How Product Managers in India's Tech Ecosystem Are Grappling With AI

In his final year of engineering, Sarthak Jain thought he was headed for a straightforward coding career. Then, while interning at an edtech start-up, he found himself juggling marketing campaigns, mentorship projects, and admin work, anything but software development.

“One day, the co-founder told me, ‘You’re good at a lot of things so why not become a product manager?’ I didn’t even know what the job was,” he recalls.

That offhand suggestion set him on an unplanned path, from being the company’s first Product Manager to cracking a coveted associate role at PhonePe without an MBA, IIT badge, or tier-1 college degree. “When the cohort joined, I realised I was the only one without those tags. That felt like a win.” Today, as a product manager at Razorpay, he works on some of the company’s most critical offerings, helping shape how millions transact every day.

Similarly, in 2021, Manthana Hegde’s calendar was a mosaic of colour-coded blocks from sprint meetings, design critiques, launch reviews at a fast-growing Mumbai ed-tech unicorn.“I felt indispensable,” she recalls. “Every decision ran through me.”

Meanwhile, in Bengaluru, Benny Biju balanced user feedback, engineering bugs, and investor escalation calls while leading a fintech app, joking, “I slept with my laptop open.”

Fast forward two years, Manthana operates within an AI-driven product workflow at a healthtech start-up, “half my old tasks are handled by a tool.” Benny is now a freelance consultant, never touching a Gantt chart again. For Anoshka, who switched from a consumer-app Product Manager role to data strategy, and Angad Singh, whose SaaS team now relies on AI to draft initial specs, the transformation is stark.

Their stories reflect a profession once deemed the top career path in India’s start-up world but now, on the cusp of reinvention.

Everyone Can Be a Product Manager

Two to three years ago, “Product Manager” was the ultimate career target for fresh MBAs and mid-career professionals alike. Salaries soared, associate Product Managers could command ₹17 lakh a year, while chief product officers crossed ₹1.3 crore, a 7.6× jump across the ladder.

“Back then, we’d joke that every problem could be solved by hiring a Product Manager,” says a founder at a Bengaluru SaaS start-up. “We staffed up with generalists, smart people who could talk to engineers in the morning and pitch to the CEO by evening.”

Anoshka remembers the frenzy: “It felt like you had superpowers just by having the title on your LinkedIn.”

From 2018 to 2019, demand was steady, but by 2020-2021, the pandemic had turbo-charged hiring. Many start-ups saw the role double or triple as venture funding poured in. LinkedIn postings reached a global peak in 2022, crossing four lakh openings. With VC money flooding in, product led growth was gospel. McKinsey estimated the pandemic accelerated tech adoption globally by five years, boosting its demand in India’s ed-tech, fintech, and health-tech sectors. 

“Between 2019 and 2021, Product Manager hiring grew 2.5× in our tech portfolio. It was almost a default hire after funding,” says a partner at a Mumbai-based venture capital firm who requested anonymity. Manthana recalls those days, “If you had an MBA and could talk in metrics, you were Product Manager-ready.”

During this period, start-ups often brought on Product Managers within two weeks of interviewing, a hiring cycle that now feels unthinkable in the current market.

While Jain’s career path reflects unconventional entry routes, the rise of AI, and early-stage start-up demand are rewriting the rulebook for who becomes a Product Manager and how the role is defined. Once a niche, vaguely understood position, the job is now both fiercely coveted and rapidly evolving.

The Shift

However, the funding slowdown and layoffs have tightened the market. LinkedIn data shows the job postings plunging from over 426,000 in September 2022 to just 34,000 in 2025. In India, hiring cycles have stretched from 2-3 weeks to 2-3 months.

“We’ve moved from hiring 15 Product Managers in a quarter to maybe three and those are highly specialised roles,” says Aisiri Hornad, the talent acquisition head at a mid-sized fintech start-up. “Generalists are struggling to justify their value.”

Vikram, who survived a round of layoffs in 2024, says, “I had to re-skill in AI workflows just to keep my seat at the table.”

Still, there are signs of recovery because Indian start-up layoffs dropped 67% in the first half of 2025 compared to the same period in 2024, with hiring picking up in fintech, deep-tech, and logistics. The shift has also meant that PMs without deep specialisation are moving into adjacent fields like data analytics, UX design, or entrepreneurship.

But what about the AI disruption? AI is rewriting the Product Manager toolkit. From drafting PRDs to analysing user feedback, automation is eating away at repetitive tasks. Developer productivity has jumped 30% in some teams, partly because AI handles coordination and reporting areas the role once owned.

“A lot of the grunt work, PRDs, requirement docs, even roadmap prioritisation can be AI-assisted,” says Aliza Noor, a product strategy consultant at a boutique Bengaluru firm.

For Benny, the change is personal, “I used to spend hours compiling competitor analysis decks. Now, an AI tool does it in 20 minutes, and my role is just to validate and decide.”

However, the PM role comes with its share of ethical trade-offs. Jain admits he’s shipped features early in his career that he personally disagreed with because they aligned with business goals. “Almost every Product Manager has done it especially early on when you don’t yet have the experience or influence to push back,” he says.

And then there’s the chaos.

“We thrive in chaos. If everything was perfectly structured, a lot of what we do would be irrelevant,” Jain says. “The tough days come when your product underperforms, that’s the dark side of the moon people don’t talk about.”

Some start-ups are even letting tech leads run product planning, skipping junior Product Manager hires altogether. This marks a departure from the pre-2023 era, when early-stage founders almost automatically brought in a PM as soon as they closed a seed round.

The New Product Manager Profile

The future Product Manager needs AI literacy, domain expertise, and an ability to bridge technology with business strategy. Skills such as data storytelling, technical fluency, and human leadership are now as critical as road mapping or sprint management.

“We want Product Managers who can bridge machine learning models and business outcomes,” says Ankuj, a founder of a Bengaluru start-up. “It’s closer to being a mini-CEO than a coordinator.”

Angad agrees, “You can’t hide behind processes anymore because you need to understand the tech under the hood.” Recruiters note that those who can operate in product-led environments or navigate highly regulated sectors like fintech and healthtech are the ones most likely to secure top offers.

As the role’s visibility has grown, so have salary expectations. Jain has watched peers from tier-2 and tier-3 colleges break into Product Managers positions that once seemed out of reach. “The hot-cake status of this role hasn’t gone down, it’s increased. Companies will pay well if you can harness AI and make your customers’ lives easier,” Jain says.

Albeit, the MBA-to-Product Manager pipeline that flourished between 2018 and 2022 is narrowing. Career services offices are seeing the shift.

“Student interest has cooled,” says a faculty member at IIM Ahmedabad’s career services. “They’re still keen, but they know the easy entry is over.”

For Manthana, Benny, Anoshka, Angad, and Sarthak the evolution isn’t bleak, instead it is refining. “The role is leaner, sharper, and more strategic,” says Ananya, who is currently pursuing her MBA. “But if you walk in thinking an MBA alone will do it, you’ll be surprised.”

But Jain is convinced AI won’t replace them but Product Managers who can’t use AI might be replaced. “An AI-enabled product manager is going to come for your job, not AI itself. AI is just an extension of your right hand,” he says.

The real value, he adds, is in human judgement: “AI is still a kid, getting good at maths and writing but far from replacing human intelligence. The Product Managers’s foresight and ability to see nuances AI misses is what keeps the role relevant.”

From 2018 to 2025, the Product Manager job has travelled a full arc: steady demand, pandemic boom, peak hiring, funding slowdown, AI disruption, and finally a more selective, skill-driven future. What survives is a role that demands more than coordination, it calls for technical insight, business agility, and human leadership that AI can’t yet replicate.