Ankur Sharma

Today marks my last day at Goibibo and MakeMyTrip. It has been an eventful journey of 4 years. I was very fortunate. I worked with the smartest people on the earth, built multiple lines of business and learnt lots during the course. Here were my top takeaways: Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish : When I had heard this line at Steve Jobs commencement speech, I only understood its meaning metaphorically. Over the last 4 years, I have worked in at least 6 different lines of business of Goibibo, more often than not working at 2 of them simultaneously. Every time I started leading a team, I learnt something new there, about product management, leadership, managing teams and being productive. Leaders like Ashish and Rajesh at Goibibo and MakeMyTrip taught me to keep looking forward and keep creating a vision of “Think about the way it’s going to be.” instead of “Remember, how it used to be?” Always be ready to unlearn: When I joined Goibibo, I was already one of the experienced PMs in the co...

This week, I spent time at IIT Guwahati giving pre-placement talk and the next whole day at the placement process trying to find our next Product Managers. The idea was to find someone who could join MakeMyTrip's Young Turks Program.  I and my colleague went through 258 profiles who had applied for the Product Management role. The number made us realise that it was one of the hotly contested role in the campus. We had some real good profiles - Students who were undisputedly working on super hot stuff!  While the shortlisting itself was a herculean tasks, eventually we could whittle it down to a manageable number. And when we started speaking to theses folks, I was blown away with the clarity in their thought process. Following are my observations from the experience: Electronics Engineers have finally found a niche! : When I was in college, placement for E&CE was always a tangential experience. Either you go to IT companies prevalent then (there were rarely ...