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Adopting A Product Mindset To Grow Businesses
Kishan Bharwad
Taskize
In LAB #4, Kishan Bharwad, Head Of Product At Taskize talks about the power of product management in growing businesses.
Kishan is currently helping drive product innovation at Taskize as a strategic, customer-centric and team oriented Product Management leader.Taskize is a problem solving network for financial services.
Show Notes
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Full video of episode
Kishan Bharwad: [00:00:00] But actually the framework about product management is developing something of value that can delight customers, that can generate revenue, and that can help you give you a competitive edge. To me, that is what product management is. You want to deliver that for your business.
Amardeep Parmar: And we’re live from the BAE HQ Lab. Today we have with us Kishan Bharwad, who's the head of products at Taskize. They're an intercompany workflow platform for financial services. Today, Kishan has chosen to talk about how to develop a product mindset and how to help you in your career and to build a successful company. So, Kishan, why did you choose this topic? Why is this so important to you?
Kishan Bharwad: Yeah, well, great to be here and Amar, thanks for having me on. So I think one of the things that, um, Is misunderstood about product management. I'm a product professional. I, you know, I'm a head of product, um, uh, tech company. Product management is often seen as [00:01:00] a tech thing, right?
Kishan Bharwad: You manage your product. You, you, you know, you, you, you work and you work with development teams. You work with your stakeholders. You design something and you release something. That's a very sort of uh, small, narrow minded approach to looking at product management, but actually the framework about product management is developing something of value that can delight customers, that can generate revenue, and that can help you give you a competitive edge.
Kishan Bharwad: To me, that is what product management is. You want to deliver that for your business. And I think too, too often it's pigeonholed as a tech thing, but actually it can be broadened out to so many other aspects and different careers. I think there's so much value in taking a product led approach or a product led mindset to not just technology services and platforms, but also any other type of business.
Kishan Bharwad: And I think that's why I think it's very overlooked thing.
Amardeep Parmar: And how do you feel like that product mindset's helped you in your own career and what you put in task?
Kishan Bharwad: Yeah, I think, so prior to joining task [00:02:00] guides, I was, uh, I worked in financial services. I worked at NatWest Capital Markets, um, and I sort of worked on their technology program there.
Kishan Bharwad: And everything was a tool for everything I did was a tool to bring new products to market. So removing technology, removing barriers to entry, developing new services, et cetera, to, or unblocking, you know, unblocking some, um, issues that might help us get products to market quicker and very quickly realize that everything is about,
Kishan Bharwad: Um, everything that you do within the company is about delivering value for your customers and whether it's in the technology part of the business, whether you're in HR, whether you're in, um, finance, it's all about optimizing the for the business, maybe, but ultimately for the customer. And once you, once you kind of realize that,
Kishan Bharwad: you start unlocking abilities in yourself and you start seeing things a little bit differently. And I wasn't necessarily a [00:03:00] product professional in my career at, uh, NatWest Capital Markets, but when I, when my, my managing director at the time he left and he started the company that I work for now, Task Eyes, he approached me and he kind of saw that
Kishan Bharwad: in me and kind of realize, actually, what you're doing is, is product management. You're looking at problems. You're looking at how to deliver value to customers. You're looking at what that means for the business. And you're looking at how, how that can, how you can be better at your, than your competitors.
Kishan Bharwad: So you're taking whatever you're doing and you're applying that framework. So why don't you come and join me? Because we need something, some of those skills. In that company, in the startup that he found, which is Taskize. And so that approach to everything I did, so I've started as QA at that company, doing quality assurance, testing, but keeping that same mindset.
Kishan Bharwad: What I'm testing, if I'm testing this piece of code to make sure that it works, is it going to, again, I keep repeating it. Is it going to delight customers? Is it going to, if, if it doesn't quite work, does it matter? Because, uh, it won't, [00:04:00] is it going to deliver me revenue? Is it going to make customers pay?
Kishan Bharwad: Right. And if I, if it doesn't work, does it really matter? Because no competitors are doing it. All right. So you kind of start scrutinizing everything you do with that product mindset. And so I did, I did a little bit of that. I did customer success. So I worked with customers as part of the role at the company early on, uh, client delivery and customer success and, uh, and ultimately into sort of product management.
Kishan Bharwad: And I think having that sort of, it's a very, um, entrepreneurial mindset, an entrepreneurial mindset within a company, thinking about what you're doing through the lens of product can, can prove to be really successful. And I think it can give you, it can give you the opportunity to do things in any business, in any industry if you take that approach.
Kishan Bharwad:
Amardeep Parmar: So it's obviously that you've now, like, task guys that are growing significantly as you've been part of that journey too. And let's say somebody's like, right at the beginning of their journey, what if they just, if you put a manager or they do that kind of a role, what's the key thing that to make sure they get into [00:05:00] the right mindset?
Amardeep Parmar: If, what's the traits that maybe you think makes a good product manager?
Kishan Bharwad: I think maybe we'll take each of those things that I mentioned, customer, revenue, and competitors, and we'll dig down, we'll take each one of those individually, because I think those are where I think you should start as a product manager.
Kishan Bharwad: I think if you want to get into this kind of profession, you've got to be focused on the customer. Who is that customer? What do they want? What are their desires? What are their motives? What problem do they have in their life that needs to be solved? Uh, and what are they willing to pay for? Is that problem big enough for them to pay for it?
Kishan Bharwad: Um, you may have a problem that you've got, but like, I don't care. I'll live with that. It's not worth paying for it. So start with the customer. Start analyzing who that is and understand where they, you know, all those aspects of who you're delivering value to. And then, and then look inside and say. How can we help this person?
Kishan Bharwad: How can we help this customer? Whether it's B2B, it might be in another, another organization that you're trying to [00:06:00] help. So it might be a, a buyer at an organization and his team, or it might be an individual if you're B2C, right? So that individual person, so really start building a picture and say, how do I really help this customer achieve and solve their problems?
Kishan Bharwad: And if you start developing that way of thinking, you kind of remove, remove, you kind of, you kind of remove all the things that are unnecessary, right? You can easily say no to things, right? Is that, is that, is the customer going to, does the customer care, right? Do they even care about this? Will they use this?
Kishan Bharwad: Will that really solve their problem? Why don't I, why don't I show them what I'm doing? When I show them what I'm thinking of delivering, do they like it? The thing is going to solve their problem. It's a really weird, easy way to say no, because your mind can wander in loads of different directions. So the first thing is
Kishan Bharwad: go in, show, show that you care about the customer because that's, if you, if you deliver for the customer, you'd end up delivering for the business. That's the first thing I'd say. The second is, uh, [00:07:00] revenue. Um, so one thing that product, I think product professions, um, often mistake, uh, their role for is I’ve got to design a feature and deliver it for the customer.
Kishan Bharwad: A problem's come in, or someone's told me I've got to do something, or, you know, somebody in my business said it'd be great if we had this feature, or a customer's always been asking for this feature. So you go and deliver it the best you can, and then you release it, and then you realize no one's using it.
Kishan Bharwad: We realize no one cares, but you realize that it was a wrong thing to do, right? Um, because it was, um, for a segment that wasn't really that important to your business and you're letting other people prioritize what you should be doing as a product manager. And actually what you should be doing is Okay, I'm going to live with this feature, but how are we going to monetize it?
Kishan Bharwad: What's the, what's the business model around it? How are we going to pay for it? Is there a long term strategy to this? Is this a free thing that I can give them that's going to get them easier access to a new [00:08:00] part of the product that has a paywall? So they kind of get a little bit of value to really bad analogy that my, my, uh, co founder used to use, but like the crack cocaine kind of analogy, right?
Kishan Bharwad: Give them a little bit of something that they really like, and then, and then, uh, and then get them to pay for it. Is it, is it, is that the strategy to always be thinking commercially as a product? I think a lot of product professionals don't think commercially enough, so how am I going to deliver value?
Kishan Bharwad: How, who is this customer? How am I going to solve problems for them? And then how am I going to generate, generate revenue? We had a very interesting sort of first few years at task guys. We were a networked product now network product like Facebook or Twitter. How do you monetize something like that? If you're the first person in the room.
Kishan Bharwad: If you go in somewhere and you're selling a network and you like to go in and there's no one there, you're going to leave, right? Um, but if you go in there and there's loads of people there, you can start enjoying it because it's a networking, start networking. So we had a [00:09:00] really tough time thinking about how we can monetize this.
Kishan Bharwad: And we're only just coming to realize it's a really hard thing to do with a network product. We're only just realizing how to navigate that commercial landscape with a network product. So it's not easy. But, you know, you got to spend that energy and time and thinking about how you do that. And the last one is competition, right?
Kishan Bharwad: So you could do, you could, again, go put these three threads together. You could do everything for the customer. You could, it makes, it makes revenue, delights the customer and it makes revenue, but loads of other people are doing it and they're probably doing it for longer and they're doing it better. So you have to have a little bit of eye on the competition.
Kishan Bharwad: Um, and it may be that you do the same thing for, for a different market. Maybe you do the same thing, but cheaper, or you do the same thing, but better. So you always got to keep an eye out on, on the product. And if you, if you take all those three things and you apply that to your business. Whether it be you as a consultant in your area of work, whether you are in tech or whether you are in, um, you know, any [00:10:00] kind of finance, whatever it is, if you take that approach, you, you start, you start, you start really becoming really valuable to the business because that's what all businesses care about.
Kishan Bharwad: You know, ultimately those three things.
Amardeep Parmar: And it's obviously what entrepreneurs themselves 'cause a lot of the time at the beginning they might be the product person themselves, starting a business, maybe can't get people involved enough yet. They have to think about this product mindset themselves and that's a huge time trap when you get somebody from external who's got experience already, you can build that mindset and kind of come with that.
Amardeep Parmar: But for some people listening right now, they're going to try to teach themselves from scratch because they don't have the runway or the ability to hire people like that. And people may be not from a black background. What would you say is like, maybe the biggest mistake they make when they try to into that kind of a world.
Amardeep Parmar: When they're trying to use their previous information, like what do you see the common pitfalls that people and mistakes people make?
Kishan Bharwad: Do you mean, sorry, do you mean founders and entrepreneurs that don't come from a product background?
Amardeep Parmar: Yeah, so is that always people who are [00:11:00] being put into a product role that they're unfamiliar with as well?
Kishan Bharwad: It's a tough one to answer because... I think entrepreneurs and, and the topic that we spoke about offline entrepreneurs, they kind of have naturally have a product mindset, I think, and if you're an entrepreneur, you kind of have those things in the back of your mind, I think one thing that the key is to put those three.
Kishan Bharwad: together because individually, they don't really, you can go down rabbit holes, somebody from a technology background that starts a company or somebody from a technology background that moves into product generally just like solving problems. And they think that their role is to develop functionality, gold plate it, do the best thing possible, make it as
Kishan Bharwad: quick as possible, make it as fast as possible, make it as easy as possible, but forget about commercials and they forget about the competition. Somebody that comes from a marketing or product is like a business analyst background or a marketing background. Normally founders are either tech or marketing.[00:12:00]
Kishan Bharwad: They come from it as how am I going to sell this thing? How am I going to market this thing to people? And then they often neglect the product and the feature itself that the technology would, it's kind of a compliment and I think you need both. If you have a great product, but nobody to kind of market it to you, you're not going to sell if you've not got a great product, but you know how to get to people and the product's no good,
Kishan Bharwad: you're going to lead, you're going to get them to your door, but you're not going to get them to stay. So you kind of need both, you need great product and great distribution. And I think basically it's technology meets marketing and often you see, you see the two come together. And what I found in experience in where I work and teams I've worked in is that you need either one person that is really sort of has both, but wears both hats and can see both things, or you need two different people actually.
Kishan Bharwad: You need to have somebody that knows how to solve problems, knows how to build technology, and then somebody that knows how to take that technology [00:13:00] and sell it to the hearts and minds of the customers that, uh, and the market that you want to deliver to. It's rare to find it in an individual, like, yeah, it's rare to find both.
Kishan Bharwad: Um, if you do find someone like that, bring them on board. If you're an entrepreneur starting a business, if you've not, and you're one of those people, I advise you to bring somebody on that can compliment that part.
Amardeep Parmar: Hey everyone. I hope you're enjoying this episode so far. The BAE HQ has a podcast, but we're so much more than that.
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Amardeep Parmar: And we talked about how do you measure this? How do you know if you're doing? It's hard to tell sometimes if you're getting involved with a product, because it's, [00:14:00] for example, the network, it can be a while before you really start seeing the revenue coming in from that.
Amardeep Parmar: How do you know you're on the right path? How do you know that you're doing things the right way?
Kishan Bharwad: You're going to come to learn that I like threes. So there's another three part framework to, for your audience to take away from this maybe. So in product management, there's, there's um, measuring success is very important.
Kishan Bharwad: When you deliver product. When I, you know, you design something and you deliver it, your engineers build it, the delivery team, everyone, everyone celebrates, everyone said, Oh, we've delivered this feature. We've delivered this new product. Really, only the engineering team should be celebrating at that point because their job's done.
Kishan Bharwad: Product team has their jobs only just started because now you've got to wait and see. This thing that I thought was going to add value to my customers and business has just gone out there is about to be used. And it won't, I won't know until it's delivered value until a few months later, right? Until it starts generating revenues.
Kishan Bharwad: So it's like getting feedback. So the first, the first step [00:15:00] to understanding success is don't celebrate once it's out the door, right? As a product manager, uh, it sounds quite negative, but that's the first step is to realize that success don't sit back because that's when your measure, your measure of success starts.
Kishan Bharwad: The, the, the things you need to measure are do my customers or do the people that I've delivered this to qualitatively, do they tell me they like what I've delivered, right? Just, I like it, I think it adds value, this is great, I love it, or no, I hate it, this is bad, this isn't solving my problem. What are they saying? right?
Kishan Bharwad: Then the data, what does the data say? Um, regardless of what they're saying, what does the data say that they're using it? Are they using it in the way you intended for them to use it? Are they using it and staying on your product for longer? Or even if you're a consultant, if you're, if you're, um, if you're, if the, if you're selling your services and they're buying more and they're continuing and they're paying greater retainers, right?
Kishan Bharwad: And what does the data say [00:16:00] about their usage? Is it sticky? And then the third is, is it delivering the value intended to deliver? So let's say, for example, I delivered a product that was supposed to make it easy. I'm just looking at my lawn here, right? I've delivered a product that was making it easier to mow my lawn.
Kishan Bharwad: Right. Customers loved it. They, uh, the data says they use it, but actually it doesn't, it's, it's taking the same time it takes to mow the lawn than it is in the previous products. So is it actually delivering the value? ‘Cause they, there's two, these two first two points could give you a false, uh, impression of success, right?
Kishan Bharwad: Is it actually delivering value is going to show you the, whether it's going to give you long term success or not, and you've got to figure out ways, and it's going to be different for every business, for every type of product, how you measure those things like surveys for the first thing, just talking to users.
Kishan Bharwad: For getting that qualitative feedback, there's tools and, and, and things you can put on the back end of your system to measure whether it's sticky and whether it's being used. And the third one's a little bit hard. [00:17:00] You're going to need to gain, get, you're going to need to get access to the customer and measure and be objective and about it.
Kishan Bharwad: Right. Just say, look, I said, I was going to do this thing for you. You've said you like it. The data says you're using it, but I really want to tell you if I've actually done a good job. So can you compare whether what I've done is actually quicker, easier, faster, whatever it was supposed to be, because only then are you going to know have you been successful and whether you should continue doing that.
Amardeep Parmar: Have you got a successful example of that from Taskize itself, of where you went through that process and you learned from the customer feedback and the data that proved that, just to give an example for people in action.
Kishan Bharwad:. Actually, I've got, I've got an example of something that, that we're still learning from actually.
Kishan Bharwad: So there was a bit of functionality that we delivered that, um, was supposed to, so our platform, you can manually create what we call bubbles. Bubbles are, um, like problem tickets that you can share into company and solve. [00:18:00] Uh, transaction related problems and so they, you know, we were creating these, uh, you can manually create them.
Kishan Bharwad: You can automatically create them. One of our clients asked to create something called, uh, to schedule them, right. To schedule them a, a specific time and have them automated and have them land on the user's desk in the morning so they can work on them throughout the day. So we, we deliver this, this bit of functionality.
Kishan Bharwad: I won't go into too, too much detail about it, but the, it was intended to do what it was supposed to do. So I'll ignore the first one for a minute about the customer feedback, but the second one around, was it used? Yes, it was used. It was used a lot. It was used every day. It was used by, um, the business. It was giving them insights.
Kishan Bharwad: So when the third one, it, was it delivering value? It was, it was delivering value because the, the business were telling us, actually, we can now see more. We're now able to have insight into problems and issues that we didn't have insight into before. [00:19:00] So it's delivering business insights and value. That was what we were supposed to do. So tick, right. I'm skimming over all the detail here, but those two aspects were, were um were met. The first one customer delight users did not like it, do not like it, right?
Kishan Bharwad: So it was, it was pushed on them by senior management and they didn't like having to use it. It was clunky. They had to manually go in and actually increase their workload. So they were using it loads, but that's not a good sign of it delivering delight. Right? And so we were just learning this and actually thinking for long term success of the product.
Kishan Bharwad: If we want to tickle three boxes, we're going to have to make the user experience better. We're going to have to refine that because, yes, it's delivering business value. And yes, it's being used heavily, which is good for our product. But ultimately, if it's like organ rejection by the users, at some point, it's going to fall apart.
Kishan Bharwad: So we've got to address this. So it was an interesting, like, learning [00:20:00] curve. Like, you've got to, you've got to think about all of those aspects, um, it's very easy to look at one and see success and not realize that there's other, all these other aspects you've got to consider. Yeah.
Amardeep Parmar: There's something I talked to recently and what they're trying to do is make a certain business process a lot quicker and easier.
Amardeep Parmar: So it's funny, their metric is people spending the least time possible using it because that means that it's feeding up the time, right? It's interesting to see this, like you said, where it's thinking about what your product aims and making sure that you're hitting those aims. So for them, if people only need to use the product for 10 minutes a day, it was delivering what they needed it to do.
Amardeep Parmar: That's perfect. But for a network thing, for example, that's makes it more, like for example, the social media right? The more time people spend on Twitter, the better it is for Twitter, because there's more content. It's that viral loop. And it's always interesting to think about that. Like, when you're listening, you think about your product.
Amardeep Parmar: What's the, is it a time saver?
Amardeep Parmar: Or is [00:21:00] it something which, the more time you spend in it, the more, like, What's the relationship between value and time there?
Kishan Bharwad: That's a really interesting, uh, interesting to consider, isn't it? It's like, I'm delivering business value by only using it for 10 minutes a day. Whereas naively, you might think the more you use it, the better it is.
Kishan Bharwad: Right. Um, and, and for those, for businesses like that, it's like, okay, well. Do they use it every day for 10 minutes? That's great, right? Are they using it every day? Is it sticky? Are they paying for it? And they're paying for that, paying for the pleasure of only using it for five minutes a day, 10 minutes a day.
Kishan Bharwad: And with like Twitter or social networks is people are using it every day. That's great. Engagement is really high, but people hate it. And they were starting to see drop off. So the people that do use it, use it loads, but we're starting to see people stop using it because it's harming their quality of life.
Kishan Bharwad: I mean, those are easy examples to picture because it's quite relevant, but, um, yeah, there's, and there's loads of different sort of aspects to, to looking at product. And the point we made about earlier is I think [00:22:00] often I talk about technology because I'm, uh, I'm in the industry. I work in Technology product management, but there's nothing stopping applying all those three things to, to, to your, to whatever it is that you're doing.
Kishan Bharwad: I always come back to consultants because I think that consulting is very much a human, um, service driven business, but like you, there's no reason why you can't deliver that same, apply that same framework to consultancy. Am I relying on customers? Am I better than my competitors? Am I delivering value?
Kishan Bharwad: Is it, am I sticky, right? And they're retaining, right? As a product, as you know, as a consultant, as a product that I'm delivering, am I objectively better delivering more value than others?
Amardeep Parmar: Yeah, I think like yousaid there, so a lot of the practice is from tech because generally in tech, the feedback loops are faster than lots of other industries.
Amardeep Parmar: But that means that you can develop some of these systems, but they do work in other industries too. And you might just have to adjust the time amounts when that comes into play. You can even say bricks and mortar stores, whatever you're doing, those same concepts are still important. [00:23:00] And you need to be more diligent about how you collect that data and thinking about it.
Amardeep Parmar: Whereas usually with tech, you can just say, okay, use data usage. Are they using it? Are they not using it? But if you think about it in terms of like football, for example, let's say we're a shop. Say, okay, we made this change to the shop. And then because of that, more people, like, we have the same number of people
Amardeep Parmar: walking past the shop every day.
Amardeep Parmar: More people now walking in because changes were slow. That's a good sign. And, but are they coming in? Do they enjoy coming into the store after that? That's your customer of July. But then, let's say the other aspect is, did they see it in the shop window,
Amardeep Parmar: but didn't actually find something they wanted to buy?
Amardeep Parmar: Then, you know, actually deliver on that. Right. So like I said, it's always different ways. You can apply it. And I think for like, all it's listening, it's going to be really interesting to try to apply it to what the business they are working in and what the business is trying to create. So we're coming towards the end now, and what I'd love to learn from you is like, what's next up for you?
Amardeep Parmar: Like, where are you taking your product mindset? What's it, whether it's Taskize or [00:24:00] other things. What are you thinking about right now that excite you?
Kishan Bharwad: Yeah, I think it's interesting. We're going through a little bit of a, so my, I'd say that the biggest strength I have as a product professional is like strategy and vision and, um, something I really enjoy, like understanding
Kishan Bharwad: our customers and then thinking about the problems now and what the future looks like and how we're going to solve problems. So for me at the moment, it's how we we've got a certain product and we've got something that we're doing. But in five years time, what does the current what does the industry look like?
Kishan Bharwad: Then, and how can we be best placed to serve that industry as a technology moves forward as regulation moves forward as new products and services come online and to market. So how can we, um, how can we in the position there? And I think for me, that's that's the most interesting thing thinking forward, you know, I think Amazon and Jeff Bezos kind of used to say he lived, he didn't celebrate this quarter.
Kishan Bharwad: He's kind of, [00:25:00] he always looks at the next quarter or like he's, he's already defining his, what he's going to be earning in the next two quarters. And that's kind of where I want to get to is, is delivering, looking more forward thinking, ‘cause we have a little bit of luxury of doing that now because we've been around for like five and six years.
Kishan Bharwad: One of the big topics in product management right now is, uh, product led growth. You've probably heard of this phrase around, um, how, how you can be, uh, uh, how you can lead growth in your company through product, making product the more, um, important front of house, um, business than sales, right? Because sales is often seen as we bring in the money.
Kishan Bharwad: You deliver the product that we tell you to deliver, right? Whereas actually product led growth is flipping that on its head a little bit and saying, we know our customers better. We, we, we think we can make, we can generate the revenue more so by being more autonomous and independent, probably not. I'm probably [00:26:00] doing the definition of product led growth a little bit of a disservice there, but looking more into that aspect, right?
Kishan Bharwad: Of of of workers with B2B it's a little bit more difficult to take that mindset because you don't have direct control of the person that pays the bills. Right? The, um, they are users aren't necessarily the people that pay the people that the person that pays is a senior leader in within the bank, they pay, they make the, they make the decision to purchase the product is then used by, you know, the teams and the boots on the ground.
Kishan Bharwad: So, I'm trying to think about how we can, how we can take taskize in the company, um, and how we can sort of inject product led growth in there to let product be able to do some of that, create that revenue and, and, and be more impactful to the business in conjunction with sales. Right. So there, there, I guess the two sort of things I'm looking at in, in taskize.
Amardeep Parmar: So if people want to find out more about you, find out more about fast service. Where should they be going to?
Kishan Bharwad: Probably LinkedIn. [00:27:00] Yeah. LinkedIn is the best place. Yeah. You can find me on LinkedIn. Uh, just Google my name, or sorry, search, search my LinkedIn. I'm not as active as I, I like talking about this stuff.
Kishan Bharwad: I'm really passionate about product management and entrepreneurship and the value that you can bring within an organization to taking these approaches, but I don't share enough. And I think this is the start of, I'm starting to do that, that a little bit more. And so, um, yeah, search on LinkedIn. You won't find much there, but if you do, you'll start to see more coming.
Kishan Bharwad: Hopefully what I'm doing at taskize with intercompany workflow and financial services and other stuff that you might find interesting.
Amardeep Parmar: Perfect. Is there any way that somebody listening right now might be able to help you? Or might be able to apply as a product professional?
Kishan Bharwad: Other product professionals. Yeah. If you, if you, if you're into, you know, I don't, I don't network with, um, with my, uh, profession enough, actually, you know, if you, if you're, if you're a product leader, if you want to get into product, if you're, uh, into product management and at the moment, and you're like looking for people to bounce ideas off, [00:28:00] maybe you're struggling with that strategy or I'm struggling with aspects of like agile and implementing agile frameworks and delivering product better.
Kishan Bharwad: So I'd love, some sort of advice or bounce ideas off that. So if you're in the product space, just, yeah, hit me up. Or if you're a founder, entrepreneur, and you're looking for like advice on that type of thing, I'm more than happy to, to, to talk. Um, yeah, uh, happy to share. I mean that, I mean, the sharing stage of my career at the moment, uh, as well as, you know, building, yeah.
Amardeep Parmar: Final question before you head off is who are three British Asians that you'd like to shout out that you think they're doing great work and people should be paying attention to them.
Kishan Bharwad: Yeah, good question. I like the, I like the, uh, the opportunity to shout people out. I think that's a great, a great idea.
Kishan Bharwad: Um, the first two, uh, are going to be from the same company, Tuck, uh, who you and I know very well. So Dhruvesh Rampura and Neel Thakrar, brilliant product, brilliant guys. I think [00:29:00] no one works as hard as I've seen in, in, in, in, in the founder world as those two, there probably are equally hardworking people, but they work very hard and they've got great product.
Kishan Bharwad: And I think they're onto something. Um, and, uh, I've been really happy to help them on their journey. I hope they find value in what I've, uh, I've been able to help them with. So definitely a shout out to those guys. I'm not going to say I think it's Tuck. co, but Tuck on LinkedIn, Tuck on Instagram. I think you can find them there.
Kishan Bharwad: Another guy you can find them on LinkedIn is not as active, but a guy called Rishi Patel. It's family business, uh, PME cake. Really insightful, really knowledgeable guy. Um, has a lot to say about business, really passionate about business. Um, I often, you know, we talked about those three different aspects of product management.
Kishan Bharwad: My, my, everyone has a tendency in some way they lean. I lean towards solving problems and building a great product. He kind of has a very good. Well, how are you [00:30:00] going to sell it? What's the unit economics? How are you going to deliver it logistically? So it kind of keeps me grounded in that respect. So shout out to him.
Kishan Bharwad: Definitely Rishi Patel of PME Cake.
Amardeep Parmar: So thanks so much for coming on the cushion. I think you helped like many people today.
Kishan Bharwad: Great. Thanks. Thanks for having me on. It's been a pleasure.
Amardeep Parmar: Hello. Hello everyone. Thank you so much for listening. It means a huge amount to us and we don't think you realize how important you are. Because if you subscribe to our YouTube channel, if you leave us a five star review, it makes the world of difference. And if you believe in what we're trying to do here, to inspire, connect and guide the next generation British Asians, if you do those things, you can help us achieve that mission and you can help us make a bigger impact.
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Kishan Bharwad: [00:00:00] But actually the framework about product management is developing something of value that can delight customers, that can generate revenue, and that can help you give you a competitive edge. To me, that is what product management is. You want to deliver that for your business.
Amardeep Parmar: And we’re live from the BAE HQ Lab. Today we have with us Kishan Bharwad, who's the head of products at Taskize. They're an intercompany workflow platform for financial services. Today, Kishan has chosen to talk about how to develop a product mindset and how to help you in your career and to build a successful company. So, Kishan, why did you choose this topic? Why is this so important to you?
Kishan Bharwad: Yeah, well, great to be here and Amar, thanks for having me on. So I think one of the things that, um, Is misunderstood about product management. I'm a product professional. I, you know, I'm a head of product, um, uh, tech company. Product management is often seen as [00:01:00] a tech thing, right?
Kishan Bharwad: You manage your product. You, you, you know, you, you, you work and you work with development teams. You work with your stakeholders. You design something and you release something. That's a very sort of uh, small, narrow minded approach to looking at product management, but actually the framework about product management is developing something of value that can delight customers, that can generate revenue, and that can help you give you a competitive edge.
Kishan Bharwad: To me, that is what product management is. You want to deliver that for your business. And I think too, too often it's pigeonholed as a tech thing, but actually it can be broadened out to so many other aspects and different careers. I think there's so much value in taking a product led approach or a product led mindset to not just technology services and platforms, but also any other type of business.
Kishan Bharwad: And I think that's why I think it's very overlooked thing.
Amardeep Parmar: And how do you feel like that product mindset's helped you in your own career and what you put in task?
Kishan Bharwad: Yeah, I think, so prior to joining task [00:02:00] guides, I was, uh, I worked in financial services. I worked at NatWest Capital Markets, um, and I sort of worked on their technology program there.
Kishan Bharwad: And everything was a tool for everything I did was a tool to bring new products to market. So removing technology, removing barriers to entry, developing new services, et cetera, to, or unblocking, you know, unblocking some, um, issues that might help us get products to market quicker and very quickly realize that everything is about,
Kishan Bharwad: Um, everything that you do within the company is about delivering value for your customers and whether it's in the technology part of the business, whether you're in HR, whether you're in, um, finance, it's all about optimizing the for the business, maybe, but ultimately for the customer. And once you, once you kind of realize that,
Kishan Bharwad: you start unlocking abilities in yourself and you start seeing things a little bit differently. And I wasn't necessarily a [00:03:00] product professional in my career at, uh, NatWest Capital Markets, but when I, when my, my managing director at the time he left and he started the company that I work for now, Task Eyes, he approached me and he kind of saw that
Kishan Bharwad: in me and kind of realize, actually, what you're doing is, is product management. You're looking at problems. You're looking at how to deliver value to customers. You're looking at what that means for the business. And you're looking at how, how that can, how you can be better at your, than your competitors.
Kishan Bharwad: So you're taking whatever you're doing and you're applying that framework. So why don't you come and join me? Because we need something, some of those skills. In that company, in the startup that he found, which is Taskize. And so that approach to everything I did, so I've started as QA at that company, doing quality assurance, testing, but keeping that same mindset.
Kishan Bharwad: What I'm testing, if I'm testing this piece of code to make sure that it works, is it going to, again, I keep repeating it. Is it going to delight customers? Is it going to, if, if it doesn't quite work, does it matter? Because, uh, it won't, [00:04:00] is it going to deliver me revenue? Is it going to make customers pay?
Kishan Bharwad: Right. And if I, if it doesn't work, does it really matter? Because no competitors are doing it. All right. So you kind of start scrutinizing everything you do with that product mindset. And so I did, I did a little bit of that. I did customer success. So I worked with customers as part of the role at the company early on, uh, client delivery and customer success and, uh, and ultimately into sort of product management.
Kishan Bharwad: And I think having that sort of, it's a very, um, entrepreneurial mindset, an entrepreneurial mindset within a company, thinking about what you're doing through the lens of product can, can prove to be really successful. And I think it can give you, it can give you the opportunity to do things in any business, in any industry if you take that approach.
Kishan Bharwad:
Amardeep Parmar: So it's obviously that you've now, like, task guys that are growing significantly as you've been part of that journey too. And let's say somebody's like, right at the beginning of their journey, what if they just, if you put a manager or they do that kind of a role, what's the key thing that to make sure they get into [00:05:00] the right mindset?
Amardeep Parmar: If, what's the traits that maybe you think makes a good product manager?
Kishan Bharwad: I think maybe we'll take each of those things that I mentioned, customer, revenue, and competitors, and we'll dig down, we'll take each one of those individually, because I think those are where I think you should start as a product manager.
Kishan Bharwad: I think if you want to get into this kind of profession, you've got to be focused on the customer. Who is that customer? What do they want? What are their desires? What are their motives? What problem do they have in their life that needs to be solved? Uh, and what are they willing to pay for? Is that problem big enough for them to pay for it?
Kishan Bharwad: Um, you may have a problem that you've got, but like, I don't care. I'll live with that. It's not worth paying for it. So start with the customer. Start analyzing who that is and understand where they, you know, all those aspects of who you're delivering value to. And then, and then look inside and say. How can we help this person?
Kishan Bharwad: How can we help this customer? Whether it's B2B, it might be in another, another organization that you're trying to [00:06:00] help. So it might be a, a buyer at an organization and his team, or it might be an individual if you're B2C, right? So that individual person, so really start building a picture and say, how do I really help this customer achieve and solve their problems?
Kishan Bharwad: And if you start developing that way of thinking, you kind of remove, remove, you kind of, you kind of remove all the things that are unnecessary, right? You can easily say no to things, right? Is that, is that, is the customer going to, does the customer care, right? Do they even care about this? Will they use this?
Kishan Bharwad: Will that really solve their problem? Why don't I, why don't I show them what I'm doing? When I show them what I'm thinking of delivering, do they like it? The thing is going to solve their problem. It's a really weird, easy way to say no, because your mind can wander in loads of different directions. So the first thing is
Kishan Bharwad: go in, show, show that you care about the customer because that's, if you, if you deliver for the customer, you'd end up delivering for the business. That's the first thing I'd say. The second is, uh, [00:07:00] revenue. Um, so one thing that product, I think product professions, um, often mistake, uh, their role for is I’ve got to design a feature and deliver it for the customer.
Kishan Bharwad: A problem's come in, or someone's told me I've got to do something, or, you know, somebody in my business said it'd be great if we had this feature, or a customer's always been asking for this feature. So you go and deliver it the best you can, and then you release it, and then you realize no one's using it.
Kishan Bharwad: We realize no one cares, but you realize that it was a wrong thing to do, right? Um, because it was, um, for a segment that wasn't really that important to your business and you're letting other people prioritize what you should be doing as a product manager. And actually what you should be doing is Okay, I'm going to live with this feature, but how are we going to monetize it?
Kishan Bharwad: What's the, what's the business model around it? How are we going to pay for it? Is there a long term strategy to this? Is this a free thing that I can give them that's going to get them easier access to a new [00:08:00] part of the product that has a paywall? So they kind of get a little bit of value to really bad analogy that my, my, uh, co founder used to use, but like the crack cocaine kind of analogy, right?
Kishan Bharwad: Give them a little bit of something that they really like, and then, and then, uh, and then get them to pay for it. Is it, is it, is that the strategy to always be thinking commercially as a product? I think a lot of product professionals don't think commercially enough, so how am I going to deliver value?
Kishan Bharwad: How, who is this customer? How am I going to solve problems for them? And then how am I going to generate, generate revenue? We had a very interesting sort of first few years at task guys. We were a networked product now network product like Facebook or Twitter. How do you monetize something like that? If you're the first person in the room.
Kishan Bharwad: If you go in somewhere and you're selling a network and you like to go in and there's no one there, you're going to leave, right? Um, but if you go in there and there's loads of people there, you can start enjoying it because it's a networking, start networking. So we had a [00:09:00] really tough time thinking about how we can monetize this.
Kishan Bharwad: And we're only just coming to realize it's a really hard thing to do with a network product. We're only just realizing how to navigate that commercial landscape with a network product. So it's not easy. But, you know, you got to spend that energy and time and thinking about how you do that. And the last one is competition, right?
Kishan Bharwad: So you could do, you could, again, go put these three threads together. You could do everything for the customer. You could, it makes, it makes revenue, delights the customer and it makes revenue, but loads of other people are doing it and they're probably doing it for longer and they're doing it better. So you have to have a little bit of eye on the competition.
Kishan Bharwad: Um, and it may be that you do the same thing for, for a different market. Maybe you do the same thing, but cheaper, or you do the same thing, but better. So you always got to keep an eye out on, on the product. And if you, if you take all those three things and you apply that to your business. Whether it be you as a consultant in your area of work, whether you are in tech or whether you are in, um, you know, any [00:10:00] kind of finance, whatever it is, if you take that approach, you, you start, you start, you start really becoming really valuable to the business because that's what all businesses care about.
Kishan Bharwad: You know, ultimately those three things.
Amardeep Parmar: And it's obviously what entrepreneurs themselves 'cause a lot of the time at the beginning they might be the product person themselves, starting a business, maybe can't get people involved enough yet. They have to think about this product mindset themselves and that's a huge time trap when you get somebody from external who's got experience already, you can build that mindset and kind of come with that.
Amardeep Parmar: But for some people listening right now, they're going to try to teach themselves from scratch because they don't have the runway or the ability to hire people like that. And people may be not from a black background. What would you say is like, maybe the biggest mistake they make when they try to into that kind of a world.
Amardeep Parmar: When they're trying to use their previous information, like what do you see the common pitfalls that people and mistakes people make?
Kishan Bharwad: Do you mean, sorry, do you mean founders and entrepreneurs that don't come from a product background?
Amardeep Parmar: Yeah, so is that always people who are [00:11:00] being put into a product role that they're unfamiliar with as well?
Kishan Bharwad: It's a tough one to answer because... I think entrepreneurs and, and the topic that we spoke about offline entrepreneurs, they kind of have naturally have a product mindset, I think, and if you're an entrepreneur, you kind of have those things in the back of your mind, I think one thing that the key is to put those three.
Kishan Bharwad: together because individually, they don't really, you can go down rabbit holes, somebody from a technology background that starts a company or somebody from a technology background that moves into product generally just like solving problems. And they think that their role is to develop functionality, gold plate it, do the best thing possible, make it as
Kishan Bharwad: quick as possible, make it as fast as possible, make it as easy as possible, but forget about commercials and they forget about the competition. Somebody that comes from a marketing or product is like a business analyst background or a marketing background. Normally founders are either tech or marketing.[00:12:00]
Kishan Bharwad: They come from it as how am I going to sell this thing? How am I going to market this thing to people? And then they often neglect the product and the feature itself that the technology would, it's kind of a compliment and I think you need both. If you have a great product, but nobody to kind of market it to you, you're not going to sell if you've not got a great product, but you know how to get to people and the product's no good,
Kishan Bharwad: you're going to lead, you're going to get them to your door, but you're not going to get them to stay. So you kind of need both, you need great product and great distribution. And I think basically it's technology meets marketing and often you see, you see the two come together. And what I found in experience in where I work and teams I've worked in is that you need either one person that is really sort of has both, but wears both hats and can see both things, or you need two different people actually.
Kishan Bharwad: You need to have somebody that knows how to solve problems, knows how to build technology, and then somebody that knows how to take that technology [00:13:00] and sell it to the hearts and minds of the customers that, uh, and the market that you want to deliver to. It's rare to find it in an individual, like, yeah, it's rare to find both.
Kishan Bharwad: Um, if you do find someone like that, bring them on board. If you're an entrepreneur starting a business, if you've not, and you're one of those people, I advise you to bring somebody on that can compliment that part.
Amardeep Parmar: Hey everyone. I hope you're enjoying this episode so far. The BAE HQ has a podcast, but we're so much more than that.
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Amardeep Parmar: And we talked about how do you measure this? How do you know if you're doing? It's hard to tell sometimes if you're getting involved with a product, because it's, [00:14:00] for example, the network, it can be a while before you really start seeing the revenue coming in from that.
Amardeep Parmar: How do you know you're on the right path? How do you know that you're doing things the right way?
Kishan Bharwad: You're going to come to learn that I like threes. So there's another three part framework to, for your audience to take away from this maybe. So in product management, there's, there's um, measuring success is very important.
Kishan Bharwad: When you deliver product. When I, you know, you design something and you deliver it, your engineers build it, the delivery team, everyone, everyone celebrates, everyone said, Oh, we've delivered this feature. We've delivered this new product. Really, only the engineering team should be celebrating at that point because their job's done.
Kishan Bharwad: Product team has their jobs only just started because now you've got to wait and see. This thing that I thought was going to add value to my customers and business has just gone out there is about to be used. And it won't, I won't know until it's delivered value until a few months later, right? Until it starts generating revenues.
Kishan Bharwad: So it's like getting feedback. So the first, the first step [00:15:00] to understanding success is don't celebrate once it's out the door, right? As a product manager, uh, it sounds quite negative, but that's the first step is to realize that success don't sit back because that's when your measure, your measure of success starts.
Kishan Bharwad: The, the, the things you need to measure are do my customers or do the people that I've delivered this to qualitatively, do they tell me they like what I've delivered, right? Just, I like it, I think it adds value, this is great, I love it, or no, I hate it, this is bad, this isn't solving my problem. What are they saying? right?
Kishan Bharwad: Then the data, what does the data say? Um, regardless of what they're saying, what does the data say that they're using it? Are they using it in the way you intended for them to use it? Are they using it and staying on your product for longer? Or even if you're a consultant, if you're, if you're, um, if you're, if the, if you're selling your services and they're buying more and they're continuing and they're paying greater retainers, right?
Kishan Bharwad: And what does the data say [00:16:00] about their usage? Is it sticky? And then the third is, is it delivering the value intended to deliver? So let's say, for example, I delivered a product that was supposed to make it easy. I'm just looking at my lawn here, right? I've delivered a product that was making it easier to mow my lawn.
Kishan Bharwad: Right. Customers loved it. They, uh, the data says they use it, but actually it doesn't, it's, it's taking the same time it takes to mow the lawn than it is in the previous products. So is it actually delivering the value? ‘Cause they, there's two, these two first two points could give you a false, uh, impression of success, right?
Kishan Bharwad: Is it actually delivering value is going to show you the, whether it's going to give you long term success or not, and you've got to figure out ways, and it's going to be different for every business, for every type of product, how you measure those things like surveys for the first thing, just talking to users.
Kishan Bharwad: For getting that qualitative feedback, there's tools and, and, and things you can put on the back end of your system to measure whether it's sticky and whether it's being used. And the third one's a little bit hard. [00:17:00] You're going to need to gain, get, you're going to need to get access to the customer and measure and be objective and about it.
Kishan Bharwad: Right. Just say, look, I said, I was going to do this thing for you. You've said you like it. The data says you're using it, but I really want to tell you if I've actually done a good job. So can you compare whether what I've done is actually quicker, easier, faster, whatever it was supposed to be, because only then are you going to know have you been successful and whether you should continue doing that.
Amardeep Parmar: Have you got a successful example of that from Taskize itself, of where you went through that process and you learned from the customer feedback and the data that proved that, just to give an example for people in action.
Kishan Bharwad:. Actually, I've got, I've got an example of something that, that we're still learning from actually.
Kishan Bharwad: So there was a bit of functionality that we delivered that, um, was supposed to, so our platform, you can manually create what we call bubbles. Bubbles are, um, like problem tickets that you can share into company and solve. [00:18:00] Uh, transaction related problems and so they, you know, we were creating these, uh, you can manually create them.
Kishan Bharwad: You can automatically create them. One of our clients asked to create something called, uh, to schedule them, right. To schedule them a, a specific time and have them automated and have them land on the user's desk in the morning so they can work on them throughout the day. So we, we deliver this, this bit of functionality.
Kishan Bharwad: I won't go into too, too much detail about it, but the, it was intended to do what it was supposed to do. So I'll ignore the first one for a minute about the customer feedback, but the second one around, was it used? Yes, it was used. It was used a lot. It was used every day. It was used by, um, the business. It was giving them insights.
Kishan Bharwad: So when the third one, it, was it delivering value? It was, it was delivering value because the, the business were telling us, actually, we can now see more. We're now able to have insight into problems and issues that we didn't have insight into before. [00:19:00] So it's delivering business insights and value. That was what we were supposed to do. So tick, right. I'm skimming over all the detail here, but those two aspects were, were um were met. The first one customer delight users did not like it, do not like it, right?
Kishan Bharwad: So it was, it was pushed on them by senior management and they didn't like having to use it. It was clunky. They had to manually go in and actually increase their workload. So they were using it loads, but that's not a good sign of it delivering delight. Right? And so we were just learning this and actually thinking for long term success of the product.
Kishan Bharwad: If we want to tickle three boxes, we're going to have to make the user experience better. We're going to have to refine that because, yes, it's delivering business value. And yes, it's being used heavily, which is good for our product. But ultimately, if it's like organ rejection by the users, at some point, it's going to fall apart.
Kishan Bharwad: So we've got to address this. So it was an interesting, like, learning [00:20:00] curve. Like, you've got to, you've got to think about all of those aspects, um, it's very easy to look at one and see success and not realize that there's other, all these other aspects you've got to consider. Yeah.
Amardeep Parmar: There's something I talked to recently and what they're trying to do is make a certain business process a lot quicker and easier.
Amardeep Parmar: So it's funny, their metric is people spending the least time possible using it because that means that it's feeding up the time, right? It's interesting to see this, like you said, where it's thinking about what your product aims and making sure that you're hitting those aims. So for them, if people only need to use the product for 10 minutes a day, it was delivering what they needed it to do.
Amardeep Parmar: That's perfect. But for a network thing, for example, that's makes it more, like for example, the social media right? The more time people spend on Twitter, the better it is for Twitter, because there's more content. It's that viral loop. And it's always interesting to think about that. Like, when you're listening, you think about your product.
Amardeep Parmar: What's the, is it a time saver?
Amardeep Parmar: Or is [00:21:00] it something which, the more time you spend in it, the more, like, What's the relationship between value and time there?
Kishan Bharwad: That's a really interesting, uh, interesting to consider, isn't it? It's like, I'm delivering business value by only using it for 10 minutes a day. Whereas naively, you might think the more you use it, the better it is.
Kishan Bharwad: Right. Um, and, and for those, for businesses like that, it's like, okay, well. Do they use it every day for 10 minutes? That's great, right? Are they using it every day? Is it sticky? Are they paying for it? And they're paying for that, paying for the pleasure of only using it for five minutes a day, 10 minutes a day.
Kishan Bharwad: And with like Twitter or social networks is people are using it every day. That's great. Engagement is really high, but people hate it. And they were starting to see drop off. So the people that do use it, use it loads, but we're starting to see people stop using it because it's harming their quality of life.
Kishan Bharwad: I mean, those are easy examples to picture because it's quite relevant, but, um, yeah, there's, and there's loads of different sort of aspects to, to looking at product. And the point we made about earlier is I think [00:22:00] often I talk about technology because I'm, uh, I'm in the industry. I work in Technology product management, but there's nothing stopping applying all those three things to, to, to your, to whatever it is that you're doing.
Kishan Bharwad: I always come back to consultants because I think that consulting is very much a human, um, service driven business, but like you, there's no reason why you can't deliver that same, apply that same framework to consultancy. Am I relying on customers? Am I better than my competitors? Am I delivering value?
Kishan Bharwad: Is it, am I sticky, right? And they're retaining, right? As a product, as you know, as a consultant, as a product that I'm delivering, am I objectively better delivering more value than others?
Amardeep Parmar: Yeah, I think like yousaid there, so a lot of the practice is from tech because generally in tech, the feedback loops are faster than lots of other industries.
Amardeep Parmar: But that means that you can develop some of these systems, but they do work in other industries too. And you might just have to adjust the time amounts when that comes into play. You can even say bricks and mortar stores, whatever you're doing, those same concepts are still important. [00:23:00] And you need to be more diligent about how you collect that data and thinking about it.
Amardeep Parmar: Whereas usually with tech, you can just say, okay, use data usage. Are they using it? Are they not using it? But if you think about it in terms of like football, for example, let's say we're a shop. Say, okay, we made this change to the shop. And then because of that, more people, like, we have the same number of people
Amardeep Parmar: walking past the shop every day.
Amardeep Parmar: More people now walking in because changes were slow. That's a good sign. And, but are they coming in? Do they enjoy coming into the store after that? That's your customer of July. But then, let's say the other aspect is, did they see it in the shop window,
Amardeep Parmar: but didn't actually find something they wanted to buy?
Amardeep Parmar: Then, you know, actually deliver on that. Right. So like I said, it's always different ways. You can apply it. And I think for like, all it's listening, it's going to be really interesting to try to apply it to what the business they are working in and what the business is trying to create. So we're coming towards the end now, and what I'd love to learn from you is like, what's next up for you?
Amardeep Parmar: Like, where are you taking your product mindset? What's it, whether it's Taskize or [00:24:00] other things. What are you thinking about right now that excite you?
Kishan Bharwad: Yeah, I think it's interesting. We're going through a little bit of a, so my, I'd say that the biggest strength I have as a product professional is like strategy and vision and, um, something I really enjoy, like understanding
Kishan Bharwad: our customers and then thinking about the problems now and what the future looks like and how we're going to solve problems. So for me at the moment, it's how we we've got a certain product and we've got something that we're doing. But in five years time, what does the current what does the industry look like?
Kishan Bharwad: Then, and how can we be best placed to serve that industry as a technology moves forward as regulation moves forward as new products and services come online and to market. So how can we, um, how can we in the position there? And I think for me, that's that's the most interesting thing thinking forward, you know, I think Amazon and Jeff Bezos kind of used to say he lived, he didn't celebrate this quarter.
Kishan Bharwad: He's kind of, [00:25:00] he always looks at the next quarter or like he's, he's already defining his, what he's going to be earning in the next two quarters. And that's kind of where I want to get to is, is delivering, looking more forward thinking, ‘cause we have a little bit of luxury of doing that now because we've been around for like five and six years.
Kishan Bharwad: One of the big topics in product management right now is, uh, product led growth. You've probably heard of this phrase around, um, how, how you can be, uh, uh, how you can lead growth in your company through product, making product the more, um, important front of house, um, business than sales, right? Because sales is often seen as we bring in the money.
Kishan Bharwad: You deliver the product that we tell you to deliver, right? Whereas actually product led growth is flipping that on its head a little bit and saying, we know our customers better. We, we, we think we can make, we can generate the revenue more so by being more autonomous and independent, probably not. I'm probably [00:26:00] doing the definition of product led growth a little bit of a disservice there, but looking more into that aspect, right?
Kishan Bharwad: Of of of workers with B2B it's a little bit more difficult to take that mindset because you don't have direct control of the person that pays the bills. Right? The, um, they are users aren't necessarily the people that pay the people that the person that pays is a senior leader in within the bank, they pay, they make the, they make the decision to purchase the product is then used by, you know, the teams and the boots on the ground.
Kishan Bharwad: So, I'm trying to think about how we can, how we can take taskize in the company, um, and how we can sort of inject product led growth in there to let product be able to do some of that, create that revenue and, and, and be more impactful to the business in conjunction with sales. Right. So there, there, I guess the two sort of things I'm looking at in, in taskize.
Amardeep Parmar: So if people want to find out more about you, find out more about fast service. Where should they be going to?
Kishan Bharwad: Probably LinkedIn. [00:27:00] Yeah. LinkedIn is the best place. Yeah. You can find me on LinkedIn. Uh, just Google my name, or sorry, search, search my LinkedIn. I'm not as active as I, I like talking about this stuff.
Kishan Bharwad: I'm really passionate about product management and entrepreneurship and the value that you can bring within an organization to taking these approaches, but I don't share enough. And I think this is the start of, I'm starting to do that, that a little bit more. And so, um, yeah, search on LinkedIn. You won't find much there, but if you do, you'll start to see more coming.
Kishan Bharwad: Hopefully what I'm doing at taskize with intercompany workflow and financial services and other stuff that you might find interesting.
Amardeep Parmar: Perfect. Is there any way that somebody listening right now might be able to help you? Or might be able to apply as a product professional?
Kishan Bharwad: Other product professionals. Yeah. If you, if you, if you're into, you know, I don't, I don't network with, um, with my, uh, profession enough, actually, you know, if you, if you're, if you're a product leader, if you want to get into product, if you're, uh, into product management and at the moment, and you're like looking for people to bounce ideas off, [00:28:00] maybe you're struggling with that strategy or I'm struggling with aspects of like agile and implementing agile frameworks and delivering product better.
Kishan Bharwad: So I'd love, some sort of advice or bounce ideas off that. So if you're in the product space, just, yeah, hit me up. Or if you're a founder, entrepreneur, and you're looking for like advice on that type of thing, I'm more than happy to, to, to talk. Um, yeah, uh, happy to share. I mean that, I mean, the sharing stage of my career at the moment, uh, as well as, you know, building, yeah.
Amardeep Parmar: Final question before you head off is who are three British Asians that you'd like to shout out that you think they're doing great work and people should be paying attention to them.
Kishan Bharwad: Yeah, good question. I like the, I like the, uh, the opportunity to shout people out. I think that's a great, a great idea.
Kishan Bharwad: Um, the first two, uh, are going to be from the same company, Tuck, uh, who you and I know very well. So Dhruvesh Rampura and Neel Thakrar, brilliant product, brilliant guys. I think [00:29:00] no one works as hard as I've seen in, in, in, in, in the founder world as those two, there probably are equally hardworking people, but they work very hard and they've got great product.
Kishan Bharwad: And I think they're onto something. Um, and, uh, I've been really happy to help them on their journey. I hope they find value in what I've, uh, I've been able to help them with. So definitely a shout out to those guys. I'm not going to say I think it's Tuck. co, but Tuck on LinkedIn, Tuck on Instagram. I think you can find them there.
Kishan Bharwad: Another guy you can find them on LinkedIn is not as active, but a guy called Rishi Patel. It's family business, uh, PME cake. Really insightful, really knowledgeable guy. Um, has a lot to say about business, really passionate about business. Um, I often, you know, we talked about those three different aspects of product management.
Kishan Bharwad: My, my, everyone has a tendency in some way they lean. I lean towards solving problems and building a great product. He kind of has a very good. Well, how are you [00:30:00] going to sell it? What's the unit economics? How are you going to deliver it logistically? So it kind of keeps me grounded in that respect. So shout out to him.
Kishan Bharwad: Definitely Rishi Patel of PME Cake.
Amardeep Parmar: So thanks so much for coming on the cushion. I think you helped like many people today.
Kishan Bharwad: Great. Thanks. Thanks for having me on. It's been a pleasure.
Amardeep Parmar: Hello. Hello everyone. Thank you so much for listening. It means a huge amount to us and we don't think you realize how important you are. Because if you subscribe to our YouTube channel, if you leave us a five star review, it makes the world of difference. And if you believe in what we're trying to do here, to inspire, connect and guide the next generation British Asians, if you do those things, you can help us achieve that mission and you can help us make a bigger impact.
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