Duraisamy Kandasamy

I am a seasoned product management professional with over 12 years of experience specializing in SaaS solutions. I am recognized for my dedication to empathetic leadership, evidence-based decision-making, and a holistic approach to product management.
Throughout my career, I have successfully led cross-functional teams, ensuring our products align with user needs and expectations. Grounded in a strong analytical mindset, I've spearheaded analytics initiatives to enhance organizational efficiencies, optimizing product features, user experiences, and overall business performance.
My involvement in every stage of product management, from conceptualization to actualization, reflects my commitment to understanding business requirements holistically. I am passionate about crafting user-friendly, responsive, and scalable products that seamlessly align with overarching business goals.

1. Vantage Solutions (Aloha Engineering): Aug 2022 - Jan 2024, Role - Product Manager

REACH is connected to thousands of maintenance industry players. REACH ‘Exchanges as a Service’ (EaaS) is built around the idea of offering a standalone out- of-the-box ability to connect with the industry players directly. Also, integrate service enablers like equipment owners, original equipment manufacturers and call centers in a cohesive maintenance ecosystem.

Responsibilities and Achievements:
1) Spearheaded the development of a comprehensive product roadmap, aligning with company goals. Resulted in a 25% increase in feature delivery efficiency and a 20% improvement in time-to-market.
2) Directed the creation and prioritization of epics and user stories, contributing to a 30% rise in overall product satisfaction and a 15% reduction in post-launch issues.
3) Implemented initiatives to enhance mobile experiences, resulting in a 30% increase in mobile app engagement and a 20% rise in positive user feedback.
4) Introduced a feature that directly contributed to a 15% increase in product revenue.
5) Initiated customer-focused features that contributed to a 15% improvement in customer retention rates over a 12-month period & 25% growth in the active user base in the last 2 quarters.
6) Established and maintained effective communication channels with internal and external stakeholders. Cultivated strategic partnerships with key industry players, fostering collaboration and revenue growth.

2. Blackboard: Oct 2018 - Jul 2022, Role - Product Manager
Blackboard Learn (LMS) allow educators to deliver life-changing teaching and learning experiences with unmatched pedagogical autonomy. Blackboard Learn provide learners and educators with the tools to help deliver life-changing teaching and learning experiences, and system reliability. From efficient workflows to extensive community of practice, Blackboard Learn is the ideal combination of education and technology.

Key Responsibilities:
1) Strategic Team Leadership - Managed a cross-platform distributed team for the development of Blackboard's first student focused solution on iOS and Android platforms.
2) Value Stream Enhancement - Drove the "Assessment & Grading" value stream, collaborating with product and engineering leadership, design, and engineering teams to deliver impactful features to market.
3) Product Expertise for Support Teams - Provided crucial product expertise to support account management, customer support, sales, and training teams.
4) Pioneering Wearable Technology Integration - Spearheaded the integration of cutting-edge wearable technology, actively contributing to the development and beta testing of an innovative app for wearable devices.

Achievements:
1) User Engagement - Achieved a substantial 44% increase in monthly active users year over year, indicating improved product adoption and engagement.
2) Educator Efficiency - Successfully reduced non-teaching efforts of educators by an impressive 30% year over year, enhancing overall efficiency.
3) Platform Consistency - Reduced the capability gap between the app and mobile platforms by a remarkable 90%, ensuring a seamless user experience.
4) Mobile app ratings improvement & increase in downloads - Led efforts to improve app ratings from a declining 2.6 to 4 for Android and 4.5 for iOS amidst the challenges of COVID-19. Achieved a significant 28% increase in downloads in the last quarter, indicating heightened user interest and market acceptance.

3. Mindtree: Mar 2009 - Oct 2018, Role - Consultant

As Consultant within Mindtree, had been part of multiple complex projects across various domain, right from proposals until project go-live by wearing multiple hats (BA, Product Owner, Product Manager, UAT, Scrum Master, Client Manager) at each phase of Software development life cycle.

Responsibilities:
1) Determined customer's needs and desires by specifying research needed to obtain market information.
2) Elicit and clearly document business and systems requirements. Analyze and synthesize business requirements, including recognizing patterns and conceptualizing processes.
3) Understand and negotiate needs and expectations of multiple stakeholders. Serve as liaison between Operations and IT to assist or gather business requirements needed for system modifications, enhancement and implementations.
4) Collaborated closely with developers to implement requirements, provide necessary guidance to testers during QA process. Facilitate discussions with Solution Architect, UI/UX design teams and provide them enough details on existing business pain points to help them arrive at solution.
5) Prepared Mockups/Wireframes to support UI/UX, Dev and QA teams.
6) Provided walkthrough to business stakeholders by demo on deliverables that has been planned.
7) Created and maintained project schedules by developing project plans and specifications, estimating time and resources, monitoring milestone completion, tracking all phases of project lifecycle, providing timely reporting of issues that impact project progress, coordinating actions and resolving conflicts.
8) Responsible for communication of releases, features, roadmap and schedule to internal users, stakeholders and executives.

Anna University

Bachelors of Engineering (June 2004 - May 2008)

Electronics and Communication Engineering