Video Games Helped Me Become A Better Product Manager, Ft. Narayan Babu, VP @ Zeta, Ex InMobi

Narayan Babu’s story sounds like a Bollywood film. A childhood spent in Kerala, with a father who worked at a government agency dedicated to bringing computers and technology to India, Narayan’s formative years were spent playing games and using the internet way before it became mainstream. Engineering was an obvious career choice, but Narayan’s family encouraged him to pursue music. Giving up on a musical dream, Narayan’s father asked him to be responsible for his own engineering aspirations. A passionate engineer who can talk code for hours, Narayan ended up creating a system like Siri, Alexa, etc., before anyone else.

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Narayan shares how his father’s agency created India’s first supercomputer PARAM. As a student, he went to the British Library in Trivandrum to read computing magazines. Getting into engineering college, he pursued IT. Joining Bosch straight out of college, Narayan shares how he worked with a team that designed the user interfaces in Mercedes. This gave him a great grounding in team dynamics and working at a corporate job.

Planning to get into a competition by Google for developers, Narayan and his team created an interesting software that could help people keep a log of their daily lives and provide reminders or help recall information. He highlights how his team of co-founders created a product called Friday and started to pitch to investors to get funding in order to grow. But with an undefined elevator pitch and messed-up priorities, their funding dreams didn’t happen for quite some time.

Finally, Vijay Shekhar Sharma, Chairman, and MD at One97 Communications (PayTM) invested in their business. Despite this positive sign, it looked like Narayan’s team was not meant for much success. Before their product could take off, the first iPhone came into being. With iPhone’s Siri, Friday suddenly became more relevant to the tech community. As Narayan shares, his team could build a Siri-type solution for Android in 24 hours!

In this talk filled with insights about life, career, product management, and entrepreneurship, Narayan’s unassuming narration makes one wonder what success really is and if there really is a roadmap to achieve it.

⚡Here are some insights from this talk:
1. I really don’t give weightage to intelligence or something you are born with because that makes you complacent.
2. Right product management is when you look at the customer and what’s a need there and build on that.
3. Taking feedback is very important in life.
4. Self-awareness, knowing what drives you and what you want, is a skill you can cultivate to make life more meaningful.

0:00 Highlights
1:19 Introduction
1:45 What inspired Narayan towards Engineering?
3:05 Early exposure of Internet, Computer and Games
8:16 Choosing Engineering over Family Tradition
11:26 Participating in Google Developers Contest
14:37 Why we couldn’t raise funds for our product?
17:36 What our Product was about?
18:34 Juggling between job and side-hustle
22:07 Stay tuned for Part 2…

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