NASSCOM Product Conclave Conference 2008

I had the pleasure of attending the second annual product conclave conference organized by NASSCOM. This year I was not only an attendee but a speaker too. The conference was held on August 11th and 12th at the Grand Ashok hotel in Bangaluru. This year there was much more participation than last year which was the inception year for product conclave conference.

This conference focuses on indian software product business and brings together luminaries from all known and unknown Indian product companies.

With slowing services sector and increasing VC funding there is lot of interest in software products business. However building a great software product requires a different set of skills and most importantly a different mindset. My speaking topic was centered around the same theme, "Product Development to Product Management". I had the fortune of sharing the panel with VP of Product Management from Yahoo! India, VP of Product Management from iFlex software and a senior Marketing manager from Rational/IBM India office. I talked about the role of product management and how it gets confused frequently. As software product business takes root here in India, there is great need for educating and dissiminating this information. As such our session was very well attended and got great response. So much so, that I may be helping out NASSCOM further with creating/delivering "product management basics" course in future.

Suhas A. Kelkar
Vice President Product Management