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Aseef Pasha: Scaling new heights, fueled by ambition, hard work and IPL

Aseef was easily the most popular guy in his ICPM cohort. I know this, because I was part of the same cohort. He contacted me a few days before the program started, and we began to exchange (our then nascent) views on product management, marketing and more.

I learned soon enough that Aseef’s cheerful demeanor hid a razor sharp mind and fierce ambition. In our online classes, Aseef was the one with the most questions. Many sessions ran well past the three hour class duration, courtesy the lively discussions we had with the faculty, and with each other, often led by Aseef.

During the course, Aseef was a Product Owner at Tesco. His product idea centred around mentoring and was one of the three pitches that made it to the final of the course. He was a masterful product leader, often working alone and honing his pitch repeatedly as we demoed to professors, mentors and industry veterans.

A few months after the course, Aseef joined Borderless Access Panels as a Senior Product Manager, driving innovation for a smart sight product. Aseef credits IPL for challenging his thinking ability over the ICPM course, and says all those learnings really helped him get the 360 degree mind shift of a typical product manager.

Read on to learn about November’s Product Manager of the Month:

Q: Can you tell us about your background, and what made you join the ICPM program?

I’m an entrepreneur at heart with a start-up mindset, and passionate about products and their reason for existence. I want to understand customer problems and build something they really want. I wanted to be the CEO of a product. I was looking for a experiential learning to access my capability. ICPM was the right course and IPL was the right ecosystem to put my thought process into life. I have co-created an idea worth pursuing in the presence of world class faculty, and leveraged the 100+ years of experience of the cohort.

Q: How did the program impact your career progression?

The experiential learning (Product Labs) really helped me to live the life of the Product Manager in the complete ICPM program. This program really made me to think hard about every decision I take for my product and business.

Q: What are you working on, and how are you applying what you learnt at IPL into your job?

Currently I am understanding the pain points faced by our clients (customers) and users. I am going to make life easy for our customers and users. I will be working towards increasing the penetration of my product at a global level. I will also work on the pricing strategy and manage the P&L of the product.Whatever i have learnt at IPL is helping me to make my manager’s life easy.

Q: Any advice for those contemplating joining an IPL program?

If you really want to be in a uncomfortable situation, you can experience it only here at IPL.This is the course where your thinking is challenged at every moment. And believe me at the end of the course you will emerge as a product leader and excel at your job.

Q: Do you keep in touch with other alumni? Why and how?

I believe in learning from others and there is no end to learning. Alumni networks are meant for that, besides the lifelong friendships. They expose you to lots of trends across different industries. This will in turn help you to innovate better. Besides the IPL alumni I’m in touch with, the Product Leaders Forum (PLF) is a platform that brings all of us to one place and creates a better product community.

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