Member story · Cohort 08 · August 2026

Ola, Rupeek, PhonePe. Almost every session you build with AI

Product Lead at PhonePe in Bengaluru, owning offline merchant fulfilment and payment device logistics. Principal Product Manager at Rupeek and close to four years at Ola before that, after SAP Labs, Wipro and an MBA from IIM Kozhikode.

Shyam’s portfolio

Shyam Prasath B Product Lead at PhonePe

Shyam’s feedback

In Shyam’s own words

What Shyam wrote about the course after Cohort 08. These are real people with real portfolios, not marketing copy. Want to talk to Shyam? I’ll intro you.

Shyam Prasath BCohort 08 · August 2026

Shyam on the course

The 8 weekends are tailor-made for senior PMs who are looking to augment their problem solving with AI as a tool.

Almost every session you build using AI.

Ankit is onto something bigger here: he is building a community that outlasts the 8 weekends and paves the way for lifelong learning.

✓✓

What changed for Shyam

Built with AI almost every session.

Problem solving, augmented by AI.

A community that outlasts the 8 weekends.

Shyam learned alongside PMs from

The path

Quality engineering, an MBA, then a decade of product

2016
Product and Revenue
Ola
2020
Senior Product Manager
Rupeek
2023
Group Product Manager
PhonePe
2025
Product Lead
PhonePe
Aug 2026
Curious PM
Cohort 08, August 2026

The work

What Shyam built, and writes

See everything on Shyam’s portfolio ↗

01 / 04

Database-connected AI chatbot with evals

A chatbot built in five stages, from a plain OpenAI call to one with conversation memory, tools and a live database behind it, then every answer traced in Langfuse and scored by AI judges.

OpenAI Streamlit PostgreSQL Langfuse

Open ↗

What it teaches a PM

Memory was the smallest change with the largest effect; evals made the answers measurable.

02 / 04

Podcast search engine and MCP server

Semantic search over a thousand podcast episodes, then the same engine exposed over the Model Context Protocol so an AI assistant can search, keep notes and run research briefs.

MCP RAG Pinecone FastMCP

Open ↗

What it teaches a PM

An MCP endpoint is a live API: ship it with auth.

03 / 04

Podcast RAG and fine-tuning

Question answering over 149 podcast transcripts, whole episodes and 900-character chunks side by side, then a small open model fine-tuned with LoRA to speak in a chosen persona.

RAG Pinecone Claude Fine-Tuning

Open ↗

What it teaches a PM

Retrieval for facts the model has never seen, fine-tuning for how it speaks.

04 / 04

Personal AI agent with voice

One agent loop that searches and reads the web, remembers you between sessions, runs a job search from your resume and answers the phone, with chat and voice sharing one memory.

AI Agents mem0 ElevenLabs Twilio

Open ↗

What it teaches a PM

The assistant grows by registering tools, not by adding branches.

What Shyam writes

shyam.curious.pm3 min read ↗

Merchant Onboarding Is a Funnel With Compliance Built In

Merchant onboarding and KYC at PhonePe: a sign-up form from the outside, a funnel where every step must satisfy the merchant and the rules that govern payments.

shyam.curious.pm3 min read ↗

Fulfilment Is Where Product Meets the Physical World

Marketplace fulfilment at Ola, loan fulfilment at Rupeek, payment device logistics at PhonePe: the hardest part of a digital product is often the part that is not digital.

shyam.curious.pm3 min read ↗