Product Management at Gaana

Gaana is the largest music streaming platform in India - with more than 185 million monthly users.

As a Product Manager, the first project I was responsible for was increasing engagement via personalized push notifications.

The goal was to increase 2 KPIs: click-through rate and conversions. I had a ton of fun with the project and loved blending my data science background with customer-facing impact! I developed a product management framework to deliver results.

I began the process by understanding the problem space: what factors affect engagement? What factors affect personalized notifications? I then conducted user analysis to understand the Indian audience. I analyzed data in BigQuery and created visuals in Data Studio to define user personas. Once I created personas, I conducted literary and market research to understand general push notifications.

I worked with multiple departments; the product team, the marketing team, the data team, the content/editorial team to cross-communicate, learn about each department and how things work, set expectations, streamline a process, and deliver results.

From developing general push notifications, I received numbers for the KPIs — some good, some bad, but all gave me new insights to do even better. I gathered insights on what type of notifications work best (attached in the presentation below), and was able to successfully increase both conversions and click through rates.

Below is the presentation I gave to the executive board.

Please note I replaced all numbers with “XX” as per an NDA.

The next project I worked on was playlist creation. At that point, Gaana had not tapped into social engagement for user-generated content (UGC). I worked heavily with the design team to rethink how Gaana should look and behave — and most importantly, how it should make people feel.

The goal was to make people feel a certain way when they look at their playlists: perhaps pride if they see how many people enjoy their playlists (likes, heart reacts, comments), maybe a sense of belonging if their playlist is being shared (downloads, shares), or a sense of nostalgia by mimicking the experience of “burning a CD” for a friend.

The first step was to redesign and simplify the playlist creation process. I developed design principles to follow, attached below.

Here are my designs based on the product requirement documentation. Note: these are not necessarily the final designs that Gaana used.