Arindam Mukherjee

Co-Founder

NextLeap

Ex: Flipkart, Tripadvisor

Career Milestones

Back in my startup days in 2008, I didn't realise what I was doing was akin to the role of a PM in an early stage start-up. An informational interview with Zynga in 2010 exposed me to the world of product management. And working on an exercise for a PM role with Tripadvisor's first PM rotational program in 2012 made me realise that this is what I would enjoy. Learnt some of the PM best practices at Tripadvisor working across user experience, search, social and revenue optimisation. Relocated to India in 2014 to join Flipkart, was amazed by the energy I saw. During my stint here, I have had the good fortune of solving some complex problems driving growth and launched some industry first initiatives which have been truly fulfilling. From leading core e-commerce platforms like Pricing & Promotions to building for the next 200M customers and launching new verticals like Travel, Gaming and Video, I have had a varied experience which required me to operate with both growth and scale mindsets and that has been truly enriching. Equally satisfying has been the process of building and scaling product teams and helping groom some of the young talent via the APM program which I started in 2015 and continue to lead. Over the course of my journey, I have moved to a general management track, leading Flipkart's Design & User Research teams (2017-2019) and currently leading product, engineering and some business lines for Retention, Engagement & New Growth at Flipkart.

Organization and You

Scale. Complexity. Impact. These are the words that come to mind when I talk about Flipkart. The challenge of solving a complex problem that touches millions of consumers and seeing your work being reflected through the metric movements and often times being acknowledged at the global stage is immensely rewarding. The very reason why I joined Flipkart was the opportunity to play a role in shaping up not just a new company but a new industry, something you don't usually get a chance to experience many times. And I have lived this for the last 7 years now! In order to bring some structure to the fast paced ways of working, I have a "block" approach to my calendar. Fridays are reserved for 1:1s focused on people growth, Tuesdays are for execution status and metric/product reviews. Other days would revolve around discussions on product strategy, influencing and pitching to stakeholders and some me-time thinking about the longer term roadmaps. Usually I reserve the first/last hour of the day for reading and learning about the broader ecosystem trends.

Core Competencies

Consumer behaviour understanding, decision making, product strategy development and rallying the team around the visio

Go to food for thought

Industry trends: Benedict Evan's essays and newsletters (https://www.ben-evans.com/) and Stratecherry by Ben Thompson (https://stratechery.com/)

Growth: Brian Balfour (https://brianbalfour.com/) and Andrew Chen's (https://andrewchen.co/) posts. Masters of Scale podcast by Reid Hoffman

Design & UX: UX Collective (https://uxdesign.cc/)

Ecosystem, life hacks, investments and happiness: Naval's blog (https://nav.al/)

Favorite Products

Netflix (delightful experience and defensible strategy)
Spotify (personalisation done right)
Whatsapp (simplicity of a product that is used by 2Bn users globally)