Growth PM at Hotstar 

Round 1 - Assignment

Round 2 - Face to face interviews

Round 3 - Technical with a Senior engineer

Round 1 - Assignment

Assignment problem was to design a promotion engine for Hotstar subscription service. What do they mean by a promotion engine? I was needed to provide potential subscribers (free users) some offers to subscribe to Hotstar. That makes Promotion engine the platform that will enable providing various kinds of offers to potential subscribers. Engine itself is a backend module.

Requirement
The ask here is to cover product solution & PRD. A doc that can explain engineering so they can refer to from execution POV. I submitted the assignment and got selected for a face to face interview.

Round 2 - Face to face interviews

Was approached by HR via call. There was an HR round, one head of dept round and four elimination rounds. Elimination rounds consist of Product Strategy (taken by
a Senior Product person), Product Design (this is taken by a PM), one technical and lastly analytics round. The first elimination round was majorly a discussion around the assignment. The following questions were asked

1. What can go wrong in setting up offers / referrals?
2. What metrics would I track for the referral engine?
3. Strategy bets Hotstar can take to increase the number of paid subscribers on Hotstar

Second round started with me choosing an app I last used. And then the interviewer prodded me on how can I improve the app? What metrics would I track from an Acquisition, Engagement and Monetisation PoV. 

Round 3 - Technical with a Senior engineer

Who asked behavioural questions for eg - hypothetical situations while working with smart engineers. The best way to approach here is to stress on the power of technology to solve real-life problems. Please find below a list of questions asked across all rounds

1. Design an app for an office pantry for employees to order tea/coffee from. Estimate the number of delivery boys required to start a Dunzo-like Kirana
   shop delivery service.
2. What's your favorite product - And how will you improve it?

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For this question, you need to show excitement about the product you choose. Your favorite should be something for which you check every app update and have been
tracking the app over last 2 years. You also keep a check on future upgrades and the product strategy. For example, if you binge watch on Netflix, you wait with bated breath for the latest upgrade of the Netflix App with the new Netflix original shows? As you are talking about the favorite product, you might get a follow up question -
How will you improve the profitability of Netflix if you were the CPO?

1. As a PM at Unacademy, how will you increase your user base?  
2. How will you improve user stickiness on Hotstar?  

For the questions above, think like a product manager - PMs will be taking some very important decisions that impacts the direction their product takes in the future. So, it’s super important for you to understand a problem, break it down into smaller chunks, and arrive at a solution with an eye on accuracy basis available data.

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For access to companies such as Hotstar i.e. Cracking Product management in India, the PM School program is a full stack solution from Interview Prep to learning the fundamentals of product management in small time-frame (2 months).