Shantanu Sathe

India has abundant expertise across every domain - logistics operators, subject matter experts, local service providers, etc. What's scarce isn't capability. It's the systems that coordinate this capability at scale. Most companies see this fragmentation and default to vertical integration: build everything in-house, own all capabilities, control every aspect of delivery. This works if you have unlimited capital and time. Most companies have neither. But there's an alternative approach that we've noticed two of our portcos execute remarkably well, in completely different industries - 1. When Meesho looked at India's logistics, and they saw thousands of fragmented local operators. Instead of building warehouses and delivery fleets, they built Valmo - an orchestration platform coordinating existing partners. Individual pilots with smartphones earn sustainable incomes, small hub operators build viable businesses, and Meesho gets coverage across 15,000+ pin codes at 12% lower cost than traditional third-party-logistics. 2. Entri saw similar fragmentation in education. India has abundant teaching expertise already running offline/online programs. Entri partners with them for content while owning demand generation, platform infra, quality monitoring, and placements. This allows them to launch new categories in weeks and scale across languages without the capital intensity of building in-house teams for every vertical. If I had to pull a common thread, it's that in fragmented markets like India, the orchestration layer often matters more than asset ownership. Coordinate what exists rather than rebuilding from scratch.

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Some of the most meaningful engineering work happens in unexpected places. Rivian’s haptic steering wheel is a great example of a this—a meaningful innovation we didn't realize we needed! But one use and it's obvious this is a leap forward in usability. Vidya Rajagopalan, Rivian's SVP of Electrical Hardware, and her team blended hardware and software to build an adaptive system that gives drivers control and tactile feedback without distraction. It’s elegant engineering and an experience that feels immediately intuitive. Follow along for more: https://lnkd.in/gJUq4xyW

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4 days of Shreyas Doshi's Product Sense course cost almost double of my 4 years of engineering. Was it worth it? 1. It gave me the much needed realisation that the the ceiling is very very high on many skills in Product Management. Before the course - I was probably getting too comfortable as I got closer to the local maxima on a bunch of product skills. 2. The content itself is was designed to build conviction & kickstart your learning on a handful of pointed skills - with enough resources to keep going back to, as you work on honing them long term. Building conviction to go deeper is hard and I'm grateful for that. 3. Beyond the content, the course is beautifully structured to take you on a journey to discover, understand and validate these concepts very naturally. No jargon, no theoretical frameworks, and nothing held back in calling a spade a spade wherever needed. Would I recommend it? For Sr. PM and above - If you are willing to put in the effort to grow in your craft, by practising the material everyday, you will unlock tremendous value from the course.

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If someone is surprised by the feedback they receive, this is a management failure. After witnessing multiple instances of this failure at Amazon, we realized our feedback mechanism was deeply flawed. So, we fixed it. In order for the organization to perform at its highest, employees need to know not only what is expected of them, but also how those expectations will be measured. Too often, managers assume that capable people will simply “figure things out,” but this is difficult and destined to fail without explicit expectations and continuous feedback. I remember the experience of an employee we can call “Melinda.” She had been a strong performer for two years before she transitioned into a new role on another team. She attacked the new opportunity with enthusiasm, working long hours and believing she was on the right track. Then, her manager expressed concerns about her performance and the criticism came as a shock. The feedback was vague, and there had been no regular check-ins or early signs to help her course-correct. This caused her motivation to suffer and her performance declined significantly. Eventually, she left the company. Afterward, we conducted a full review and we discovered that Melinda’s manager had never clearly articulated the expectations of the new role. Worse, her previous achievements had been disregarded in her evaluation. The system had failed her. This incident was not isolated. It illustrated a pattern. It revealed broader gaps in how we managed performance transitions and feedback loops. So, in response, we developed and deployed new mechanisms to ensure clarity from day one. We began requiring managers to explicitly define role expectations and conduct structured check-ins during an employee’s first 90 days in a new position. We also reinforced the cultural norm that feedback must be timely, specific, and actionable. These changes were rooted in a core principle of leadership: you have to make others successful too. Good management does not involve catching people off guard or putting them in “sink or swim” situations. When employees fail because expectations were unclear, that failure belongs to the manager. The best thing to do when you see those failures is to treat them as systems to improve. That’s how you build a culture of high performance.

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Is CGPA really that important? How do I get into Product Management during summer placements? It’s mid-June – MBA season kickoff at IIMs! Last week, I had the opportunity to be back at my alma mater – #IIMB – to welcome the incoming PGP 2025–27 batch. During my interactions, the above questions came up again and again. Here’s my take – simple and honest: Yes, CGPA matters. Especially your Term 1 grades. Recruiters see it as a signal – not just of capability but of the effort you’re willing to put in. While clubs, events, and side projects are exciting (and important!), don’t lose sight of academics. Want to stand out for PM roles? Build something. Alongside case prep and frameworks, actually creating something gives you a huge edge. Find a real problem. Discover a use case. Prototype. Launch. Get feedback. Iterate. Even 10–20 real users who engage with your product is a compelling story to share in summer interviews. To the incoming batch – good luck and enjoy the ride! #IIMB #MBA #ProductManagement #SummerInternships #CampusToCorporate #CareerAdvice #PGP2527

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30+ teams. One goal. None playing the same game. I recently stepped into a space where more than 30 teams contribute to the same outcome. On paper, we were “aligned.” In reality, each team was chasing a different metric. Then one purchase order caught our eyes. The delivery date was impossible. I pulled the thread with my team and partners and uncovered a breakdown that had been sitting under the surface for a long time, hidden in the noise of day-to-day operations. We are now working through the fix. The challenge is not about blame. It is about making the problem visible, making the first step easy to solve, and linking it to the next step so the system keeps flowing. I start small and go big. I am comfortable not knowing every detail upfront as long as I understand the big picture and build guardrails to keep us on course. You cannot fix a fragmented system overnight. But if you do not connect the pieces early, they will drift apart and take twice as long to bring back together. How do you fix a fragmented system : start small or try to solve it all at once?

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I constantly oscillate between sharing in-progress work and completed work. This means I'm long overdue to share some exciting updates on Wonderment Delivery Promise, our pre-purchase ETAs product. Wonderment now supports Rules for transit estimations and fulfillment estimations to allow you to account for per-product ETA customizations (like embroidery and engraving), warehouse delays, or other events that would impact coming estimates. Here's a quick demo of how you can use them for communicating pre-orders, backorders, and delays: https://lnkd.in/eb88vmcu

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Ankit Shukla and Aakash Gupta did an awesome study on PM salaries in India They found that average PM CTC grows from 17 Lakhs per annum as an APM to 130 Lakhs as a CPO. Of course, there's some bands around all of this. Here's the total comp 25th to 75th percentiles: Associate PM: 14 to 20 lakhs PM: 18 to 38 lakhs SPM: 37 to 62 lakhs PPM/GPM: 62 to 97 lakhs Director: 61 to 133 lakhs VP: 77 to 135 lakhs CPO: 52 to 194 lakhs But it's interesting to look at the average. For instance, here's the average split between Fixed/Variable/ESOPs Associate PM: 82%/ 11%/ 6% PM: 81%/ 6%/ 13% SPM: 76%/ 9%/ 14% PPM/GPM: 74%/ 13%/ 14% Director: 65%/ 7%/ 28% VP: 65%/ 7%/ 28% CPO: 55%/ 7%/ 38% The ramp up in variable and ESOPs is very dramatic at senior levels, from 17% to 45% of total compensation. And that leads to huge increases in Total CTC. For more details - mediums, locations, company, and other cuts - check out the full report: https://lnkd.in/djbctbAV

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I recently had the privilege of moderating a fireside chat at Stanford University Graduate School of Business with Vijay Krishnan, Founder & CTO of Turing, alongside Prateek Sharma (Managing Partner, Ahead VC). Moving beyond the usual buzzwords, Vijay shared some deep-cut insights on the AI landscape, market dynamics, and career strategy. Here are a few that really stayed with me: 🌐 Market Alpha Gets you the Global Maximum Vijay echoed Marc Andreessen’s idea that market is the biggest determinant of startup success. After his first exit, he resisted investor pressure to “move fast” and instead invested heavily in exploration, searching for the right market with the best opportunity. He prioritized a global maximum vs shuffling around local peaks. Strategic patience is super valuable. 🔄 Agility + Open-Mindedness = Reinvention Turing began as a developer marketplace and reached unicorn status. But when OpenAI approached them for GPT-3 work, they leaned into a new frontier, evolving into an AI accelerator powering frontier labs and enterprise deployments. Agility and open-mindedness helped them embrace “right-place-right-time” opportunities, as they dared to reinvent. 🏗️ Vertical AI Still Has Moats The narrative that foundation models will swallow every vertical? Vijay pushed back. Companies with deep system integrations, compound products (vs point solutions), and strong distribution create defensible value. Vertical players that solve real workflows wouldn’t vanish overnight just because models gets better (unless there’s AGI…then all bets are off!). 🔧 Consulting Will Focus on Plumbing + Context In the enterprise AI wave, strategy decks won’t cut it. The winners will be the ones who can do context engineering, who identify high-value use cases and actually implement, customize, and plumb AI into complex legacy systems. 🚀 Career Advice: Stay Close to the Frontier For early-career folks, Vijay’s message was clear: “The closer you are to the frontier of AI, the better.” That’s where the opportunities compound. What do you think? #AI #GenAI #FrontierAI #AIInfrastructure #EnterpriseAI #FutureOfWork #TechCareers #VentureCapital #StartupStrategy #Turing #StanfordGSB

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