Pros
The team itself is talented and hardworking, and many employees are genuinely trying to build a solid product despite structural challenges. Opportunity to work on a corporate Travel & Expense (T&E) platform, which could be an interesting and scalable product if executed well. The Group CEO is engaged and willing to step in when issues escalate and progress stalls.
Cons
The primary challenge for the team has been a lack of effective business leadership at the Chief Business Officer level, which has significantly slowed execution and created uncertainty around both technical and commercial decisions. Despite frequent references to prior experience at PayTM, the kind of practical product leadership, technical understanding, and business clarity expected from someone in this role has largely been missing in day-to-day execution. This becomes particularly visible during product discussions and review meetings. Several recurring patterns illustrate the issue: 1. Repeating the CEO’s points instead of contributing actionable direction In meetings with the Group CEO, when the CEO makes a point, the CBO often responds with something along the lines of: “See, what I think you’re trying to say is…” and then restates the same point almost verbatim. While this may be intended to summarize, in practice it often adds little value because the original point is already clear. What the team typically needs in those moments is direction, prioritization, or a decision, not repetition. 2. Reiterating the vision instead of explaining execution When technical or product questions are raised, responses are often framed around the broader company vision (for example: “In Prasad’s vision we need A, B, and C.”). The team already understands the CEO’s vision because it has been communicated multiple times. What engineers and product managers usually need from leadership in these situations is guidance on how to translate that vision into execution—architecture direction, implementation priorities, trade-offs, and concrete next steps. That type of guidance has often been missing. 3. Lack of clarity on core business fundamentals When business questions are raised—such as the monetization model for the corporate T&E platform, API costs, margins, or whether those costs affect travel commissions—the typical response has been that these questions will be figured out once the product goes live. Building a product without clarity on its revenue model or cost structure creates significant uncertainty for the team and suggests that key commercial fundamentals were not defined early enough. Because of these gaps, the team frequently looks directly to the Group CEO for product and execution guidance during meetings. In several other teams within the organization, the CEO typically participates only in demos or periodic reviews because a strong product leader is already guiding the team. In this case, that leadership layer has not been functioning as effectively. Over time, the Group CEO had to become increasingly involved in product discussions to help move things forward, which highlighted the absence of strong execution leadership at the level where the team expected it.
