Context

This is a transcript of a mock interview I did while preparing for the Staff Product Manager role for Nykaa Luxe. The point of it was to test my product sense and to see how prepared I actually was.

• Interviewer: Damodar
• When: 6 September 2026, 5:00 PM
• Length: 30 minutes
• Role: Staff Product Manager, Nykaa Luxe

We skipped the intro and the background, so Damodar went straight into my last role.

The questions

• Can you tell me a little bit about what you did at Novo Nordisk in your last role? previous work experience
• When you say building access, what did that mean? follow-up probe
• Can you tell me about a time when some intervention you did actually helped? past impact
• How do you see this experience helping you create a good product for Nykaa Luxe? transferability
• What is your core differentiator, or why you and not someone else for Nykaa Luxe? positioning
• Sizing works differently across brands, so how do you know what you are buying is for you? product sense

Worth noting what is missing from that list. There was no root cause analysis question, no metrics question, and no case where he handed me an ambiguous problem and asked me to solve it live.

Question 1: What did you do at Novo Nordisk?

I answered this in two parts.

First, I said I helped build access for consumers, and that I launched Wegovy before moving on to building access.

Then I explained what that work involved. Access meant that people could find the medication and use it in a responsible manner. My job was to find the people who were most eligible, or who needed the medication most, and help them find their way to the medication, to the right experts, and to the right support system that would let them improve their health.

Question 2: When you say building access, what did that mean?

I answered this by splitting the segment in two.

I said that weight management has two parts to it, the disease and the treatment.

On the disease side, there is a lot of misinformation, and a lot of things people simply do not understand or know about weight loss. There is also a lot of fear attached to it, especially fear of taking the treatment.

On the treatment side, people do not understand that it is not only the fear of the medication, it is also that the treatment has to be coupled with good lifestyle habits and diet. This is a prescription-only medication, so access means more than the medicine being available.

Then I said what ties both parts together. All of this is only possible if the person has access to the right information and the right experts, and that does not come to you directly. It is not easily available on the internet either, because there is just so much misinformation out there.

I made one more point here that I think matters. A lot of people who struggle with weight loss have already tried many things. Eating less and moving more is not something they have not tried a hundred times before.

So access, the way I described it, covers understanding why your body is doing what it is doing, finding the right doctors, working out whether the treatment is right for you, knowing where to go and how to get it, and then the care that comes after the treatment.

Question 3: Tell me about a time when an intervention you did actually helped

I had two instances I could have used here. I picked one and left the other, because the one I chose had the most groundwork behind it and was probably one of the most successful things we unlocked.

I answered this in three parts.

What we found. I said there were two halves to the work, helping people understand weight management before they were prescribed anything, and the treatment experience itself. I took the first half. In a lot of conversations with doctors and patients, we found that people do not understand why they are putting on weight or why it is so hard to lose it. They do not know what to do. They are scared of the medication and scared of going to a doctor, because weight management is a very taboo subject.

We also found something I did not expect. A person does not take this decision alone. The entire family weighs in on it. If it is a couple, the husband weighs in on the wife’s decision. If the mother is the one taking it, the children weigh in and tell her she can or should not take the medication.

What we did about it. Because of that, we worked out that you need a broader change in how society approaches and talks about weight, and you also need change at a much more personal level, and at the levels in between. Doing a one-on-one, or running a radio ad, does not work on its own. You have to get on as many platforms as possible, repeat the same message as much as you can, and at the same time create safe spaces for these conversations to happen.

So we ran billboards, news ads, AdWords, placements in newspapers and on radio, online advertisements and social media ads. We also did in-person discussions inside residential societies, clinics and dispensaries. On top of that we did one-on-one counselling, and we did family counselling.

What actually changed. Family counselling made the biggest difference. Every time we ran one, the partner came away understanding, more than anything else, why the other person was struggling. There was a movement of guilt and of burden. It became them against the disease, instead of the partner against the person going through it.

That is why we were able to move as much as we did. We tripled our conversion, and by conversion I mean people going from an inquiry to actually taking a consultation with a doctor.

Question 4 and 5: Why you, and how does this help you build for Nykaa Luxe

Damodar asked these separately but I answered them as one, so I have put them together here.

I answered in three parts.

The through line in my career. I have been in different roles at different capacities. I started in product, then moved to a strategy-facing role, and finally into commercial. I have also moved across industries, starting in food, then insurance, then healthcare, and then pharmaceutical. What I told him is that the skill I focused on sharpening the most across all of it was understanding the consumer and their problems. What is the core need, how do I answer it, and how do I communicate value to the consumer in the way they actually want to hear it.

What each role taught me. At Kenko I learned that ops and support can break at every turn, and that the real question is how you build robust processes. At Rebel Foods I learned how your SOPs can break things. At Novo Nordisk I learned that if you have a great product but it cannot talk to your consumer in the language they are willing to listen to, it does not matter. Novo Nordisk also taught me that trust is paramount when you are putting a product like that in front of someone, and that you have to build for trust.

Why that fits luxury. I said that luxury is a category where communication is primary, and important, if not the deal breaker. You need amazing communication, visually, spatially, verbally, excellent communication throughout and nothing short of that. Because let us face it, a customer is coming onto your platform to pay a hundred times what a normal product costs, so how are you going to justify that experience? And on top of that you are an e-commerce place. You are competing with a hundred other brands and ten thousand other SKUs, and for a luxury product that is wild. How do you still communicate exclusivity? How do you communicate quality? How do you communicate that value? That becomes the key question, and it is what I have spent my career building.

The product discussion: sizing

Damodar brought up an example. When you are shopping, sizing is a big problem, because different brands size differently. So how do you know that what you are buying is actually for you?

I answered in three parts.

Why it is harder in luxury. I said this is a classic e-commerce problem, but in luxury you have to have a solve. You cannot tell someone here is a 32 size waist, now imagine what that looks like on your waist. That is going to be crazy. You have to go the extra mile.

Additional services. I gave an example from outside e-commerce. I went to a really expensive boutique to buy a saree. They did the finishing, the fall and the pico, and handed it to me directly. Then they said that for a very minimal price they would also stitch the blouse for me. Additional services, offered immediately.

Trust markers. Then I talked about trust markers. When you are buying a phone that costs thirty or forty thousand rupees, why do they do open-box delivery? Yes, there is fraud, and this came out of an iterative process. But does it not give you trust in the process? You know that you are going to see the product you receive, so you know it is the one. Interventions like that are what build trust and what build confidence.

I closed by saying that this is what the platform should be doing. Understand what the customer needs at every point, and make sure we are meeting that need in a very premium manner.

Analysis

Defining access took me three attempts

This is the one I am least happy with. Damodar asked a simple clarifying question about a phrase I had used myself, and I did not have a clean answer ready.

I started down one path about consumers wanting to experience weight loss and trying a lot of different things without success. I stopped, corrected myself, and started again with a different answer about it being prescription-only. Then I stopped a second time and took a third run at it, which is when I landed on the framing that actually works: the disease on one side, the treatment on the other, and access as the thing that gets you from one to the other.

The framing I ended up with is the one I should have opened with. It took me three goes to get there, and this was a question about a word I had used myself.

I explained the outcome last, when it should have come first

I should have opened with the problem itself. People were making inquiries but not following up with a doctor visit, and solving that was my job. That is one sentence, and it sets up everything that comes after it.

Instead I started with how much groundwork the work involved, then went through what we found in the conversations with doctors and patients, then the channels we used, and only at the very end said that we tripled conversion and explained what I meant by conversion. The order should have been the problem first, then the barriers we found, then what we did about them.

I listed every channel without saying which one worked

In the intervention answer I listed billboards, news ads, AdWords, newspaper placements, radio, online advertisements, social media ads, in-person discussions in societies, clinics and dispensaries, one-on-one counselling and family counselling.

I did eventually say that family counselling made the biggest difference, but it arrived at the end of that list instead of the start. Anyone listening got nine or ten channels before they got the one that mattered.

Product sense barely got tested

Damodar’s own feedback was that my product sense was good, but that he had not tested it deeply, and that this is the part I need to practise more.

Looking at the question list, that tracks. Four of the six questions were about my past work and my positioning. Only one, the sizing question, was a product question, and it came right at the end. So the part of the interview I most need to be strong in is the part that got the least airtime.

What went well

Damodar’s read was that there was a lot of clarity, that I came across as very confident, and that he was quite happy with it. He also said I was clear on why luxury and on what is crucial in the luxury category, and that I was prepped on it. And he said I knew what I did in every role and why that feeds into this interview.

One thing I would keep doing: when he asked for an example of an intervention, I had two, and I prioritised one instead of walking through both.

What I am doing differently next time

Get the definition of access down to one pass. The disease and treatment split is the answer. I should be able to give it in a couple of sentences without three run-ups, and then go straight to an example.

Say what I did in plainer words. Access is my word, not the listener’s, and it made me spend a long time defining a label before I could describe anything I had actually done. I want to use direct, concrete language that puts a picture in someone’s head instead of an abstract term they have to unpack first.

Expect to be asked which intervention actually worked. Damodar did not ask me that, but if I read out ten channels then someone is going to want to know which one moved the number and how I could tell.

Drill product sense. This is Damodar’s point and I agree with it. It is the thing that was least tested and the thing the role is most about, so it is where the practice needs to go before the real interview.