post

B2B product management

Artificial Intelligence (AI) & Machine Learning (ML)

Building Product Teams

Business Strategy

Data Driven Product Management

Digital Transformation

Diversity and Inclusion

Minimum Viable Product

OKRs

Prioritisation

Product Design

Product Research

Product Development Process

Product Ethics

Product Discovery

Product Leadership

Product Management Career

Product Strategy

Stakeholder Management

🌎 <a href="https://www.mindtheproduct.com/world-product-day/" style="color:#FFFFFF;text-decoration:underline;">Happy World Product Day!</a> Be sure to celebrate product, yourself, and your peers today! 🎉

Ditch the PRD template and embrace the PRD checklist

Are you really understanding your users or going through the motions?

Building confidence in product investment decisions

How to price your subscription product: insights and examples

Product Minds: Building ChatPRD – Claire Vo (CPO, LaunchDarkly, ChatPRD)

Footer About

Footer Contribute

Footer Get Involved

Footer Links

Mind the Product

Podcast

How Citi is accelerating AI in banking – Tariq Maonah (SVP of Product and Engineering, Citi)

Artificial intelligence (AI)

20 ways to build AI/ML products

Imogen brings more than 10 years of experience in print and digital to her role as Director of Content Strategy for Mind the Product. The core of her experience comes from 10 years working as an editor for Bauer Consumer Media, a division of Europe’s largest privately-owned publishing group, and as Head of Content for Benivo, an award-winning startup.

Imogen Schels

<p>Today, Bernard Hosanna is based in Singapore and works a product strategist at SouthEast Asia&#8217;s super app, <a href="https://www.grab.com/sg/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Grab</a>, but, like many in the game, he hasn&#8217;t always worked in product.</p>
<p>Bernard studied engineering with a focus on telecoms at <a href="https://www.tp.edu.sg/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Singapore’s Temasek Polytechnic.</a> While he remembers being a “fanatic about handphones and gadgets”, telecoms wasn&#8217;t for him, and he then went on to study investment finance and economics at a US university. From there, he began a career in finance. By 2013 he was an investment advisor in the US at <a href="https://www.goldmansachs.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Goldman Sachs</a>, one of the best-known investment firms in the world.</p>
<p>He decided to switch to product in 2015. His decision was based on a “gut feeling”, which turned out to be spot-on &#8211; along with his timing. The business climate in finance was becoming more challenging by the day while the tech scene was starting to show robust growth. He&#8217;d watched as the ride-hailing space, led by<a href="https://www.uber.com/gb/en/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"> Uber</a> in the US, grew exponentially.</p>
<p>&#8220;I&#8217;d tried Uber in the US and I got it. I could see how it could shape and change the way we go about daily life. It was very impactful.&#8221; This drove him to look further into the ride-hailing industry and other tech firms around the world, including <a href="https://www.grab.com/sg/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Grab</a>, the big player back home.</p>
<p>&#8220;I can&#8217;t explain it, I just felt I should give it a shot,&#8221; he says. &#8220;Looking back now, I feel grateful and very blessed to have taken the risk at that time. I&#8217;m not sure how many people would have done the same.&#8221;</p>
<h2>A Leap of Faith</h2>
<p>To some of his friends and family, it seemed like an odd transition &#8211; finance to product? &#8220;None of them could understand why I was quitting<a href="https://www.goldmansachs.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"> Goldman Sachs</a> to, as they put it, join a taxi company.&#8221; But to Bernard, it made sense from the get-go.</p>
<p>In finance, you&#8217;re often responsible for managing the funds of ultra-high net worth clients. Your job is to listen, to understand their objectives in order to successfully customise a portfolio and provide tailored advice. &#8220;That&#8217;s stayed with me,&#8221; he says. &#8220;Now, when I go out and meet our customers, our drivers, and our merchants, I really listen to their story so that I can understand how to help them.&#8221;</p>
<p>The other similarity between finance and product, he explains, is attention to detail &#8211; dealing with millions and billions of dollars every day, means being meticulous and detail-oriented at all times. It’s something, he says &#8220;you have to be able to apply in a product job, where every single detail in the user experience matters”.</p>
<p>Bernard got his first job as a product management lead at Grab in July 2016 and, despite the similarities with his previous career, he admits he had little in the way of the coaching skills or experience needed. &#8220;Essentially I had been working with a product, but it was an investment product. It wasn&#8217;t impossible to make the switch to consumer tech products but I had to test the waters and I did a lot of self-learning along the way.&#8221;</p>
<h2>Building Product at Pace</h2>
<p>He&#8217;s now been working at Grab for four years and says he can&#8217;t imagine being anywhere else. He loves everything about it &#8211; his opportunity to work with brilliant minds across the region and the world, the impact he sees their work having on the community, and being in a company where, despite small beginnings, nothing is made to feel out of reach.</p>
<p>In 2018, Grab hit the headlines for its <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/daniellekeetonolsen/2018/03/26/grab-officially-takes-control-of-ubers-southeast-asia-operations/#12ed5d0d6c57">acquisition of Uber&#8217;s Southeast Asia assets</a>, and it’s now Southeast Asia’s largest mobile technology company. But it was started by a group of friends in a tiny rented storage space in Kuala Lumpur, only six years earlier. It now operates in eight countries across Southeast Asia and to date has received <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/05/grab-vision-fund/">multi-billion-dollar funding</a> from the likes of Softbank, Toyota, Microsoft, and Chinese ride-hailing giant Didi Chuxing. It <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/15/ride-hailing-firm-grab-can-go-public-once-its-profitable-ceo.html">was valued at $14 billion in March 2019</a> and co-founder and CEO Anthony Tan says some of the company’s operations are already profitable in some markets. Says Bernard: &#8220;When I joined I had no idea we would be setting down historic milestones like that. I feel I&#8217;m working somewhere where we have the opportunity to make history.&#8221;</p>
<figure id="attachment_19487" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-19487" style="width: 965px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="//wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Motorcycles-i-indonesia-shutterstock.jpg"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="wp-image-19487" src="//wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Motorcycles-i-indonesia-shutterstock.jpg" alt="Motorcycles in indonesia shutterstock" width="965" height="543" srcset="/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Motorcycles-i-indonesia-shutterstock.jpg 4305w, /wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Motorcycles-i-indonesia-shutterstock-300x169.jpg 300w, /wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Motorcycles-i-indonesia-shutterstock-768x432.jpg 768w, /wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Motorcycles-i-indonesia-shutterstock-1024x576.jpg 1024w, /wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Motorcycles-i-indonesia-shutterstock-285x160.jpg 285w, /wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Motorcycles-i-indonesia-shutterstock-570x320.jpg 570w" sizes="(max-width: 965px) 100vw, 965px" /></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-19487" class="wp-caption-text">In Indonesia, two-wheeled bikes are the primary means of transportation, something Grab has to consider when building hyperlocal experiences (Photo: Shutterstock)</figcaption></figure>
<p>As product management lead, Bernard and his team have had to focus on building hyperlocal experiences in eight other countries and over 250 cities. He explains: &#8220;In Southeast Asia and Vietnam, as well as in Indonesia, two-wheeled bikes are the primary means of transportation. In other countries, like Malaysia or Singapore, it&#8217;s a car.” This is just one example of the many differences his team has had to adjust to and localise.</p>
<p>At the same time, over a period of just three years, the company experienced hyper-growth. It had to hire quickly and continue to build hyperlocal product experiences at pace but, in the midst of it all, the team began to notice they were failing to adopt a standard approach.</p>
<p>&#8220;At Grab, we&#8217;re set up in 20 plus tech families. Each family has a product leader, and each family focuses on one problem &#8211; such as drivers, payments or food delivery,&#8221; he says. These families operate autonomously, and, as new people joined the company, they brought with them their own ways of working: &#8220;We realised we needed to provide some guardrails and synergy,&#8221; Bernard says. This is how he took his next step, moving to the role of product strategist. &#8220;The role was introduced exactly for that purpose, to create that synergy, and because the areas it covered were ones I&#8217;m so passionate about, it felt natural to move into it.&#8221;</p>
<h2>Scaling for Success</h2>
<p>Now reporting to the head of product strategy, Bernard&#8217;s role, and the wider team, looked significantly different to his early days at Grab when he was one of four product leads, a change that was largely a result of hyper-growth in Grab’s payments and food delivery businesses.</p>
<p>&#8220;We&#8217;ve definitely built and scaled the team as a result of that growth,&#8221; he says. &#8220;To give a clearer picture of that journey, I joined the product management team at Grab as number 13, and now we have 180 plus.&#8221;</p>
<p>Today, his role is now to help the broader product team to get where they need to go by drafting out frameworks and tools that empower them to deepen their understanding of their customers, and ultimately build better products. &#8220;I always have innovation on my mind too,&#8221; he says. &#8220;I&#8217;ll be thinking about our research, asking myself what&#8217;s it telling us and what are the opportunities that we can potentially add value into in this region? I&#8217;m always thinking and learning.&#8221;</p>
<figure id="attachment_19486" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-19486" style="width: 944px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="//wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Grab-food-delivery-business-Shutterstock.jpg"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="wp-image-19486 " src="//wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Grab-food-delivery-business-Shutterstock.jpg" alt="Grab food delivery business Shutterstock" width="944" height="623" srcset="/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Grab-food-delivery-business-Shutterstock.jpg 5207w, /wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Grab-food-delivery-business-Shutterstock-300x198.jpg 300w, /wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Grab-food-delivery-business-Shutterstock-768x507.jpg 768w, /wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Grab-food-delivery-business-Shutterstock-1024x676.jpg 1024w" sizes="(max-width: 944px) 100vw, 944px" /></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-19486" class="wp-caption-text">Along with Grab&#8217;s payments, its food delivery business also drove early growth (Photo: Shutterstock)</figcaption></figure>
<h2>Continuous Learning</h2>
<p>Like many successful product people, throughout his journey, Bernard hasn&#8217;t been afraid to look to other product managers and companies for advice and inspiration and believes constant learning is a key to success. Right now, he says, three Chinese firms are leading the pack. &#8220;Meituan Dianping, the number one food delivery in China, Alibaba and Tencent are tech giants that we, at Grab, look at and aspire to learn from.&#8221;</p>
<p>Internally, Grab&#8217;s learning and development team has grown too, evolving and elevating the learning process, not just for its product managers, but the organisation as a whole. &#8220;Learning has certainly evolved and been elevated &#8220;Within the organisation and we want to equip product managers with opportunities to learn. Be that through courses or with the support of local trainers.&#8221;</p>
<h2>What&#8217;s next?</h2>
<p>Bernard feels blessed and grateful for the incredible ride Grab has taken him on so far and can&#8217;t wait to see what&#8217;s next for him, his team and their customers. He&#8217;s now looking forward to collaborating and innovating with the bright minds and his fellow Grabbers, &#8220;that&#8217;s what we call our co-workers,&#8221; he explains. &#8220;I&#8217;m excited to keep working on future everyday experiences as we elevate the community in Southeast Asia and embark on this amazing super app journey.&#8221; Stay tuned!</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<div class="g g-21"><div class="g-single a-170"><a class="gofollow" data-track="MTcwLDIxLDEsNjA=" href="https://www.pendo.io/pendomonium/"><img decoding="async" src="https://www.mindtheproduct.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/MTP-Footer_ad.png" /></a></div></div>

core/freeform

Susana Lopes: Embracing a dual-track career ladder in product

Career clinic for product managers by John Cutler

Hiring product managers by Kate Leto

Identify and manage imposter syndrome by Phyllis Njoroge

From PO to CPO: How to drive your product career by Namrata Sarmah

Learnings from London: The secret sauce to hiring great product people by Kate Leto

Building the perfect product manager: A model for professional development by Greg Prickril

Bernard Hosanna on Growing With Grab

Imogen Schels

Comments

Read next