Varun Kulkarni | SpeakerHub

Personal Details

Bio

Varun is a Senior Product Manager at Microsoft. He leads high-impact strategic initiatives for next-gen AI based products, platforms and digital consumer ecosystems. Previously, he was a Senior Product Manager at Cisco and a Senior Consultant at Deloitte Consulting LLP.

Varun also has an MBA from the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management and an MS from Northwestern University.

He is a Product Leader with ~10 years of experience across cutting-edge AI, ML, GenAI, Cloud, Digital Transformation technologies and B2B, and B2C Business Products and Services. He has keen business and strategic acumen and is passionate about leveraging technology to improve the lives of end users.

Varun also actively engages in speaker engagements as a Product and Strategy leader with Northwestern University, University of Washington and University of Toronto.

Current position (3)

Senior Product Manager

Microsoft

Senior Product Manager

Cisco Webex

Senior Consultant

Deloitte Consulting LLP

Degrees (2)

MBA Strategy & Finance

University of Toronto Rotman School of Management

2020 to 2022

MS Business and Operations Management

Northwestern University

2015 to 2016

Presentations

Presentations (4)

Should Product Managers prefer ruthless or pragmatic digitization?

Product Managers focused on digitzation must prioritize for maximum value capture. Selecting a process-oriented framework is key for exceeding customer expectations and next-gen customer experiences.

Enable PM best actions for Go-To-Market and Product Market Fit through AI-based Data and Insights

With the prevalence of AI, Product Managers can use an action-oriented approach to leverage data and insights for continuously improving Go To Market and Product Market Fit

How to effectively deal with and leverage ambiguity as product managers

Product managers mostly, if only sometimes, have to deal with ambiguity. Whether it is unclear customer requirements, conflicting priorities, rapidly shifting market dynamics, designing innovative solutions, or any day-to-day activity, product managers must overcome obscurity/vagueness or cryptic challenges that create ambiguous directives. A simple example is Cool Customer-Centric Features VS Monetization Features VS Technical Debt. Ambiguity (in the absence of data) affects decision-making, product strategy, vision, and simply shipping new features or products.

Data and Inishgts Led Product Management

Keynote speaker at the ADP Product Day in 2023 delivering a presentation on Data and Insights Led Product Management.

Past talks (5)

How to succed as a PM

Northwestern University

Chicago

June 1, 2022

How should PMs deal with increased digitization

Northwestern University

Chicago

July 1, 2022

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