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 — through 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 — 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 primary product expert internally — sales, partner integrations, training, customer success.

Nov 2018 — Nov 2022
03

Product Manager & BDM

Compaz · Customer Engagement Platform

Took Compaz — a behaviour-analytics + 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 & 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 — LLM features and agentic workflows shipped 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 & 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 — Claude Code In Action (Anthropic) and Vibe Coding L2 Silver. Practical AI-native craft, not slideware.

[ 08 ]Let's build

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