About

I'm a product manager who builds AI products for enterprises: agentic AI, GenAI, cloud platforms and SaaS.

IIT KharagpurEPGP, Agentic AI and GenAI
IIM KozhikodeMBA, 2017 — 2019
Ex-MicrosoftProduct Manager, Azure
Ex-EYProduct Manager

I'm Akshay Sharma, Senior Product Manager at Avalara, where I work on AI for tax compliance across the AvaTax and Returns experiences. I'm based in Hyderabad, India.

Over 10+ years I've worked on products in tax compliance, retail, healthcare, cloud migration and internal knowledge workflows. My work is 0 to 1 product discovery, AI use case design, roadmap ownership and cross-functional delivery: turning a business problem into an AI product with clear value, adoption, governance and enterprise readiness.

Before Avalara I was a product manager at Microsoft, on Azure cloud migration and cost governance, and at EY. I hold an MBA from IIM Kozhikode and I'm completing an executive programme in Agentic AI and GenAI at IIT Kharagpur. Outside work I mentor people moving into product, publish research on AI and education equity, and maintain open kits for AI product managers.

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Experience

Project details

Mar 2025 — Present
Senior Product Manager, AvalaraAI-enabled tax compliance across AvaTax and Returns.
Apr 2023 — Feb 2025
Data and AI Product Manager, Brane AI Enterprises / NSL HubRetail ERP with Promo AI and Pricing AI; natural-language low-code platform.
Feb 2022 — Apr 2023
Product Manager, Cloud Migration and Cost Governance, MicrosoftAzure CostIQ for migration pricing, budgeting and governance.
Mar 2021 — Feb 2022
Product Manager, EYSkillHubAI knowledge platform; unified healthcare platform.
May 2019 — Mar 2021
Product Manager, Larsen & ToubroDigital transformation and CRM platform; feasibility engine MVP.
Apr 2018 — Jun 2018
Product Manager Intern, Robert BoschSmart city and smart campus solutions.
Mar 2015 — Jun 2017
Product Analyst, ADPTax Credits Services; One ADP and One Payroll research.

Education

Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur: EPGP, Agentic AI and GenAI · 2026
Indian Institute of Management, Kozhikode: MBA · 2017 — 2019
University of California, Berkeley: AI and ML: Business Strategies and Applications · 2021 — 2022
JNTU Hyderabad (VNR VJIET): B.Tech · 2010 — 2014

Recognition

Global Winner: Ideas for Action, World Bank
Global Winner: Global CyberPeace Challenge
National Finalist: Global Management Challenge 2021
Certifications: Microsoft Global Hackathon 2022 · Lean Six Sigma Green Belt · Scrum

What I work on

Agentic AI: Task decomposition, workflow agents, exception triage, human review, audit trails.
GenAI products: AI assistants, copilots, enterprise search, RAG, content generation, summarisation.
AI product management: Use case discovery, ROI sizing, PRDs, model evaluation, adoption metrics, GTM support.
Enterprise guardrails: Explainability, privacy controls, compliance workflows, governance, risk review.

Also

Founder, Student Force: Career guidance for rural students and village development · 2012 — 2020
Co-founder, Sri Auro-Aditi Institute: Play-school growth plan and franchise model · 2014 — 2015
Tools and platforms: Azure, AWS, GCP, RAG, AI assistants, model evaluation, AI governance, SQL, dbt, Snowflake, Power BI, Figma, Miro, Jira
Languages: English, Hindi, Telugu