COVID-19 Vaccine Program Platform for India: Phased Plan to 80% Coverage at Low Cost

In a product manager interview at Salesforce, you are asked to own a product that manages COVID-19 vaccination across India. The goal is to get 80% of the population vaccinated, and to do it in a price-optimized way. Define the roadmap, explain what you would build, describe how you would roll it out, and say how you would measure success. ### Clarifying Questions - Does the 80% refer to the whole population or only to people eligible for vaccination, and does "vaccinated" mean one dose or a full course? - What does "price-optimized" mean here: the lowest total program cost per person vaccinated, the price individual citizens pay, or both? - Is there a deadline for reaching 80%, and who owns the product: the national government, the states, or a vendor platform they license? - Which parts of the program are in scope: citizen registration and booking only, or also vaccine stock, site operations and certificates? ### Part 1 — Users and roadmap Identify the people and organizations the product must serve, and lay out a phased roadmap toward the 80% target. ```hint Look at who gets left behind Coverage targets are usually missed among the hardest-to-reach groups, not the easiest. Ask who would be left out if the product worked only for smartphone owners in cities, and when your roadmap starts serving them. ``` #### What This Part Should Cover - The users on the citizen side and on the delivery side (sites, health workers, officials), with what each needs. - Phases in a deliberate order, with the reason for that order. - What is deferred, and why. ### Part 2 — What to build Describe the core capabilities of the first release and the requirements they must meet at national scale. ```hint Follow one dose Trace a single dose from its arrival at a site to a verified certificate in a person's hands, and note each record that has to be created along the way, including when the site has no connectivity. ``` #### What This Part Should Cover - Core capabilities across registration, booking, site operations, stock and certificates. - Scale, connectivity and language requirements, sized from the target. - Identity, privacy, and the design choices that keep cost down. ### Part 3 — Rollout Explain how you would launch the product across the country. ```hint Plan for a bad first day A national launch meets traffic spikes, weak connectivity and untrained staff at the same time. Decide what a pilot must prove and what a site does when the system is down. ``` #### What This Part Should Cover - A pilot design and the evidence it must produce before expansion. - Staged expansion with gates, pacing demand to vaccine supply. - Training, support, fallback procedures and communication. ### Part 4 — Measuring success Define how you would track progress toward 80% coverage and how you would judge whether the program is price-optimized. ```hint Price per what? Decide which unit cost you would report, and think about how it changes as vaccination moves from city centers to remote villages. ``` #### What This Part Should Cover - A north-star coverage measure with leading indicators. - Cost metrics tied to concrete levers. - Equity, safety and data-quality guardrails. ### What a Strong Answer Covers - Pinning down the target's denominator and the meanings of "vaccinated" and "price-optimized", then sizing the doses and daily capacity the target implies. - Designing for India's scale and diversity: many languages, patchy connectivity, people without smartphones, and assisted or walk-in channels. - Concrete cost levers, such as wastage, stock routing, channel mix and second-dose completion, connected to how cost is measured. - Safety, privacy and inclusion treated as constraints throughout: adverse-event reporting, minimal health data, and nobody excluded for lacking an ID or a phone. - One consistent thread in which the roadmap phases, rollout gates and metrics all serve the same coverage goal. ### Follow-up Questions - Six months in, most people have a first dose but second-dose completion is lagging. What would you change in the product and in outreach? - A new age group becomes eligible and millions try to book in the same hour while supply is short. How should the product allocate slots fairly? - Should registration require the national ID? Argue both sides and make a call.