Countless hours are wasted building features without real market insight or backing. Your boss might disagree with your opinions, but it’s a lot harder to brush off direct customer feedback.
Market-informed roadmaps are not just wish lists of features. They are strategic tools grounded in real market feedback and customer insights. Without this foundation, you risk chasing competitors blindly or building features no one wants.
Your actual job as a PM is to understand the competitive landscape well enough to spot gaps and opportunities — but never lose sight of your users. The market is noisy; your customers are the signal.
Defining your competitors is the first step — but it’s more nuanced than you think
Not every company that looks similar is your competitor. Talvinder explains:
"Any business marketing a product similar to, or as a substitute for, your own product in the same geographic area is a direct competitor. Firms offering dissimilar or substitute products in relation to your product or service are considered indirect competitors."
For example, a butter manufacturer competes directly with margarine makers because they serve the same customer need — a spread for bread. But the manufacturer of eyeglasses competes indirectly with contact lens makers. Both satisfy the need for vision correction, but with different products.
This distinction matters because your competitive analysis efforts should focus most on direct competitors — those who threaten your market share today or tomorrow.
Indirect competitors, while less immediate threats, deserve monitoring. They may pivot into your space or influence customer preferences in ways that affect you.
Your task: Identify your direct and indirect competitors clearly. This will guide where you focus your research and product efforts.
You don’t have to analyze every competitor — focus on the vital few
Indian markets often have many players, especially in fast-growing sectors like e-commerce or SaaS. Trying to analyze every competitor is a fool’s errand.
Talvinder’s advice:
"If you are selling in a market with many competitors, your job of analyzing the competition becomes a little more difficult. Since it is unrealistic to collect and maintain information on dozens of competitors, you will be able to save yourself valuable time, without sacrificing the integrity of your competitive analysis, by using the old 80/20 rule."
This means:
- Identify the 20% of competitors that account for 80% of the market revenue or customer mindshare.
- Focus your analysis deeply on those players.
- Keep a watching brief on others who might disrupt or pivot into your segment.
For example, the Indian personal computer market has hundreds of clone manufacturers. But companies like Compaq, IBM, and Apple capture most of the business. Your competitive radar should zoom in on those leaders.
Why this matters: Spending limited time on the most impactful competitors lets you build sharper strategies and avoid analysis paralysis.
Feature tables: a pragmatic tool to spot product gaps and prioritize enhancements
A feature table (also known as a compact Quality Function Deployment or QFD) is a simple but powerful tool.
It helps you:
- Compare your product features against competitors’
- Understand which features matter most to your users
- Identify where you are behind and prioritize accordingly
Here’s the basic approach Talvinder teaches:
- List relevant product qualities or features in rows.
- Assign an importance score to each feature based on user research.
- Score your product and each competitor on how well they deliver each feature.
- Weight the features by importance to highlight the most critical gaps.
- Use the weighted scores to prioritize which enhancements or projects to pursue.
| Product Quality Attribute | Importance | Your Product | Competitor A | Competitor B | Competitor C |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Speed of Checkout | 10 | 7 | 9 | 8 | 6 |
| Payment Options | 8 | 6 | 7 | 9 | 5 |
| Customer Support | 6 | 8 | 7 | 7 | 8 |
| App Stability | 9 | 7 | 6 | 8 | 7 |
This table reveals where you lag on what matters most. Prioritizing fixes on the highest weighted gaps will move the needle more than chasing low-impact features.
Note: The importance weights must come from real user research — not gut feel or competitor mimicry.
Product strategy session at a Series B Bengaluru fintech
You (PM): “Our user interviews say speed of checkout is the top pain point. Our app scores 7, but Competitor A is at 9.”
Engineering Lead: “We can improve checkout speed by optimizing APIs, but it will require two sprints.”
CEO: “If that’s the biggest gap impacting retention, we should prioritize it over new features.”
You (PM): “Exactly. The feature table confirms this focus.”
This data-driven prioritization aligns the team and cuts through the noise.
Balancing feature development with fixing critical gaps
The customer lens beats the competitor lens every time
Competitive research is a tool — not the goal. Talvinder’s core message is clear:
"While this topic was all about competitive research and figuring out product gaps basis the competitive lens, as a product manager, the lens that should matter the most is the consumer lens. What your user is saying and doing should guide your plans, nothing else."
You will hear it often: "Our competitor launched feature X; we need to build it too." That’s a trap.
Blind copying rarely works except in pure commodity markets.
Instead:
- Understand what your users love or hate about competitor features.
- Investigate whether those features solve real user problems or are just shiny distractions.
- Adapt ideas to fit your product philosophy and user context.
For instance, Swiggy’s hyperlocal delivery experience is not just about matching Zomato’s app features. It’s about deeply understanding Indian consumer expectations around timing, payment modes, and trust.
If you do this well, you won’t have to obsess over every competitor move. Your users will tell you what matters.
- List your product’s direct and indirect competitors in your market segment.
- For each, note their unique selling points and the user problems they address.
- Identify 2-3 competitors who control the majority of the market share or mindshare.
- For these key competitors, research publicly available info on features, pricing, and customer feedback.
- Interview 3-5 current or prospective users to understand what they value most in your product category.
- Reflect: What gaps exist in your product compared to competitors? What user needs are unmet?
Test yourself: Prioritizing competitive analysis in a fragmented market
You are a PM at a Series A SaaS startup in Mumbai targeting small retailers with inventory management software. The market has 30+ competitors, but 5 of them control 75% of the customers. Your CEO wants a detailed analysis of all competitors by next week.
The call: How do you prioritize your competitive research efforts, and what rationale do you give to your CEO?
Your reasoning:
You are a PM at a Series A SaaS startup in Mumbai targeting small retailers with inventory management software. The market has 30+ competitors, but 5 of them control 75% of the customers. Your CEO wants a detailed analysis of all competitors by next week.
Your task: How do you prioritize your competitive research efforts, and what rationale do you give to your CEO?
your reasoning:
Where to go next
- Build a strategic roadmap focused on outcomes and market insights: Building Your Roadmap
- Learn frameworks for competitive analysis and market research: Competitive Research Frameworks
- Deepen your user research skills to validate market assumptions: User Research Methods
- Explore prioritization techniques to balance customer needs and business goals: Prioritization Techniques
PL alumni now work at Flipkart, Razorpay, Swiggy, PhonePe, Amazon, and dozens of other Indian startups and tech companies.