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The IPMF Philosophy
Technology products bring significant value to billions of people and have rapidly proliferated in India. However, most technology products and services get designed with “the average” user in mind and don’t serve the unique needs of people with marginalized identities in terms of gender, disability, caste, sexual orientation, indigeneity, and other markers. And very often remain inaccessible for use by these segments.
This leads to significant loss of value since these segments are quite large both in terms of the number of people and economic power. For instance, it is estimated that women control USD 30+ trillion in spending power, between 7-9% of the global population belongs to the LGBTQ community with the Pink Economy being USD 4.6 trillion, about 15% of the population has some form of disability with the Purple or Disabled economy being at least USD 8-12 trillion. A Harvard Business Review article written by the founder of Belongg illustrates this well.
Solving this problem – ensuring technology products better serve important needs of marginalized user groups – will have significant short-term and long-term effects. In the short-term, enable better services (healthcare, financial services, transport, jobs seeking, education) for millions of people from these marginalized user groups. In the long-term it will lead to population scale benefits where inclusive product management becomes a default for all companies, not just a “good to have”.
We believe that focused interventions that a) address information asymmetry and market intelligence gaps for companies along with b) providing them customized design and prototyping support focused on marginalized users can help address a meaningful part of the problem. It is with this belief that we have come together to design and launch the Inclusive Product Management Fellowship in India. Our goal is to work with 10+ companies in the first cohort and eventually scale this program to 100s of Product Managers every year. And help shape almost all significant technology products and making product inclusion a default in the Indian and Asian product ecosystems.
Founding Organisations
Belongg is a social innovation venture focused on driving intersectional inclusion within technology products and global development programs. Belongg conceptualized IPMF and is keen to make this the leading program for product inclusion in India.
Dalberg is a leading global advisory firm focused on social impact and works leading organisations on key strategy and impact projects. It has been a core part of the IPMF journey and is bring key strategy and program support.
Supported By
Omidyar Network India is a leading impact investment firm investing in entrepreneurs who are tackling India’s hardest problems. A key focus is to enable every Indian to feel empowered and safe and derive value from digital products through the use of inclusive tech practices and products.
Partners
The Product Folks is among the world's largest PM communities with over 200k+ members. TPF helps PM grow their skills and careers and also helps people break into PM careers. TPF is keen on helping embed inclusive product management practices in the Indian tech ecosystem.
Mission Accessibility works towards dismantling the barriers faced by persons with disabilities in accessing apps and websites in India. Registered as an NGO, it has been setup by two blind lawyers and works with leading product companies in India to make their products more disability inclusive.
Qonnect is a global LGBTQIA+ professional networking platform with 2,000+ members. It operates across more than 6 countries and seeks to create and support the next generation of LGBTQIA+ role model leaders within startups and corporates. Qonnect is seeking to promote greater queer inclusion in tech products.
Women In Product seeks to support women in the product ecosystem by giving them a safe community to network, grow and thrive in their careers. It's a women-only community led by amazing women product leaders and is keen on driving gender-inclusive product management practices in India.
Nasscom Foundation is a non-profit with a vision to empower lives through technology and work towards creating a truly inclusive India. It works with member companies of NASSCOM along to meet the technology needs of non-profits and underserved communities across India.
LedBy Foundation is the first leadership incubator for Indian Muslim women and provides experiential leadership training, mentoring to high-potential Indian Muslim women. LedBy was incubated at and pre-seed-funded by Harvard.
Interweave is a consulting company focused exclusively on helping organisations build equitable and inclusive workplaces. As pioneers in this space in India, Interweave prides itself on being at the cutting edge of designing DEI solutions that bring out the best of India's increasingly diverse workforce.
Collaborate with us
We are keen to collaborate with product companies who want to be part of the Fellowship program, with individual product leaders who want to get involved, with specialised organisations and centres focused on inclusive design and product management, with NGOs and civil society organisations focused on the needs of specific marginalised user groups, with innovators and startups who are building tools for this, and with investors and funders who are keen on driving inclusion through tech products.
If this is interesting to you, please drop us a line and we’d love to schedule a conversation.