Thank god for the Vaccine!
2020 has been a lot of things so I thought I’ll start the last newsletter with some positive news. At the time of writing, the UK is going to soon start administrating the first covid-19 vaccine. And in my opinion, that is the best news to see off 2020.
But in classic 2020 style, there are reports of a new strain of covid vaccine found in UK and Nigeria. Sigh.
I don’t think there ever will be a year like 2021, that must shoulder the burden of the 7 billion expectations to be GOOD. Nor extraordinary, neither amazing. Just good.
2021, please don’t disappoint. No pressure.
December is a month for reflections. People check on their yearly resolutions and how disappointed are they with how quickly they forgot about those dear resolutions.
Our Favourite products launched in 2020
Continuing with the tradition, in the December digest, we wanted to make a list of the best products launched in 2020.
The criteria for this was simple
Your favourite product could be a software tool, hardware or anything new under the sun that was launched in 2020.
You will need to tell us what makes this your favourite product.
And here are the results
(The results are in the order as the submissions came in.)
Helps find interesting content, top influencers and community engagement
Touchless KeyChain by Mahindra - Nominated by Paresh
During Covid time Mahindra launched one small key chain which will helped users touchless door opening facility. Very simple and innovative product. They served the mkt need.
The first laptop I brought in my life was a macbook, It's been six years the speed & display has been same. It has become me. Gradually I realised my best companion is my macbook. On year ending Mid November I had to hunt for second device to use, That's where I met iPad Air. It's so much worth to make your day better and life easier.
Timecap - Nominated by Padmanabh
Although the app was launched in January 2020, I came across it only recently. Beautiful, minimal & functional UI, Helpful stats/insights for reviewing progress, Has an option to track activities with multiple occurrences in a specific time interval ( For eg. I use it for tracking pushups, multiple sets of 12 pushups in a day etc.) 2021 is almost here, so recommending it here for everyone for planning and tracking new habits in the new year..!
Smartwatch - Nominated by Manish Modi
2020 showed how health is important apart from other lifestyle so to track your daily health monitoring smartwatch with n numbers of features is must like heart rates, bP, oxygen level, water drinking level, sleep level, number of steps walked etc.
Excalidraw - Nominated by Vedant
If you are a product manager, please use this to share your product ideas. Wire-framing could not have been made simpler. No signups, no barriers. Simply type the link in your browser and start sketching your ideas :) Pure joy :)
To the people who took time to fill the google form, we floated in the WhatsApp group, thanks a lot.
Let’s get on a Zoom call.
Zoom has had an unforgettable year. You can pick any metric used to define the success of a startup and zoom would have set new benchmarks in it this year.
Yes, the lockdown provided a perfect market, but it’s not as if they had zero competition. On the contrary Google, Microsoft, Slack, and Facebook (basically just about every tech behemoth) had a competitive product. And most of them provide their services completely for free.
Yet…
Zoom managed to quadruple its revenue this year. Wow!
A case study you should not miss
This case study was done by Amit, and I would recommend all of you to give it a read. It dissects Zoom's pricing with amazing insights. I have attached one of the slides of the case-study here.
Since we are sharing work of our community members...
Akshay was pretty busy last month surveying product managers and collating the insights. Safe to say, if you are someone eager to step into the product management space you just cannot miss this. Click on the link below to read it. Thank me later :)
Some of the things planned for 2021
From Zoom, we now know things can really turn in a single year, and for ProductTank Pune we want 2021 to be that year.
So, we are preparing a calendar for the events and initiatives we can do next year. For January 2021, we are planning two events
A workshop on - “Hacking your Product Leader career”
An event on - “Why are soft skills the hardest when managing products?”
This is still in works, do let us know if you have any ideas on how to improve the quality of our events. Thanks :)
Also, subscribe to the newsletter to get more news about upcoming events.
Hirings
No edition of the ProductTank Pune newsletter can be complete without a take on the latest hirings.
Some of the new hirings are listed here. You can check the rest by clicking on the button below. Hurry up these jobs are highly sought after.
Vice president for Product with a Startup- Mumbai
Product manager with Airbase- Bangalore
Product Manager with a US healthcare- Mumbai
Product Owner with a startup- Bangalore
Product Owner with Citius Tech- Mumbai
From ProductTank Pune
We wish you have a Happy 2021.
Thanks for being with us in 2020, and we promise we have great things planned for our community in the year ahead.
See you next year :P
Team ProductTank Pune.