About

Pankaj Kumar is a seasoned Product Manager with over 13 years of experience in the technology industry. He is currently working as an Advisor at Parakh Online, where he advises on all aspects of establishing a successful organization, including product, strategy, business, hiring, and culture. Prior to his current role, Pankaj worked at Microsoft as a Product Manager for Teams and Skype, where he successfully handled the complete end-to-end for three websites and two mobile apps. He was responsible for growth hacking Teams for Consumers to enable seamless chat between Teams app users and SMS/Email users. He also built delighters for Skype users, such as Together mode, Raise Hand, Custom Reactions, and frictionless create and join Meeting (in the form of MeetNow). Pankaj increased the top of the Skype funnel by deep integration of Skype with various internal and external partners. He also enabled developers to host a 'Share to Teams' button, increasing the top of the Teams funnel. Before joining Microsoft, Pankaj worked at Expedia as a Product Manager, where he was responsible for envisioning, implementing, and launching a new line of business (Rails) across all platforms, including Android and iOS. He also extensively used email marketing to get traction for Rails and was involved in SEO/SEM optimizations. Pankaj has experience in envisioning long-term and short-term plans using data projections and strategizing expansion based on various aspects like Point of Sale, Supplier, and Technology Platform. He has also built Natural Language Processing (NLP) based search using api.ai. Pankaj's desired future journey is to learn and innovate using present and future technologies, especially Machine Learning and AR/VR, to create disruptive products. He has a degree in Executive Program in Artificial Intelligence: Implications for Business Strategy from MIT Sloan School of Management, an MBA in Information Systems & Strategy from IE (Instituto de Empresa), and a Bachelor of Technology in Computer Science from IIT. Pankaj has a diverse tech stack, including product management, ML, mobile, software engineering, integration, NLP, Ruby, AI, iOS, search, and Android. He has interviewed over 100 PMs and has relevant experience of 13.44 years. Pankaj's mission is to use technology to create 'Magical' experiences.