As the world becomes increasingly digital, businesses adopt new technologies and approaches to stay ahead of the curve. This is particularly true in product management, where digitization allows tech leaders to make informed decisions that can drive innovation and improve product outcomes, leading to greater social and economic benefits.
Digital Product Management expert Varun Milind Kulkarni is playing a leading and critical role in leveraging specialized digital product management to drive innovation in the technology and healthcare industries. As a seasoned digital product management expert for six and a half years, Varun has been instrumental in reshaping the tech industry through his mastery of product strategy, design, and management. His drive for innovation pushed him to grab opportunities to build and launch next-generation digital experiences while making a positive impact on end-users and communities.
The industry of digital product management
A tech product's success or failure often hinges on the effectiveness of its digital product management, which makes it a vital component of the tech industry. It involves guiding a tech product through its entire lifecycle, from ideation, planning, design, development, launch, and post-launch evaluation, ensuring that it meets its users' needs while aligning with the company's goals and objectives.
This approach requires a deep understanding of user experience, product lifecycle, strategic management, and advanced operations excellence, as well as the ability to create intuitive, easy-to-use products, and meet the expectations of today's tech-savvy individuals while maintaining usefulness for the end-customers.
Varun's mastery of digital product management
Varun, as an expert in product management began his career at Deloitte, one of the Big 4 consulting firms, where he worked for five and a half years. During this time, he led and played a critical role in launching some of the biggest digital platforms for modernizing public-assistance healthcare programs like Medicaid, SNAP, and LTC. He also managed and led the first-of-its-kind cloud-based telehealth products across various cross-functional teams such as millions of end-users and a very large number of healthcare providers in several US States, providing virtual care for members in Nursing Facilities and Hospice Care during COVID-19.
At present, Varun is a Senior Product Manager at Cisco Webex overseeing product management and strategy for next-gen B2B SaaS and Contact Center products that leverage cutting-edge technologies like AI and Cloud Modernization. This includes generating ideas, conceptualizing, strategizing, designing, and managing the product life cycle, roadmap, and vision. Varun also drives customer and stakeholder engagement, launching successful products in the health-tech, technology, B2B, and consumer services sectors focusing on digitization.
He shares, "Across both organizations, I have always played leading and critical roles in driving digitization for customer-centric and next-gen products that positively impact communities and customer experience. These experiences gave me an opportunity to master the art of innovative and beneficial product management."
Mastery that drives real results
Varun's mastery of building tangible products has had a significant impact on the lives of many individuals and businesses. Through his expertise in digital product management, operations research, and business strategy, he has conceptualized and launched multiple digital health-tech products that have improved patient outcomes/experiences and reduced operational costs for public-assistance healthcare programs such as Medicaid, SNAP, and Long-Term Care. His work on telehealth products has been critical in providing low-cost virtual care to Long-Term Care individuals, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Varun's work on next-gen Unified Communication as a Service (UCaaS) platforms has also had a significant impact on US and EU B2B enterprises, improving their infrastructure utilization, and business operations as well as data-driven decision-making, and fostering workforce optimization and collaboration. By providing next-gen digital reporting and analytics, Varun's products have helped businesses make better forecasting and business decisions that reduce operational costs which increase ROI, and ultimately contribute to the growth of the US economy.
His mastery and excellence in digital product management have undoubtedly led to the development of tangible products that people enjoy and benefit from, driving community improvement and innovation. His approach to product management emphasizes digitization and customer-centricity, ensuring that products are designed to meet users' needs, thus fostering a thriving and progressing community.
Varun's passion for giving back
Varun shares that his passion for innovation and digitization came from his inherent curiosity to utilize technology and build products that improve customer experiences and positively impact customer lives. From his college days back in India, to pursuing an advanced MS degree from Northwestern University and an MBA from the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management, Varun did not stop pursuing his goal.
Varun possesses expertise in innovation and digitization and demonstrates a desire to impart this knowledge to others to improve their quality of life. This is evident in his role as an MBA Edge Mentor for the University of Washington, and a distinguished Alumni Mentor for Northwestern University where he mentors undergraduate and graduate students with his expertise so they can also be catalysts of change and improvement.
"As I learned, it's time to give back. I am relentless in my pursuit of solutions that can make a positive difference in people's lives," Varun shares.
Because of his unwavering passion for mastering his craft in digitization, Varun has paved the way for more innovative, beneficial, and life-changing digital products that surely changed and will continue to change the playing field for people, the community, and the country, in the years to come.
