What does a Product Head do?
A product head owns the whole product function — strategy, roadmap, pricing, the product team and the growth or P&L targets attached to it — and typically reports to the CEO or founder. Indian companies use this title where global org charts say Head of Product or VP Product; it sits a full level above running a single product line.
A product head usually has around 10–18 yrs of experience and earns typically ₹45L–₹1.2Cr/yr in India. The day-to-day blends Product strategy, Roadmap ownership, Pricing & packaging and more — this page gives you a ready-to-use product head job description template you can copy, plus the exact skills and salary employers expect.
Product Head job description template
Copy the 8 responsibilities, 6 requirements and 8 skills below into your job post, then edit the parts that are specific to your company — pay band, location and reporting line.
Select the text above to copy it manually if the button is unavailable.
What are a Product Head's key responsibilities?
A product head is typically responsible for the 8 duties below, which cover the day-to-day work most employers expect the role to own outright. Paste them into your job post as they are, or cut the ones another team already handles — a responsibility list that claims work the hire will not actually do is the fastest way to lose a candidate at offer stage:
- Set product strategy and defend the annual roadmap with the CEO and board
- Own pricing, packaging and the revenue or retention numbers tied to the portfolio
- Build and structure the product team — PM hiring, levelling and career paths
- Run quarterly planning and arbitrate trade-offs against engineering capacity
- Approve research spend, analytics tooling and third-party product platforms
- Partner with sales and marketing on launches, positioning and win-loss review
- Sunset features and lines that no longer earn their maintenance cost
- Present adoption, churn and roadmap progress in monthly leadership reviews
What qualifications does a Product Head need?
Employers hiring a product head in India usually ask for the 6 qualifications below, typically alongside 10–18 yrs of experience. Keep only the ones you will genuinely screen on: every extra must-have narrows the pool, and in the Indian market a long mandatory list filters out strong candidates whose background simply reads differently on paper:
- 10+ years in product management including experience managing product managers
- Ownership of a revenue, retention or growth number rather than feature delivery alone
- Strong commercial instinct across pricing, unit economics and market positioning
- Comfort with data — cohort analysis, funnel diagnosis and experiment design
- Experience hiring and levelling a product organisation
- Board-level communication and cross-functional negotiation skills
What skills should a Product Head have?
These are the 8 skills employers name most often on live product head listings in India. Treat the first few as the ones worth screening for directly and the rest as signals a candidate can pick up on the job — asking for all of them at once is what turns a reasonable role into an unfillable one:
Listing the three or four skills you genuinely screen on — rather than all 8 — is what keeps a product head posting from filtering out candidates who could do the job.
What does a Product Head earn in India?
Typical salary (India)
typically ₹45L–₹1.2Cr/yr
Experience range
10–18 yrs
These are typical ranges and vary by city, company and skills. For live, role-specific pay data, see the OnJob salary guide.
Product Head job description — FAQs
What is the difference between a product head and a product manager?
A product manager owns one area and its backlog, while the function leader owns the portfolio, the team running it and the commercial outcome. Day to day that means less spec writing and more hiring, pricing, prioritisation across lines and defending resourcing with the CEO — closer to running a small business than shipping a feature.
Does Product Head mean the same thing as Head of Product?
Head of Product is the global phrasing for identical scope, and VP Product or Chief Product Officer sit at the same or one rung higher depending on company size. Indian job boards list all of them interchangeably, so read the reporting line and team size instead of trusting the label on its own.
Do you need an MBA to lead product in India?
An MBA helps in enterprise and B2B companies where commercial fluency is assumed, but it is not a gate. Founders and hiring committees weigh a track record of owning outcomes — a line that grew, a churn number that fell, a team that got built — far above the degree, especially at startups.
What does a product head earn in India?
Cash compensation typically runs ₹45L–₹70L per year at growth-stage startups and ₹80L–₹1.2Cr at large product companies, with equity often adding substantially more at venture-funded firms. Packages swing widely by stage, so weigh base, bonus and the realistic value of stock together when comparing two offers.