Prashant Tomar: A Product Leader Reimagining How Businesses Operate In The AI era

Prashant Tomar is a distinguished Senior Product Management leader with over a decade of experience building technology products that help businesses grow and address the evolving needs of customers. As a senior product leader at Meta, he specializes in business-facing AI and messaging products—the infrastructure powering how hundreds of millions of businesses communicate with more than 3 billion consumers daily across WhatsApp, Messenger, and Instagram.

But Prashant's work isn't just about scale. It's about making advanced technologies accessible to businesses that were previously left out—whether it's a solo founder managing a small beauty brand or a retail team looking to upskill their workforce. His mission is to build intuitive, AI-powered systems that allow businesses of all sizes to connect, automate, and grow—responsibly and securely. For his contributions to the field, Prashant was recognized as one of the top emerging product leaders and received a Gold Globee Award in 2024.

From Data Systems to Human-Centered Technology

Prashant's journey began with a computer science degree that gave him the technical foundation to design scalable systems, followed by an MBA from the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business, where he sharpened his product strategy and leadership lens.

At Informatica Corporation, he worked with Fortune 500 clients to deploy cloud data infrastructure — helping companies like Shell and American Express transform how they stored, accessed, and governed data. "I saw firsthand how powerful platforms could unlock value for large enterprises," he says. "But I also saw how inaccessible that power was for smaller businesses."

That realization stayed with him. It's what ultimately led him to spend the next decade building products that make complex technology usable and impactful for non-technical business users.

ProEdge: Unlocking the Power of Upskilling for the Enterprise Workforce

When Prashant joined PwC's internal venture arm, the challenge was bold: build a scalable solution to help the global workforce adapt to the future of work. The result was ProEdge, an AI-powered upskilling platform that delivered personalized learning paths to employees based on skill gaps, role trajectories, and future-readiness.

Unlike traditional training tools, ProEdge didn't just offer course catalogs — it integrated over 6,500 content providers and used AI to recommend what each employee needed to learn to grow in their role. Prashant led the product from zero to scale: building the platform, assembling the team, and launching it with over 75 enterprise clients in its first year.

ProEdge became core to PwC's Workforce Transformation offering, empowering companies to reskill at scale and future-proof their workforce. Analyst firms like HFS Research and ALM Intelligence recognized it as a market-defining solution. But for Prashant, the real impact was more personal: "We helped tens of thousands of employees — many who had never done digital learning before — gain the skills they needed to stay relevant and grow their careers."

Instagram Reels: Helping Creators Grow Their Audience and Income

Before diving into business messaging, Prashant took on a multi-faceted challenge at Instagram: helping creators reach the right consumer audiences through Reels, and in turn, grow their businesses. His team focused on building new surfaces to recommend short-form videos—especially in private messaging and notifications—using AI to personalize distribution.

This shift had a major impact. Reels engagement surged, with users resharing Reels more than 2 billion times every day by 2023. Creators who previously struggled with visibility began to build loyal audiences, and users discovered more content they loved. By surfacing relevant Reels more effectively, Prashant's team helped turn discovery into a powerful engine for creator growth and monetization. His framing of the opportunity was simple but transformative: "Every creator is a business. By improving how their content gets discovered, we help them succeed."

WhatsApp Business Platform: Making Messaging Work for Businesses of All Sizes

After his success at Instagram, Prashant transitioned to Meta's business messaging team, where he led the launch and global expansion of the WhatsApp Business Platform. This platform enabled companies to engage with customers at scale across utility (e.g., order updates), marketing (e.g., product launches), and service (e.g., support) use cases — all within WhatsApp.

Prior to WhatsApp Business Platform, there was no secure, scalable way for businesses to use WhatsApp to connect to their customers. Prashant also introduced a new use-case-based pricing system, aligning costs to the purpose of the message and ensuring the platform remained accessible to both global brands and local sellers.

The results were transformative: Businesses like Soko in Kenya used the API to connect artisans with global buyers; governments used WhatsApp to distribute vaccine appointments during the pandemic; and small businesses in India used messaging to deliver groceries and retain customers in lockdowns.

Most importantly, the system is designed with user protection in mind — discouraging spam, maintaining consent-based engagement, and aligning with evolving privacy standards.

Bringing AI to Small Businesses: Enabling Meta AI in Messaging

Prashant's next challenge was arguably his most ambitious — how to make AI tools accessible to the small businesses that operate entirely on their phones. Large companies have CRMs, ERP systems, and AI assistants. But a local boutique in Brazil? Or a repair technician in Egypt? They rely on WhatsApp — and had no access to advanced automation or insights.

Prashant led the development of a transformative mobile-to-server messaging infrastructure that enabled AI agents to function securely within WhatsApp, while preserving end-to-end encryption and user privacy. This platform became the backbone for Meta Business AI for SMBs — a product that now allows businesses to automate customer service, send proactive reminders, and generate replies using AI. "Instead of forcing businesses to adopt complex tools, we brought the intelligence to where they already work," Prashant says. "And we did it without compromising privacy or trust."

A Recognized Product Leader in the industry

Prashant's work has been recognized across the tech and business community. He received the Product Manager of the Year Award from Globee and the India Achievers Award for Excellence in Product Management. He is a Senior Member of the IEEE and a Member of the Forbes Technology Council, where he regularly contributes thought leadership on product strategy, AI, and messaging infrastructure.

Beyond Meta, he serves as a guest speaker and coach at Product School and supports startups through the University of Michigan's Ross Business+Tech Initiative. His insights have been featured in Forbes and BuiltIn, and he is a senior judge at Unicorn Events, the world's largest pitch competition for high-growth startups.

Through every product he builds, Prashant is advancing a singular mission: to make technology simpler, smarter, and more human—especially for the people building businesses of their own.