself with the product.
He emphasized on the importance of segmentation and how important it is to reach out to the target customers in a more efficient and effective way. He spoke about two ways of segmentation namely, Structural Segmentation and Need Based Segmentation.
Overall, it was a very insightful session for the students of TAPMI who got to know about the way industry functions and the challenges involved in the job of a product manager. The session was very interactive, with the TAPMI students asking relevant questions that were answered very promptly by the guest. The TAPMI family thanked Mr Amit Sanyal for taking time out for the lecture through a small token of appreciation presented by the Placement Team.