What's in the report?
Product management in India
The use of data by product teams
Metrics that matter
Barriers, challenges, and blindspots
General conclusions
Introduction
As India becomes increasingly digitally connected, the number of digital products has also increased and so has the importance of product management and product strategy. Mixpanel and Product Tank Pune surveyed over 160 product managers and leaders across India to find out:
- How India product teams use data in their work
- What metrics are the most important to them
- How effective India product teams are in measuring their metrics
- What barriers they face in the quest to become more data-driven
- How India product teams compare to their global peers
Product management in India
Where are product teams located?
Our survey showed that product teams are not located in just one or two cities — they can be found across India, from Bangalore to Chennai, Mumbai, and Pune. This is a reflection of the growing importance of product management to all kinds of companies.
Product managers work from all major cities in India
What kinds of companies are building product teams?
Product management teams are being built in companies of all sizes, from the smallest startups to large enterprises.
Product managers in India are working in companies of all sizes
While many of the respondents came from B2B Software / SaaS companies, product managers can be found in most industries, including Consumer Tech, Financial Services, Retail, and Media.
Product management is a job function found in a wide variety of industries
The use of data by product teams
Everyone uses data, but not everyone uses all data.
All survey respondents indicated that they were using at least one data type in their work but the difference lay in just how many different data types they were using. When compared to responses to an earlier Mixpanel global survey, India product managers appear to be more reliant on sales, marketing, and leadership feedback than other data types. This suggests that there is opportunity for India product teams to tap on more data types, especially competitive data and survey data.
India product teams leverage internal feedback data and customer conversations when making product decisions
Product Metrics that matter
Product managers are asking key questions.
We asked product managers what questions they are asking about their products and found that the most asked question was “Which of my feature launches made an impact”. Most product managers are asking multiple questions about their product. The types of questions and the ranking could be reflective of the high number of new products being launched in the market — product teams are focused on engagement and building the right features.
India product teams look at feature impact, how users are using their product, and also try to understand which product features are popular
The top two questions that India product teams and their global peers are asking are the same, while rankings for the other questions are also very similar.
How are product teams measuring themselves?
When we dive deeper into the key metrics that product teams care about, India product teams tended to focus on Revenue, followed by Retention and NPS, and Engagement. This differs significantly from their global peers, who said Retention, Engagement, and Conversion were most important to them.
The high volume of new products being introduced in India, a price-sensitive market, could be a key reason why India product teams have a stronger focus on Revenue metrics than their global peers.
Revenue, Retention, NPS, and engagement are top metrics in India
What matters the most in each industry?
Top metrics vary by industry, driven by the different business and monetization models that they each have. Although the most important metrics vary greatly by industry, the same metric, Activation, was listed as least important across the board.
Here, the top metrics for India product teams also differ from their global peers, with India teams placing more empahsis on creating and retaining revenue. Generally higher acquisition costs outside of India could account for global product teams placing more importance on conversion metrics than their counterparts in India.
NPS, Retention, Revenue, and Conversion feature in the top metrics by industry, but Activation was the least important metrics for all industries.
Metrics are being measured, but it’s not always effectively done.
Most product teams in India felt that they were able to track their metrics effectively and fared better than their global peers, but there are still some who struggle.
When we break down the data by industry, we can see that B2B Software companies are struggling the most, just like their global counterparts. The trends for the other industries differ greatly between India and global product teams.
B2B software companies seem to face the most difficulty in measuring their metrics
India B2B Software companies and retail companies could possibly benefit from identifying new metrics that they can use to improve their ability to measure their businesses.
Barriers, challenges, and blindspots
Barriers still exist.
While product teams generally feel that they’re measuring their key metrics effectively, numerous barriers still exist.
Product teams in India face barriers in data access and product analytics tools
Respondents also cited other barriers, including difficulties in getting the development team to develop faster, insufficient data being captured, and difficulties in integrating data from multiple sources.
While global product teams also indicated that they faced data challenges, India product teams feel more strongly that they’re using tools that aren’t necessarily made for product teams.
While many India product managers indicated that they were measuring their key metrics effectively, they’re also highlighting that there are numerous barriers that they’re facing. This could mean that India product teams may be able to measure their metrics effectively, but they have to get past data issues and grapple with tools that don’t always fit their needs in order to do so.
When it comes to barriers, size matters.
When we look at the barriers by company size, it’s clear that the barriers faced by large enterprises are very different from those faced by SMB companies. A higher percentage of SMBs encountered each barrier than large enterprises, except for “Data experts at my company are too busy to help me”.
This could possibly be due to larger enterprises needing to deal with larger data volumes, more tools within their overall tech stack, and larger teams with well-defined roles and responsibilities. For example, product managers in smaller companies may be tasked with accessing or manipulating data themselves, while in a larger enterprise that may be the responsibility of a data engineer.
Company sizes has an impact on the barriers faced
General conclusions
The survey respondents came from numerous cities across India and spanned all major industries. This tells us that product management has taken root in India and continues to grow in importance.
In many ways, India product teams are like their global peers, constantly asking questions of their product and business to build better products and drive business growth. But while challenges are similar globally, the magnitude and order of severity can differ, reflecting differences in local markets. These differences suggest that new product metrics specific to the Indian context need to be defined for product teams to work more effectively.
Key areas for future development could be in the improved access to data, speed to insights, and ease of access to data/insights to help product teams be even more efficient and effective.