Growing up in a small town in Sangli, Maharashtra, Aqsa Fulara, an AI/ML product manager at Google since 2017, like many other women, faced societal norms that often discouraged women from pursuing higher education far from home.
“Coming from a community where moving out of my parent’s home to a hostel for higher education was frowned upon, I put all my energy towards getting into this prestigious engineering college in the same city,” Fulara told AIM in an exclusive interview.
Her dedication paid off when she was admitted to Walchand College of Engineering, where she did her BTech in computer science and engineering. This academic achievement was just the beginning.
Fulara’s passion for learning and her desire to push the boundaries led her to the University of Southern California (USC), where she pursued a master’s degree in engineering management, and since then “there was no looking back!”, Fulara shared gleefully.
“While my experiences in India provided me with a solid technical foundation and analytical approach to solving problems, my experiences at USC and Stanford focused a lot more on practical applications of cutting-edge technology,” she added.
According to recent surveys, compared to other developing countries, fewer women in India reported being discouraged from pursuing scientific or technical fields (37% vs. 65%). The primary challenges faced by women students in India are high-stress levels (72%), difficulties in finding internships (66%), and a gap between their expectations and their current curriculum (66%).
Fulara's path to AI and ML was not marked by a single dramatic moment but rather a gradual buildup of curiosity and fascination with technology. Her inclination towards solving problems and understanding complex systems drew her to this field.
“That led me to my capstone project on behaviour recognition and predicting traffic congestion in large-scale in-person events and thus, building products for congestion management,” she added.
Leadership Mantra: Building the Culture of Innovation
If you're familiar with Google's Vertex AI Search, you likely know about Recommendations AI. Now branded as Recommendations from Vertex AI Search, this service leverages state-of-the-art machine learning models to provide personalised, real-time shopping recommendations tailored to each user's tastes and preferences.
One of the key figures in scaling this product is Fulara, who has been instrumental in its growth since 2021. Fulara has also been the force behind the highly acclaimed products in Google Cloud's Business Intelligence portfolio, such as Team Workspaces and Looker Studio Pro.
Fulara considers Looker Studio as one of her favourite projects. "Imagine having a personal data analyst assistant who can provide customised recommendations and help you make informed decisions," she added.
Having worked with Google for over seven years now, one thing that Fulara values most about the company is the freedom to explore and innovate. "Whether it's pursuing a 20% project in a new domain, growing into a particular area of expertise, or participating in company-wide hackathons, Google provides much space for creativity and innovation," she shared.
This environment has allowed her to pivot her career towards product management, building on her AI experiences and focusing on delivering business value through customer-centric solutions.
Leading AI product development comes with its own set of challenges. "AI products have a larger degree of uncertainty and ambiguity, with challenges in terms of large upfront investment, uncertain returns, technical feasibility, and evolving regulations," she explained.
To manage these challenges, Fulara fosters a culture of experimentation and agility. "We release MVPs for testing far ahead of production cycles to rigorously test and benchmark on production data and user behaviours," she added, allowing her team to make informed decisions even with incomplete information.
Fulara emphasises the importance of managing scope creep tightly and sharing outcome-based roadmaps upfront. "We're solving for problem themes, not necessarily just churning out AI features," she noted. This strategy helps maintain focus and adapt to changes quickly.
Future of AI
Looking ahead, Fulara sees generative AI, personalised recommendations, and data analytics as transformative forces in the coming decade, making data and insights more accessible and workflows more collaborative.
AI and ML models are becoming increasingly pervasive, assisting in personalised shopping journeys, optimising marketing strategies, and improving data-driven decision-making across various industries.
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