Apr 18, 20226 min read

India Product Management Survey

Updated: Jun 3, 2022

Product Management Survey' March 2022

If you are an aspiring product manager, you might be wondering what future prospects lies for you ahead and What is the current state of Product Management in India ?

At eZO.Hire we conducted a nation-wide survey to gauge the skills and career progression of Product Management professionals across India. The survey spanned 350+ product managers and Product hiring leaders across industries and was concluded on March'22.

The India Product management survey measures Product managers journey, its demands, skills & tools expected to use, the challenges faced, career trajectory, salary band and future expectations from product management roles across different industries.

A wide-array of 350+ product professionals working in product management role across various industries took part in this survey. The study aims to examine the future of the Product Management, and help aspiring product managers in making right decisions.

Product Management- Roles and Responsibilities

Product managers are the one's who are in charge of a product's vision, development, strategy, and the launch. They determine the why, what, and when of a product, thus identifying its value, communicating its commercial value to a product team to delivering, scaling and capturing value across desired customer base.

A product manager's prime objective is to maximize customer value, drive growth and the return on product investment. They do so by conducting extensive market research and understanding the customer experience, in order to direct the product's strategy.

They also predict future challenges, forecast the demand and profits, among other actions to deliver product's commercial objectives. In a way, product managers are at the crossroads of business technology and user experience. They act as CEO of the product.

Apart form setting Product Strategy, conducting Research and Analysis, getting Customer Experience, for a product manager, more than half of their day goes into firefighting. This includes Stakeholder Management, Communicating with Engineering, setting Roadmap priority, etc.

You must be wondering how Product Managers reduce firefighting?

From our survey we found out some of the ways which help them reduce the time spent on firefighting. The most common answers we got were up-skill the teams, and splitting the work between product managers and product owners.

Stakeholder Hurdles faced by Product Managers

The fast-paced agile workflow is what makes the product management role exciting and challenging at the same time. Product Managers works on multiple things at the same time, which demands the ability to switch between functions easily. They are constantly trying to balance the right role at the right time, in order to get the best out of their teams.

"Huge Responsibility With little Authority" is what describes the role in a nut-shell.

We looked at the top 5 challenges that the product managers face in their day-to-day operations. The chart below shows the collated percent wise distribution of the same. Getting consensus from the different teams on the roadmap priorities, product strategy and product design are the top challenges faced by Product Managers.

Essential Skills for Product Managers

Managing multiple roles and teams definitely requires the product managers to know how and why of everything. To gauge the most preferred skills, we asked our respondents of the top 3 skills that they feel are the most important in order to thrive in a product management role. A vast majority of the people choose communication as one of the prime skills. Industry specific skills like Data Analytics and Go To Market Strategy were also among the top responses.

In addition to these, product managers are expected to upskills themselves from time to time as they move up in their roles. Skills like market and risk analysis, business modelling, strategy, people leadership, product vision, brand management, innovation and creativity are some of the key skills that will help you in excelling in the product management role.

Career Trajectory of Product Mangers

As per the industry standards, a product manager can expect a change in role in every 2-3 years. This means that a fresher, who has joined as an associate manager, can move up to the leadership roles like VP or Chief Product Officer in 10-12 years.

But What After?

You might be wondering that if the growth rate is so high, what do product managers do after serving in the industry for certain years? We asked the future goals of our respondents, and found that one in three product managers wish to build their own start-up after gaining some years of experience. This is because working with many teams allows them to gain the knowledge and experience in all the different domains.

Product Manager's Salary trends in India

Salary figures for Product Management roles in India starts from around 10LPA, and gradually increases with the time spent by one in the industry. The data collected shows a YOY growth of approx. 28% in the salaries of Product Managers.

Product Management salaries in India ranges between 10LPA - 90LPA across roles and industries. However, this largely depends on the firm they working in, as well-established companies tend to pay more dearly than start-ups.

Salaries of Product Managers also tend to depend on their skills and expertise in different domains. Key skills that employers look forward in their product managers, apart form communication, are technical expertise and business intelligence.

Where the Product Management jobs located in India?

As per the latest data available in naukri.com, there are 12k+ jobs available in Product Management. Most of these jobs are located in cities like Bangalore, Delhi NCR, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Pune and Chennai.

What Product Delivery Method do Product Managers follow the most?

Here we refer to the product delivery method as a framework used to organize, plan, and supervise the development of an information system. While there are numerous techniques to choose from, each has its own set of concepts, norms, practices, processes, and benefits and drawbacks. Furthermore, there is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all method. The best methodology is totally dependent on the variables you're dealing with, most notably your timelines, flexibility, and budget.

Here, we studied the usage of agile and waterfall, two of the most common methodologies for product delivery. While Agile is more widely preferred than Waterfall, we also found that 50% of the product managers choose to use a mix of both.

Top Product Management Tools

The role of a product manager entails much more than gathering product insight and analyzing the product roadmap. Product Mangers use certain tools and soft wares to carry out product analytics, tract the product development, and setting roadmap strategies. For the aspiring Product Managers, here is the list of the common tools used in the industry, that can help you to thrive in the role.

Prototype : Figma | InVision | Balsamiq

Roadmap : Aha! Rally | Productboard

Agile : Trello | Jira | Rally | Asana | AgileLean

Customer Journeys : Miro | Hotjar

The word cloud displays the answers of our respondents when we asked them about the tools that they use the most in the day-to-day operations. As we can see, tools like hotjar, jira, productboard, figma, rally, tableau, etc. are the most common among the product managers.

Product Managers prefer apps and websites which have simple user interfaces, alongside features like task management, templates to store product specifications, customer feedback aggregation, etc.

What Matters the most the Product Managers?

Even-though product manager's salary lie in the higher brackets, it is not the sole reason for such high demand for this role.

For Product Managers, learning gained by working with multiple teams and across different domains, and the impact that they create inside the organization as well as in the minds of the consumers, are one of the top reasons for them to love their job.

Conclusion

In this survey, we analyzed the roles and responsibilities, salary trends, methods and tools used and he skills required to excel in the career of product management. Role of a product manager is highly versatile and involves everything, right from the product design stage to launching the product in the market and capturing customer feedback. However, 50% of their working hours are wastes in firefighting, due to the multiple teams that they manage at the same time. The high growth trajectory may attract people in this industry, but it is also essential for a product manager to stay updated and constantly upskills themselves with the new technologies in the market.

In India, over 90% of the product management jobs are located in cities like Bangalore, Mumbai, Pune, Delhi NCR, Chennai and Hyderabad. The average salary of product managers ranges from 10 LPA for freshers to 33 LPA for people with over 20 years of experience. Thus, product management offers a great opportunity for people who are interested in knowing the why and how of everything and are good with communication and people management.

To know about the demographics of this survey and other relevant facts, download the full report from the below link.

Download Complete Survey