Rising Fast: 4 Innovation Lessons from Uber’s Nimisha Sharath

We recently announced the Product 50 Award winners of 2025, honoring the industry’s most impactful, influential, and visionary digital product and growth leaders. This year’s winners are developing boundary-breaking, business-making products and disrupting industries.

In this second installment of our series, we share more insights into winners’ career paths, inspirations, challenges, and perspectives on the trends shaping the digital product world.

Meet Nimisha

Nimisha Sharath is sure to be making headlines in the product world soon. As a product manager at Uber, she focuses on enhancing 2-wheeler travel safety and driving positive behavior, using AI to quantify risk, promote safer marketplace trips, reduce dangerous driving behaviors, and save millions of dollars in insurance costs.

Before joining Uber, Nimisha worked at Microsoft, contributing to multimedia and content recommendations, and at Instacart, where she applied data science to improve offer promotions.

Nishima shared her advice for other up-and-coming leaders, including four key ways innovation can propel their companies and careers forward.

1. Get diverse perspectives to identify gaps

The best product leaders see what others miss, identifying and addressing gaps in products, markets, and user experiences. “I’ve learned that the most important problems aren’t always the loudest,” shares Nimisha. “Sometimes, they’re hidden beneath layers of assumptions or buried in data that no one’s really looking at.”

Nimisha cuts through the noise to spot the critical gaps by talking to real users, looking for patterns in data, and questioning why things are done a certain way.

“I don’t just rely on data,” she explains. “A challenge that seems small on a spreadsheet might be a daily frustration for drivers or riders. I immerse myself in the experience, even driving Ubers to understand firsthand what drivers face.” This hands-on approach has inspired her team to participate in employee driving weeks, embedding a culture of user-first thinking into their work.

Nimisha believes that diverse perspectives lead to better products. “Sometimes, the best opportunities aren’t the obvious ones. Take the time to explore the gaps that others have overlooked—and always listen to the people who use the product.”

However, every product builder knows you can’t address every piece of customer feedback, and prioritization is critical. Nimisha’s advice: Keep it simple. Ask yourself, “Is this a real pain point? Can we solve it effectively? Will it make a meaningful impact?” If the answer is yes, then it’s worth investigating.

2. Run quick tests and get feedback (lots of it)

Experimentation is key to building great digital experiences, and modern product teams like Nimisha’s are testing, learning, and iterating faster than ever before.

Nimisha believes in testing ideas before fully committing to them. “Instead of spending months building something only to realize it doesn’t work, I try to run small, quick experiments to get early signals,” she says. This could be a simple A/B test, a lightweight prototype, or even just a user interview to validate assumptions.

She also emphasizes the importance of creating feedback loops to accelerate learning. “Whether through metrics, conversations with users, or small-scale rollouts, I try to learn as fast as possible so we can make adjustments before scaling,” Nimisha explains.

But feedback isn’t just about numbers to her—it’s about people. “I make sure we’re hearing from diverse voices, including drivers in different markets, riders with accessibility needs, and operational teams that see things from a different angle.”

One time, her team needed to test a new engagement tool. Rather than going all-in out of the gate, they started with a small pilot. This was a great decision because they uncovered key insights that helped them refine their approach before launch.

3. Build allies and mentorship across your organization

Uber is a big company, and no one builds things alone. One of the biggest lessons Nimisha has learned is that collaboration is just as important as execution.

“Whether it’s engineers, operations teams, or leadership, getting alignment early makes everything smoother,” she says. When it comes to getting buy-in, she finds that framing ideas in a way that resonates with others makes a big difference—whether it’s tying proposals to company goals or showing a clear user benefit.

She also calls out that not every decision comes from the top down—sometimes, it’s about making the case for prioritizing something. “For example, I had to advocate for investing in a product area that hadn’t been getting much attention,” she explains. “By bringing real driver stories and data to the table, I was able to shift the conversation and secure resources to solve the problem.”

Mentorship has also played a huge role in Nimisha’s journey, so she tries to mentor others. “Whether helping a teammate think through a problem or guiding someone earlier in their PM career, I believe that lifting others strengthens the entire team.”

In fact, she hasn’t focused just on next steps in her own career—since 2024, she’s helped nearly 100 immigrants break into product management. “I’ve given countless free talks and workshops to help people upskill and land PM roles,” Nimisha shares. “I love mentoring and offering my time to anyone who needs guidance.”

4. Make meaningful progress—one step at a time

One of the hardest things about product management is balancing your big-picture vision with what you can actually ship in the near term. Nimisha advises breaking ambitious ideas into smaller, high-impact steps so you can deliver value early, while still working toward a larger goal.

Nimisha also emphasizes that prioritization is key. “It’s easy to get pulled in a hundred different directions,” she says, “but focusing on the few things that will drive the most impact makes all the difference.”

However, she’s found that impact doesn’t always appear in dashboards—because it’s also about real people. “When making trade-offs, I always go back to what’s best for drivers and riders, not just what looks good on a quarterly report.”

For example, in one instance, instead of trying to overhaul an entire system, her team focused on one small but critical improvement. This ended up being more effective than a complete redesign. It was a great reminder that progress isn’t about doing everything at once—it’s about doing the right thing at the right time.

Nurturing tomorrow’s leaders today

Today’s emerging product builders are tomorrow’s epic leaders—and Nimisha is bound to be a key voice in shaping that future of product management. Prioritizing reflection and staying laser-focused on her customers’ needs, she’s building meaningful solutions that solve real problems the right way.

“I’m honored to share my journey because I’m passionate about uplifting others in the tech industry,” Nimisha says. “I strive to be a leader, mentor, and advocate—someone who’s not only pushing boundaries in tech but also working to make it a better, more inclusive place for everyone.”