Product Manager - Digital Financial Products

Airtel Africa; Gurugram District; On-site; INR 4,000,000 - 7,000,000; Full time

Job summary

Airtel Africa seeks a Product Manager to own the strategy, roadmap, and execution for core financial products across App, Web, and WhatsApp channels. You will lead cross-functional teams, drive AI-enabled personalization, and scale lending, overdraft, savings, and cards across markets.

The role demands a digital-first mindset and strong stakeholder influence. Based in Gurgaon, you will collaborate with regional teams to localize configurations, ensure compliance, and deliver seamless user

Qualifications

• 8-12+ years in product management in fintech, digital banking, or financial services.
• Experience with lending/credit, overdraft, savings, or card products.
• Strong understanding of digital banking and payments trends in emerging markets.
• Experience designing across App, Web, and WhatsApp banking.

Responsibilities

• Define and own product vision, strategy, and roadmap for one or more product lines.
• Own multi-channel experience strategy across App, Web, and WhatsApp banking.
• Translate strategy into PRDs, user stories, and backlog for your product lines.
• Drive Agile delivery and end-to-end product journeys from origination to repayment/issuance.

Skills

Analytical skills

Communication skills

Stakeholder management

Agile teamwork

Education

Bachelor's degree in Business/CS/Engineering

MBA or advanced degree preferred

Tools

Jira

Asana

Trello

Monday.com

Job description

Overview

As a Product Manager for our digital financial ecosystem, you will own the strategy, roadmap, and execution for a core suite of products Loans, Overdraft, Savings, and Cards delivered seamlessly across App, Web, and WhatsApp/conversational channels, across our footprint of 14 African markets. You will bring a strong digital-first vision, translating user needs and market opportunity into products that are simple, trusted, and habit-forming, while pushing the organisation to adopt AI-driven capabilities that make the experience smarter and more personalized.

Key Responsibilities

1. Product Strategy & Vision

• Define and own the product vision, strategy, and roadmap for one or more product lines within the ecosystem (Loans, Overdraft, Savings, Cards), ensuring consistency and cross-sell synergy across the broader digital platform.
• Own the multi-channel experience strategy - App, Web, and WhatsApp/chat-based banking - ensuring feature parity, consistent journeys, and channel-appropriate design.
• Conduct market research, competitive benchmarking, and user research to identify trends, gaps, and opportunities specific to each product line and market.
• Evaluate and champion the use of AI/ML in the product experience - e.g. credit risk and underwriting signals, personalized offers, conversational assistants/chatbots, fraud detection, smart nudges - to improve conversion, retention, and operational efficiency.

2. Product Planning & Execution

• Partner with UX, business analysts, engineering, tech ops, risk/credit, compliance, marketing, and business operations to prioritise features and releases based on business impact and user value.
• Translate strategy into clear PRDs, user stories, and acceptance criteria; own the backlog for your product line(s).
• Drive Agile delivery (sprint planning, backlog grooming, release management), ensuring high-quality, on-time delivery.
• Own end-to-end product journeys - e.g. loan origination through disbursement and repayment, overdraft eligibility and drawdown, savings goal-setting and interest accrual, card issuance and transaction management.

3. Experience Design Across Channels

• Champion user-centric design and ensure a seamless, intuitive journey across App, Web, and WhatsApp - including designing for low-bandwidth, low-literacy, and first-time smartphone users where relevant.
• Work closely with UX/UI designers on wireframes, prototypes, and flows; ensure conversational/WhatsApp journeys are designed with the same rigor as App/Web (menu design, chatbot flows, escalation to human agents).
• Ensure journeys are compliant with relevant financial regulations and responsible-lending/KYC requirements across markets.

4. Analytics, Experimentation & Optimisation

• Define KPIs and North Star metrics per product line (e.g. loan disbursement rate, NPA/default trends, overdraft utilisation, savings balance growth, card activation and usage rates).
• Use data, A/B testing, and funnel analysis to identify drop-offs and optimise conversion, activation, and retention.
• Leverage AI-driven analytics/insight tools where possible to move from descriptive to predictive and prescriptive decision-making.

5. Stakeholder Management

• Communicate vision, roadmap, and progress to senior management, regional business heads, and external partners.
• Partner with business development on strategic partnerships and integrations (e.g. credit bureaus, payment networks, WhatsApp Business API providers, AI/ML vendors) that strengthen the product's value proposition.

6. Market Expansion & Localisation

• Support expansion of the product suite into new markets, factoring in local regulatory requirements (credit, lending, data privacy), cultural nuances, and market dynamics.
• Work with regional/OpCo teams to localise product configuration, content, and go-to-market - including go/no-go readiness (e.g. performance, stability, and support-volume thresholds) for phased or beta rollouts.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Business, Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field; MBA or advanced degree preferred.
• 8-12+ years in product management, with meaningful experience in fintech, digital banking, or financial services - direct experience with lending/credit, overdraft, savings, or card products strongly preferred.
• Strong understanding of digital banking and payments trends in African (or comparable emerging) markets, including credit risk fundamentals and regulatory considerations.
• Demonstrated experience designing or scaling products across multiple digital channels - App, Web, and conversational/WhatsApp banking.
• Exposure to applying AI/ML in a product context (e.g. personalisation, credit scoring, chatbots/conversational AI, fraud/risk models) is a strong plus.
• Proficiency with project management tools (Jira, Asana, Trello, Monday.com) and product analytics tools (Google Analytics, Firebase, AppsFlyer, WebEngage, or equivalent).
• Comfortable working in cross-functional Agile teams, with a track record of successfully launching and iterating on digital financial products.
• Strong analytical skills - able to translate complex, multi-market data into clear, actionable recommendations.
• Excellent communication, presentation, and senior stakeholder management skills.
• Entrepreneurial mindset, comfortable with ambiguity, and passionate about driving financial inclusion in emerging markets.

Location

Gurgaon

Join Us

Join a mission-driven digital organization working to expand access to relevant and innovative financial services across Africa. You will have the opportunity to shape a major financial-product ecosystem, build experiences across multiple digital channels, and use data and emerging technologies to improve the financial lives of millions of customers.