Sushmita Mallick
Principal Product Manager · Strategy, Pricing & 0-to-1
I find the structural problem hidden inside what others treat as an ops issue — then orchestrate across systems to fix it permanently.
On the Ground — 4 Countries
Not just stakeholder calls. Embedded in the field with real users — warehouses, affiliate markets, rural networks, and factory floors.
Regional Product Manager across 15+ affiliate markets for Philip Morris International — only PM embedded on the ground for the entire Southeast Asian distribution network.
Lived as a delivery associate. Shadowed warehouse and supply-chain operations first-hand to identify pain points that desk research had missed for 2 years.
On-site for legacy system resolution and full application turnover — shipped on time with zero escalations.
Pain-point interviews with non-tech field users that seeded a multi-year engagement. First visit; lasting impact.
Field research isn't a methodology for me — it's a default.
From engineering to strategy — finding the real problem.
Twelve years from engineering to PM to strategy — IBM in Kolkata, Jakarta, Melbourne, and Bangkok; 0-to-1 AI at Reliance Jio; four years at Walmart Global Tech across consumer pricing, fulfilment promise, and sortation network strategy. Rated Exemplary — Walmart's highest performance band — FY2027.
The through-line across every role: the real problem is almost never the stated one. At Walmart, the brief was "fix pricing." The actual problem was that no one had ever modelled what a delivery cost. $62M later. I'm now open to Staff PM, Director, and Fractional CPO engagements where the problem is structural and ambiguous.
Core Competencies
Tools & Craft
The moves I make on every engagement.
Name the real problem
The brief is always a symptom — I interrogate the data before I read the brief.
Model the unit economics first
Before I argue for a roadmap, I build the model. This is how $62M of structural pricing loss became visible.
One hypothesis, one kill criterion
Every initiative opens with a target metric and a threshold I'll stop at — A/B test designed before design starts.
Compound output with AI tooling
Shipped AI in production at Jio and Walmart. Three proprietary frameworks now run as AI agents. I use agentic tooling daily.
Case studies, strategy work & platform builds.
Six initiatives across pricing, 0-to-1, growth, and platform — each with real shipped outcomes.
Structural Pricing Recovery
Found that delivery cost had never been modelled — built a tiered surcharge by weight, region, and membership tier.
Same-Day Delivery Paid Tier
Repositioned same-day commercially as sole PM — coordinated promise engine, fee calculator, and checkout across 5 teams.
Checkout Consolidation
PM lead on a monolith-to-microservices migration — defined API contracts across 15+ engineering teams on a system that could not go offline.
Sortation Network — FC Direct
Reframed 402K weekly exception events as a product problem — replaced downstream interception with an upstream two-party confirmation gate.
Clinical Decision-Support Platform
0-to-1 LLM platform for specialist diagnostics in primary care — the strategic problem was clinician trust, not model accuracy.
Multi-Market Revenue Expansion
Converted UX research across 15 countries into a biometric authentication upsell and mobile cross-sell — sole PM for a Fortune 500 CPG client, 3M DAU.
Five products torn down. One framework.
Each teardown is scored across 9 inflection points using the DISCOVERY framework and AI agent — public research only, no insider access.
View the DISCOVERY Framework →Not tools I've used — systems I've built.
Four original frameworks spanning pricing strategy, product teardowns, 0-to-1 launches, and market analysis. Two are live AI agents.
DISCOVERY Teardown Framework
Score what you've built before someone else does.
A 9-inflection-point, weighted scoring system that produces a 0–100 DISCOVERY score for any product. Designed for product due diligence, competitive teardowns, and pre-launch audits. The same framework powers Fractional CPO client engagements.
PRICE Framework
Price what you change, not what you built.
A 5-phase, 20-sub-phase pricing strategy system for product leaders. Covers value audit, buyer intelligence, pricing model architecture, market calibration, and repricing systems. Every sub-phase includes a live interactive calculator.
PRISM Framework
Launch from evidence, not enthusiasm.
A structured 0-to-1 product launch framework with five concurrent phases and two decision gates. Covers problem discovery, research, ideation, solution build, and market execution — designed to prevent premature scaling before evidence is in hand.
2×2 prioritisation framework with Commit / Validate / Defer / Drop output.
Explore →Adds irreversibility layer to every RICE score. Essential for one-way-door decisions.
Explore →5-phase method to recover the churn signal that silent users left without raising a ticket.
Explore →A non-linear path — engineer to PM to strategy.
Education
- Indian School of Business (ISB)PGP, Information Technology & Strategy · 2020–2021 · CGPA 9.05/10 · Amazon ACE Campus Finalist (Top 10 of 160)
- Govt. College of Engineering & Leather TechnologyB.Tech, Computer Science · 2010–2014 · CGPA 9.0/10 · Full fee waiver · top 1% cohort all 4 years
Certifications
- •Building with the Claude API — Anthropic
- •Microsoft AI Product Manager Professional
- •IBM AI Developer Professional
- •IBM Design Thinking Practitioner
- •IBM Agile Explorer
Things I build outside of work.
Quantitative tools, experimental interfaces, and side projects. Built to scratch a personal itch — or to learn something by building it.
Thinking
Frameworks I actually use.
The Confidence Calibration Matrix
"Conviction is not knowledge."
Scores every roadmap item on Confidence × Impact before it enters the prioritisation stack. The quadrant — Commit, Validate, Defer, or Drop — is the output. If you can't score it, you can't prioritise it. That's the point.
RICE + Regret Scoring
"RICE tells you what to build first. Regret tells you what you can live with being wrong about."
Adds a Regret of Action vs Regret of Inaction layer to every RICE score. The delta between them is your decision pressure signal — essential for irreversible calls.
The Silent User Audit
"Support tickets only capture the vocal minority."
A 5-phase method to recover the churn signal that silent users left without raising a ticket. Combines behavioural archaeology with structured re-engagement interviews to produce a pattern — not a one-off complaint.
Let's work on something hard together.
Open to Staff PM and Director of Product roles, and to fractional and consulting engagements. The fastest way to reach me is email.
Sushmita Mallick