{"id":911,"date":"2020-09-28T16:06:48","date_gmt":"2020-09-28T10:36:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/open.money\/blog\/?p=911"},"modified":"2024-05-29T14:37:52","modified_gmt":"2024-05-29T09:07:52","slug":"going-beyond-a-portfolio-career-to-become-a-product-manager","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/open.money\/blog\/going-beyond-a-portfolio-career-to-become-a-product-manager\/","title":{"rendered":"Going beyond a portfolio career"},"content":{"rendered":"I like to think of my journey so far, a decade long career, as what they call a “Portfolio career”. I come from a background in product management – edtech, fintech, and core banking, credit risk, analytics, content, and operations. I have worked for a mix of large and small firms – two multinational banks and one startup prior to Open. While I have degrees in Engineering & Economics, my goal has always been to chase interesting challenges to take on in my career.\u00a0<\/span>\r\n\r\nGone are the days of rising up the ranks over 30 years in one place – also gone is the Indian middle-class myth that we grew up with – “get into a nice engineering\/medical college and your life is set”. I believe the idea is to keep pushing your way into new horizons and find ways to make your mark.<\/span>\r\n\r\n\"Beyond\r\n

How Open caught my attention\u00a0<\/b><\/span><\/h2>\r\nI love reading about startups in my spare time and what stood out about Open was how they were the first to solve a massive unaddressed customer need- Banking for small businesses.\u00a0<\/span>\r\n\r\nToday, big banks are too self-involved or focussed on large clients that they have lost touch with the challenges faced by small businesses. Simple things like setting up a current account, using it to reconcile payments, raising tax-compliant invoices<\/a>, collections against invoices, and expense management<\/a> are a challenge for new businesses.<\/span>\r\n\r\nBefore Open came along, businesses needed multiple apps\/accounts and a Chartered Accountant to manage all their finances. I was stupefied to find that no one had thought of putting all these pieces together before – especially banks.\u00a0<\/span>\r\n\r\nI joined Open after a five-year stint in an entirely different role where I predominantly<\/span> monitored and analysed risk in credit card and business loan portfolios. However, what helped was I worked on fintech<\/a> partnerships as an added responsibility and I read up extensively on what pain points \u2018neobanks\u2019 were solving for.\u00a0<\/span>\r\n\r\nI knew that startups<\/a> were innovative and unconventional and expected something exciting to work on- and that’s exactly what I got.\u00a0<\/span>\r\n

Jumping right into the Open universe<\/b><\/span><\/h2>\r\nWhile Open simplifies banking for small businesses<\/a>, it\u00a0also offers many value-added services through its app store and it is here that my journey started. I was given an interesting problem to solve that involved creating something from\u00a0scratch that did not exist inside a ‘neobank’ before. <\/span>\r\n

Interesting beginnings<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\r\nIn August 2019, when I joined Open, we had about 450,000 businesses using it for banking and payments. We thought, if we could create a channel for them to advertise their products and services and trade with each other, it\u2019s a win-win for both the small business and us.\u00a0<\/span>\r\n\r\nWe could then keep the whole sales and payments cycle completely inhouse- something that none of the marketplaces today can boast of. <\/span>Ultimately, bringing sales, banking, and payments together thus <\/span>enabling customers to manage their finances & grow their business – all in one place.\u00a0<\/span>\r\n\r\nAs a new joiner, diving in to create this, involved talking to design, engineering, marketing, and sales and getting everyone excited about it. This experience gave me a complete sense of ownership. People also associated me with this product feature for a long time- that it became my introduction. This connected B2B marketplace<\/a> christened as <\/span>Open Hub<\/span>\u00a0was launched within four months and it was a huge thrill to see the first 1000 users start using it. It’s a thrill that\u2019s often missing in large companies.<\/span>\r\n

The second ad’venture’<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\r\nThe second challenge that awaited me after Open Hub, was on a line that I have not worked on before- running a business unit. I now head the lending and wealth unit at Open.<\/span> In all my past roles, I had chosen very technical and logical things to do- and this was definitely out of my comfort zone. But I jumped at the chance to run a \u201cstartup within a startup\u201d of sorts and I also had the vast experience of the serial entrepreneurs at Open to guide me which has made the journey quite smooth for me. On a lighter note, the one challenge I now face is having to remember the names of the many new people I talk to all day long- I am much better at remembering numbers. \ud83d\ude42<\/span>\r\n\r\nSo back to what I am working on- We are connecting small businesses to the capital they need to grow. We offer term loans, a line of credit, invoice discounting, and credit cards. <\/span>A<\/span>s with all our other offerings, we are making these products extremely customer focussed, flexible, and intuitive.<\/span>\r\n\r\nOn the wealth side, we are building investment products tailored for small businesses- while we see so many SAAS products for individuals now, we are yet to see solutions for managing surplus capital for small businesses on a fully digital platform.\u00a0<\/span>\r\n\r\nAlong with this, we are building an embedded fintech platform that any business can use off- if they want to ’embed’ payments or lending into their customer journeys- from a ride-sharing company wanting to give credit cards to its drivers or an e-commerce platform wanting to give loans to its sellers or farmers getting financing for their equipment – the platform is fungible to accommodate all types of use-cases.<\/span>\r\n\r\n\"Beyond\r\n

My Open journey has only started<\/b><\/span><\/h2>\r\nIt’s been a very exciting and fulfilling journey so far and I can\u2019t wait to grow this lending wing into a huge vertical for Open.\u00a0<\/span>\r\n\r\nIn terms of culture, while everyone has ideas to make work interesting, Open does things in its own unique way- from how new joiners are welcomed, to our town halls and the creative workshops, there is something special about the care taken to ensure it’s a good place to work and grow. As for startup enthusiasts, Open is a place you will love if you enjoy challenging the status quo. If you are passionate about fintech, this is the company you need to be at.<\/span>\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\nRelated Articles –\r\n\r\nHow entrepreneurship helped me become a true-blue product manager<\/a>\r\n\r\nNeobanking for SMEs: A lawyer\u2019s take on fintech<\/a>\r\n\r\nGoing the distance: How entrepreneurship made me a better product manager<\/a>\r\n\r\nRedefining leadership at work \u2013 the Open way<\/a>\r\n\r\nOpeners take on team building \u2013 the remote way<\/a>\r\n\r\nHow Openers took on WFH with full force<\/a>\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n