Tech Product Management Interview Questions & Answers

Q1. Assume you are working in Netflix, what will you do to help Netflix grow 10x in India?

If I were working at Netflix and tasked with helping the company grow 10x in India, here are a few strategies I would consider:

  • Localize content: Bring relevant local language content to cater to the needs of Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities. India is a multicultural nation with a wide range of regional languages, cultures, and traditions. Localized content tailored to these many locations is one strategy to appeal to a larger audience. This could entail collaborating with regional content producers and creators or perhaps opening an Indian studio to create unique material.
  • Offer flexible pricing: Despite the fact that Netflix is known for its high-quality content, most of the potential users in India may be turned off by the expensive subscription costs. To solve this, Netflix might provide adaptable price options that take into account various spending limits and viewing preferences. One creative idea can be to provide subscription cost splitting among friends.
  • Partner with local companies: Try to bundle Netflix with other complementary services (For example, Bundle with Times Prime Subscription and Amazon Prime that gives Delivery + Music + OTT). Netflix SHOULD collaborate with regional businesses in India to raise brand recognition and attract new clients.
  • Sports live streaming: Major competitor of Netflix, Hotstar, Prime Video and SonyLiv have already done that successfully, even though they don’t have as good of a product as Netflix does. Cricket is a religion in India and can be leverage to grow in India.

Q2. If you are the Co-founder of Paytm, what would you do to make it profitable?

  • Reduce the reliance on Paid Ads and IPL Sponsorships. Paytm doesn’t need it anymore. Basically, Paytm needs to reduce their CAC.
  • Focus on improving the Paytm Ads product with a focus on providing relevant ads. Currently, their ads are not at all relevant to the users.
  • Although many other nations have comparable payment and banking demands, Paytm primarily targets the Indian market. By entering other markets, businesses may be able to diversify their revenue sources and become less dependent on the Indian market.
  • Build a better B2B Product (Paytm Business, Payment Gateways, Payment Pages and Links) to compete with the likes of CCAvenue and Razorpay.

Q3. If you had to build an expense manager from scratch, can you share the top 3 user needs and product recommendations?

Here are a few user needs that should be fulfilled:

  1. Expense Manager should be able to track expenses and bills automatically. It can be done by analyzing user SMSs.
  2. One important thing that most Expense Managers miss is the ability to pay directly from the platform. It is quite powerful because tracking expenses can be made really accurate and the user won’t move out of the system. Integrating UPI can be a first step.
  3. Recommendation engine to help users keep their expenses in check and nudging them for spending more than they could afford to.

Q4. INDmoney helps users’ track their personal finances across investments, savings accounts, insurances, loans and credit cards. If you had to build a recommendation engine to help users save and earn more, what are the top 5 hypotheses you’ll build?

  1. I believe that if we can give users regular nudges (based on their data), they might be willing to save and invest more, probably by 5-10% (or better, 1% everyday/week) because Indians are savers by nature but they need a nudge from time to time (in real life from friends and family).
  2. Overspending using Credit cards (or taking a lot of loans) can be a real problem and providing users some of their own data in a insightful way can help them take a break from spending more than they can afford to because data can be a great detractor.
  3. Along the same lines as above, there are youngsters who can afford to invest more into equity rather than debt instruments and showcasing them data to help them overcome their fears of investing in equity and benefits of the same, we can help them invest and earn more because data can be a great motivator as well.
  4. Insurances are something that will be widespread in India in the near future and as more and more youngsters are getting a hang of personal finance, they will start buying insurance before they will start investing in other assets and that can be done by recommending useful and personalized insurance products to the users along with the pros and cons of policies in easy words because this will build user trust in our recommendations and at the same time they might be able to understand the policies better. When a user understands a product better, they are more inclined to buy it.
  5. Savings accounts are not the future. As we can learn from developed nations where savings account hardly provide 1% of interest rate (and sometimes even in negative), we can conclude that India might in the same position when the economy will grow. Therefore, if we can dissuade users from keeping a lot of cash in their savings account using infographics and rather motivate them invest it in equity and debt instruments based on their goals, it would help users earn more and when they would earn more, they would be happier and it might just become a reason for customer delight.

Q5. SafetiPin is a social enterprise and uses its My SafetiPin App (android & iOS) to collect crowdsource data which gives an indication of Safety of that location. As a Product Manager, what gamification features do you think should be in the app to increase its engagement?

  1. Badges and achievements: For example, submitting a specific number of safety ratings, finishing a safety checklist, or inviting a specific number of friends to use the app are all actions that users can take to earn badges or awards. These badges can be shared on social media or shown on the user’s profile.
  2. Leaderboards: Users can view their position in relation to other users based on factors such as safety ratings. This might inspire users to submit more ratings and foster friendly rivalry.
  3. Challenges and quests (Augmented Reality): Users may be given tasks or quests that motivate them to travel to new places and provide their assessments of those places’ safety. These tasks can be finished to gain rewards or unlock new features.  The user’s experience of touring various locales and neighborhoods can be improved using augmented reality. The app can assist users in making wise safety decisions by providing real-time visual data about a certain region, including its safety rating, crime history, and real-time updates on any incidents in the vicinity.
  4. Rewards and incentives: By using the app frequently, users can receive discounts or freebies at nearby businesses (Would require B2B Partnerships) as well as donations to charitable organizations as prizes or incentives.

Q6. What do you think is the most important thing to consider when building a great product in India?

It would be to provide great value. India is a market where customers, in both B2C and B2B segments, are super value-conscious. They want a bang for their buck. Looking at the example of why Hotstar and Amazon Prime Video are winning against Netflix, the reason seems to be value. Hotstar provides live-streaming of Cricket, along with regional content and Amazon Prime provides free delivery, early access to sales, access to free music and free books, along with great content. Although, Netflix is a way better product than both of them, have better quality content as well as content delivery system, it’s simply not something Indians are finding enough value in and hence, it’s growth has stalled.