A user can complete every step correctly and still misunderstand what the software has done. Product research needs to examine that interpretation, especially at the boundary between preparation and execution.
I look for the moment when a user moves from understanding a situation to authorising an action. Software can blur that boundary through a convenient word, an inherited approval or a commercial rule that discourages the right people from reviewing the work. Product leadership means making those choices visible and accepting the consequences for adoption, revenue and scope.
I lead product at Sarnovel Treasury Software in Guwahati. Our clients are banks and finance companies whose treasury teams use our software to organise positions, prepare proposals and record internal decisions. We serve thirty-two institutions, but we do not make their investments or send their money. That distinction has to be understandable in the product itself. A clear contract is insufficient if a button invites a user to believe that an instruction has already reached a bank. My work begins with the task and the authority that the person carrying it out actually holds.
My route into product began in industrial commercial administration. I prepared order and payment schedules, then moved into finance-software implementation, where I watched skilled people work around screens that did not fit their responsibilities. I joined Sarnovel as a product manager in 2009, led its workflow portfolio from 2016 and became CPO in April 2022. Today I lead twenty-two product, research and design colleagues through four managers. Engineering is a separate function. I am responsible for the problems we choose, the experience we offer and the evidence behind our product decisions, rather than claiming personal ownership of every technical outcome.
The strongest product choices in my recent work have often made a proposition less convenient to sell. We renamed a renewal action so that it described preparation rather than execution. We made a changed treasury proposal lose its earlier internal approval. We redesigned commercial access so that reviewers were not priced out of seeing the work. And we declined to add a valuation engine merely because a prospective client offered an attractive contract. Each decision had a cost. I want those costs and the reasoning behind them to be visible in my record.
A request is not an executed renewal
In an early moderated test, eleven of twenty-four participants read a deposit-renewal control as confirmation that an instruction had reached the bank. We replaced it with a preparation workflow and an explicit external-execution boundary. A later group of twenty-four included two such misunderstandings; these were separate groups, not a paired clinical experiment.
Approval belongs to a particular proposal
A review of forty scripted amendment scenarios found nine in which a changed proposal still displayed its earlier approval. We made material changes create a new version requiring renewed internal sign-off. The immediate cost was additional review work, not a claim of measured financial loss avoided.
Commercial access shapes the control environment
We replaced a proposed named-seat package with an institution-and-workflow subscription that included read-only reviewers. The annualised contract value for four proposed new clients moved from ₹1.8 crore to ₹1.52 crore. That was a pricing decision on offers, not a reduction in already recognised revenue.
Current focus
I am working with our managers to make product evidence easier to challenge before commitments reach clients. Research should reveal the user's interpretation, design should expose the responsibility involved, and commercial proposals should show the ongoing service obligation. Our ₹7.6 crore annual product-function budget is distinct from engineering expense and company revenue. I want teams to be precise about that scope when they describe what they have achieved.
Conversations I welcome
I am preparing for one suitable first non-executive appointment in a specialist business-software or financial-service support company. I have provisionally allowed twenty days a year, including preparation and travel, subject to employer consent and the actual calendar. I would bring product judgement and expect a proper induction into the wider duties of a director.
Beyond the page
The record behind the perspective.
Formation
Bachelor of CommercePelvani Commercial College · 1998
I have worked with Tenzin as CEO since 2022. He is willing to show the revenue we give up when a product promise exceeds our capability. That makes the decision more credible, because the commercial cost stays in the conversation.
Anup DervashiCEO, Sarnovel Treasury Software; executive colleague since 2022The full record ↗
Contact
I am preparing for one suitable first non-executive appointment in a specialist business-software or financial-service support company. I have provisionally allowed twenty days a year, including preparation and travel, subject to employer consent and the actual calendar. I would bring product judgement and expect a proper induction into the wider duties of a director.
