Akhil Jayaprakash

Senior Product Manager

Amazon

Career Milestones

There were two defining moments in my career A) When I found my calling in products: this happened when I was won an idea generation contest in Akamai and was given an opportunity to present to the Founder of Akamai Tom Leighton. B) When I understood product management is not about finding the right solution but it's about identifying the right problem.

Organization and You

Currently I work at Amazon and focus on making online e-commerce accessible to the next 100 million users in India. This was one of the motivating factors for me to move back from Boston. When you start looking for new markets that are going to have meteoric growth then it's going to be our untapped cities in India.

Core Competencies

I love speaking to customers and understanding the why to their problems. During weekends I often spend my time thinking about how the next 10 years in India will look like for folks that live in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities.

Go to food for thought

Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell and for my daily commute I used to catch up on Turnaround Podcasts (https://turnaround.substack.com/)

Favorite Products

I can't pinpoint one that exists today but I am looking forward to new products that will sprout up because of COVID. For example: Touchless buttons on elevators, touchless point of sale machines, etc. I think it's worth looking out for how companies will approach solving this problem.