Is Platforms and Product role the same?

Platform can be thought of as a horizontal layer which can be used among many verticals Example in Paytm, Core payments is a platform which can be used across multiple horizontal layers like upi payments, credit card payments for movies, ondc, flight etc etc

No, they are not. Taking Flipkart as an example, they have different products such as apps for the customers/sellers, the backend, the website for customers/sellers etc. Different PMs are responsible for taking care of these products. Platform product manager focuses on creating and maintaining the platform that enables other product teams to develop and deliver their products more efficiently and effectively. They need to balance the needs of various product teams while ensuring the platform's stability and growth plus, they work to ensure that the platform is scalable, reliable and provides the necessary tools and resources for another product team(s).

No, it’s very different. (Vertical) Product Management - You work for a specific product line, think it from a B2B SaaS lena where such definitions are more clear. Taking an example of HRMS systems, if you are building an attendance module. You will have end-to-end visibility of what will it take to build the same. You will have end customer as your major stakeholder. (Horizontal) Platform Product Management- Here the role will cut across various vertical products. From the example given above, out of attendance & onboarding modules, one of the common layer can be “data layer” which contains all the data pipelines & services. You will need to figure out things majorly with internal stakeholders.