Excellence Awards

SPM excellence awards are instituted to celebrate excellence in the software product management practices and show case the best practices and role models.

Who Can Apply

  • Any software product / internet commerce platform company incorporated in India

  • Any global software product / internet commerce platform company with their product management leadership based in India.

How to Apply

  1. Download the application format - Download here

  2. Fill it in, attach your product documents, and submit the package by email to SPMAwardsIndia@ispma.org

Important Dates

Receipt of Expression of Interest along with Nomination form: 7 November 2026

Completion of Evaluation by Jury and sending out interview calls: 21 November 2026  

Completion of interviews and announcement of finalists: 11 December 2026

Presentation by Finalists at the Summit: 12-13 February 2027

For any questions, please write to: csitm@iimb.ac.in

A company can nominate multiple products with separate application for each.

All submissions will be evaluated by a jury comprising of experts of international repute drawn from the industry and academia.

ISPMA/ IIMB guarantee confidential treatment of submitted information.

MEET Our Prestigious Jury MEMBERS

Jury Chair - Hans-Bernd Kittlaus

Hans-Bernd Kittlaus is board member, chairman emeritus and Hall of Fame member of ISPMA e.V. He is also the owner and general manager of InnoTivum Consulting (www.innotivum.com) which he founded in 2001. Before, he was Director of SIZ GmbH (Computing Center of the German Savings Banks Organization, Germany) and Head of Software Product Management and Development units of IBM. His main focus area is software product management. Hans-Bernd has been working as a trainer, coach and consultant for both corporate IT organizations and companies in a number of industries, and as a lecturer at academic institutions. He has trained hundreds of product managers in all ISPMA training modules. He is a frequent speaker at international conferences and has published numerous books and articles, his latest being “Software Product Management for Startups: The ISPMA-Compliant Study Guide and Handbook” (with Haragopal Mangipudi, guNaka/InnoTivum 2023) and “Software Product Management: The ISPMA-Compliant Study Guide and Handbook, 2nd Edition” (Springer 2022). He is Diplom-Informatiker (corresponds to M.S. in Computer Science).

Jury Member - Muthu Ranganathan

Muthu Ranganathan passed CA in 1995 and is now Director- Product Management, SAP Labs,
Bangalore. Muthu has 20+ years’ experience working initially in corporate finance in companies such as Arvind Brands, Pepsi & Ford and later moved to IT working in Ramco, Hyperion (now part of Oracle) & SAP. His experience spans across product management, strategy, global Center of Excellence roles. Muthu is presently driving new innovation products in Big Data and Digital areas at SAP. Muthu is a SAP Mentor, which is a 130+ community of global experts across SAP customers, partners and employees. An active blogger in technology and business topics, access his expert blogs in SAP Community Network, Linkedin and iSpirit
You can follow him on twitter @muthurangnathan.

Jury Member - Frank Villavicencio

Frank Villavicencio is a product executive and a Fellow of ISPMA. He was Chief Product Officer at ADP from 2015 to 2021, first for Access and Identity Management and then for Shared Services, where his team was responsible for managing more than 40 million identities and delivering more than 64 million tax statements a year. He then served as Chief Product Officer of Greenshades Software. Since 2023 he has worked as a fractional Chief Product Officer and is now a Partner at Product Advisors, advising fintech, healthcare technology and cybersecurity companies on product strategy, AI roadmaps and go-to-market. Frank holds a master's degree from Carnegie Mellon University, is a named inventor on nine U.S. patents, and has spoken at Identiverse and Money20/20. He serves on the jury for the ISPMA Excellence Awards in Software Product Management.

Jury Member- Prof. Gabriel Silva Cogo

Prof. Gabriel Silva Cogo is a PhD in Management Information Systems and an applied researcher working with topics such as DevOps, AI governance and cybersecurity, SRE and Chaos Engineering, and human–AI interaction, DAOs and blockchain, and technology and public safety. He currently leades multidisciplinary applied research projects involving FGV and other brazilian and international universities, as well as public-sector institutions. His current research interests include Tech governance, assurance and reliability, Autonomous and agentic AI systems, Human–AI interaction and decision-making, AI adoption and organizational transformation, Technology governance, etc. He currently serves as an Assistant Professor at FGV EAESP and as a researcher at FGV Analytics, combining academic research, executive education and applied projects with government, industry and university partners.