Kanayannur, Kerala · IST ··:··:··
Portfolio · Volume 11/Updated May 2026

Varun Manickath.

Started as a relationship manager. Shipped six products across two banks, a customer-engagement platform and an AI-first fitness SaaS. Now Head of Product at myFitApp.

01.   Customer-side → Product Head 02.   FinTech · CEP · B2B SaaS · AI 03.   Going all-in on AI-native
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Software lives or dies in the hairline cracks between strategy, design, and operating reality. I work in those cracks. I take fragile ideas and pressure-test them with customers, ship them inside regulated systems, and turn them into compounding businesses. Eleven years in, across banks, accelerators and SaaS, the shape of the work hasn't changed. The leverage just keeps getting bigger.

VM. Kanayannur · 09°57′N 76°16′E

From the customer side of the business to running the product.

One unbroken arc across two companies. Started in a relationship management / customer-success seat. Earned the product chops shipping bank-grade software. Then spent six years compounding inside one product org, going from Senior PO to Head of Product.

06

Head of Product

myFitApp · Innovatise

Owns vision, roadmap, P&L and board reporting for an AI-first B2B SaaS serving the global health & fitness industry. Leading the AI agenda across LLMs and agentic workflows.

Jul 2024 → Now
05

Product Lead

myFitApp · Innovatise

Promoted to lead product delivery across modules. Drove abstraction, prioritisation and execution rituals across squads. Scaled discovery and partner integrations.

Nov 2022 → Aug 2024
04

Senior Product Owner

myFitApp · Innovatise

Owned roadmap with the Product Director; designed and shipped major modules of the platform. Acted as the primary product expert internally across sales, partner integrations, training and customer success.

Nov 2018 → Nov 2022
03

Product Manager & BDM

Compaz · Customer Engagement Platform

Took Compaz, a behaviour-analytics and customer engagement platform, to market. Translated business strategy into prioritised user stories across multiple dev teams; doubled as BDM, bridging customer voice into roadmap.

Jan 2018 → Nov 2018
02

Product Owner

MobME Wireless Solutions

Shipped client-facing FinTech products inside regulated banking environments: Fedmobile, FedCorp, LVB Mobile and LVB Upaay (UPI). End-to-end delivery against bank-grade requirements.

Apr 2016 → Nov 2018
01

Relationship Mgr · Ops · Startup Studio

MobME Wireless · Kerala

First role: relationship management and operations. Helped run India's first focused FinTech accelerator in partnership with Federal Bank. Close to customers, regulators and early-stage venture-building from day one.

Feb 2015 → Apr 2016

Six products. Two banks.
One CEP. One global SaaS.
All shipped to production.

Retail · Mobile Banking 2016 → 2018

FedMobile

Federal Bank's flagship mobile banking app. Accounts, transfers, UPI, recharges, bill pay, mutual funds, debit-card management. Randomised-keypad MPIN, biometric login. Live on iOS and Android.

Federal BankUPIiOS / AndroidRBI Compliance
Corporate Banking 2016

FedCorp

Federal Bank's corporate banking app: accounts, NEFT/IMPS transfers, beneficiary management. Multi-entity coverage from proprietorships to public companies. Built to bank-grade audit standards.

Federal BankCorporateNEFT / IMPSMulti-entity
Retail · Mobile Banking 2017

LVB Mobile

Lakshmi Vilas Bank's retail mobile banking app: full-stack consumer banking across accounts, transfers, payments, service requests. Built end-to-end inside a regulated environment.

LVBRetail BankingiOS / Android0 → 1
UPI · Consumer 2017

LVB Upaay

UPI consumer payments app for Lakshmi Vilas Bank: multi-bank VPA, account linking, scan & pay, recharges, fee payments, QR generation. Shipped end-to-end inside a regulated banking environment.

LVBUPIVPANPCI
Customer Engagement 2018

Compaz

Mobile behaviour-analytics and customer engagement platform. Collected data across touchpoints to build advanced customer profiles using ML. Took it to market as PM & BDM, prioritising stories across multiple dev teams.

CEPBehaviour AnalyticsMLEnterprise
B2B SaaS · AI 2018 → Now

myFitApp

AI-first B2B SaaS for the global health & fitness industry, used by 4,000+ gyms and 20M+ members worldwide (GLL, Everyone Active, PureGym, JustFit, Elixia and more). Currently leading vision, roadmap, P&L and the AI agenda. Shipping LLM features and agentic workflows to operators.

Innovatise4,000+ sites20M+ usersAgentic AI

From the customer side of the table to running the product.

I started my career as a relationship manager in MobME's startup studio, the customer-facing seat at India's first focused FinTech accelerator. That seat is where I learned how products live and die in the real world.

From there I crossed into product, shipping FedMobile, FedCorp, LVB Mobile and LVB Upaay for two scheduled commercial banks. Took Compaz, a behaviour-analytics and customer engagement platform, to market. Then joined Innovatise as Senior Product Owner and grew into Head of Product at myFitApp, an AI-first B2B SaaS now used by 4,000+ gyms and 20M+ members worldwide.

I've sat at every seat in the product machine: customer success, BDM, ownership, lead, strategy. That breadth is the point. I don't outsource the messy parts of shipping software to anyone else.

11+Years building & shipping in regulated and B2B SaaS markets
6Products shipped: bank-grade, CEP, AI-first SaaS
2Scheduled commercial banks served as the product owner

The four modules that run beneath every product I ship.

I think of my craft as an operating system. Four modules, each pressure-tested across eleven years and six role progressions. Composable, each one feeding the others.

01 +

Strategy & Vision

  • Product Strategy
  • Roadmapping
  • Market Analysis
  • Competitive Positioning
  • P&L Ownership
  • Pricing
02 +

Leadership

  • Org Design
  • Hiring & Mentoring
  • Cross-functional Alignment
  • Executive & Board Comms
  • Stakeholder Mgmt
03 +

Build

  • 0 → 1 Product
  • Lifecycle Management
  • UX / Interaction Design
  • Technical Leadership
  • QA & Release
04 +

AI-Native

  • Agentic AI
  • LLMs
  • Claude Code
  • Workflows
  • Vibe Coding · L2 Silver

Trained where it counts. The two on top are the bet on the next decade.

Formal credentials kept current alongside shipping work. Most recent first, both AI-native, both 2026. The supporting four are the operating fundamentals: people, product, OKRs, scrum.

Nov 2023

The Manager's Guide to Difficult Conversations

Project Management Institute

People MgmtCommunication
Oct 2023

Creating a Product-Centric Organization

LinkedIn Learning

Org DesignProduct Ops
Sep 2023

Goal Setting · Objectives & Key Results

LinkedIn Learning

OKRsOperating Cadence
Jul 2016

Certified Scrum Master

Scrum Alliance

ScrumCSM
11+Years building & shipping in regulated and B2B SaaS markets
6Products shipped, RM to Head of Product, customer-side to C-suite
2Scheduled commercial banks served as the product owner
Live · May 2026

Going all-in on AI-native product building.

A second decade is starting. The bet is that the next ten years of product reward operators who can fluently move between strategy, code and customer, and ship faster because of it.

Building01

AI-first roadmap at myFitApp

Pairing customer feedback loops with emerging-tech bets: LLM-powered features and agentic workflows for fitness operators worldwide.

Operating02

Org design for an AI-native product team

Hiring, mentoring, and rebuilding execution rituals around small, full-stack squads that ship with agentic tooling.

Studying03

Claude Code & agentic workflows

Recently certified in Claude Code In Action (Anthropic) and Vibe Coding L2 Silver. Practical AI-native craft, not slideware.

[ 08 ]Let's build

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