May 2023 – Apr 2024 · 11 mos · Greater Delhi Area

• Taking a break to recharge and figure out what next. In my free time I'm writing, consulting, and meeting interesting people.
• Writing:
• a) Observing trends for the Indian consumer - https://theindianpivot.substack.com/
• b) Lennys Newsletter for India - https://theproductroadmap.substack.com/
• Consulting:
• Fractional CPO for growth stage startups. Engagements a) growth stage social media b) early stage rewards e-commerce c) early stage health tech
• Cohort Based Course for mid - senior product managers
• Elevate - https://bit.ly/3UxnnE6

Oct 2021 – Mar 2023 · 1 yr 5 mos · Remote · Remote

• Leading the candidate engagement charter at Apna, a professional network for the rising workforce. Managing a team of product managers to drive engagement and retention.
• I spent a lot of time at ShareChat envious of the power of a people network - and saw the opportunity at Apna to build a people powered network which would help the emerging workforce (Bharat consumer).
• To this end I built multiple products
• Digital Professional Identity through an profile valuable to recruiters and the network
• Core of the professional network - People You May Know (machine learning based people recommendations)
• Content Feed - Personalised content recommended by a data science algorithm. Managed the AI product team.
• Job Referral - Use your professional network to identify unlisted/new opportunities. Enabled through a one click referral product tailor made for this audience. Increased chat volume 2x.
• People Management
• Team of ~15 product managers and designers, supported by an engineering team of ~40

Aug 2018 – Oct 2021 · 3 yrs 2 mos · Bengaluru Area, India · Hybrid

• What an absolutely wild ride. 5mn to 50mn daily active users, 0 to xx cr per month in live audio virtual gifting revenue, and launching a market leader short video product overnight.
• I had more highlights in 3 years than most people have in 30. Experienced absolutes - from the troughs of despair to the highs of success. Went from an IC PM to building and leading a fantastic team of product leaders. I had to build a lot of my own frameworks from first principles - building consumer product in India for a Tier 2 audience is very very different. Personal thesis of exponential learning played out massively. Extremely grateful for the opportunity and the team.
• At ShareChat I helped scale the product to 100mn+ monthly active users. ShareChat is used by 1 in 5 of internet users in India.
• I led a team of 20+ GPMs, PMs, and analysts, and ran 5 product pods.
• I also built India's largest live audio platform specifically for the India 2 audience and grew it from from 0 to xx mn USD GMV in 12 months.
• A snapshot of products I worked on -
• AI Recommendation systems
• Live Audio chatrooms (largest audio product in India)
• Content creation tools and funnels
• Creator acquisition and retention
• Notifications (xx bn notifications sent daily)
• Search and Discovery
• Profile
• ShareChat TV (Long form video within ShareChat)
• and much more.
• https://www.livemint.com/companies/start-ups/indias-sharechat-raises-266-million-for-valuation-of-3-7-billion-11639635557451.html
• https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/technology/sharechats-virtual-gifting-earns-50-million/articleshow/94689816.cms?from=mdr

Apr 2016 – Apr 2018 · 2 yrs · Bengaluru Area, India

• Got my first shot at structured product management. Spent two years here honing my craft, understanding and building for the 'inspiration' part of a travellers customer journey. Managed a couple of junior PMs, built interesting products in content, video, ad-tech.
• Programmatic CRM: Built content personalization engine to deliver relevant travel content to 4 million travelers. Involved user journey creation, Facebook integration & marketing, Email marketing, & content mining from reviews.
• Video: My team pioneered user generated Video Reviews as a new content format in the travel space. I was responsible for both review generation and review consumption metrics. Being an early leader in Video content meant that I had the chance to see first hand the impact of visual content on all metrics.
• Reviews Platform: Led relationship with multiple partners to collect & distribute HolidayIQ review content.
• Brand Solutions: Responsible for building out products to amplify HolidayIQ’s Brand Solutions business.
• Eventually saw my learning plateau and moved. By this time I was sure of consumer product, and was looking to move into a sector which was just opening up. That's when ShareChat happened - content + product + large unaddressed base + rapid growth.

Feb 2015 – Apr 2016 · 1 yr 2 mos · Bengaluru Area, India · On-site

• What Cubeit does - https://medium.com/cubeit-curate-your-content/obituary-the-folder-8d0f5021edfd
• As part of a small team at an Accel Partners funded startup, I helped ideate and launch a content first mobile first app which enabled consumption of diverse forms of content on the mobile (think of how youtube links show in WhatsApp as content cards). As Growth lead I worked on innovative modes of customer acquisition, generating user feedback through AB tests, focus groups, and interviews. Cubeit was eventually acquired by Myntra.
• Great experience building a 0-1 product, launching, and failing. By now I was a 100% sure I wanted to work as a product manager, but in a slightly more structured organisation. On to the next!

Sep 2014 – Jan 2015 · 4 mos · Bengaluru Area, India

• At Zoomcar, a Sequoia/Ford funded self drive car rental startup, I was responsible for marketing and business development, my first customer facing role! Ran around setting up parking locations for our cars, helping launch new cities, working on marketing collateral, and a bunch of other generalist stuff.
• Also - cut my teeth in product, working with the engineering and design team to build products for marketing automation.
• Another step towards figuring out what I really wanted to do with my career. Outcome: Startups = Good, Product = Great!
• I quit in 6 months to join a VC funded 5 member team building a content product out of a shared apartment (!)

Apr 2014 – Sep 2014 · 5 mos · Bangalore

• I joined Flipkart as a management trainee in Supply Chain Finance, and was part of the team which managed warehouse finance for Flipkart. This involved tracking costs for all warehouses across India, and actively analyzing them to recommend actions to management. I was also part of the supply chain strategy team where we built a business case for pan India expansion of Flipkart's fulfilment network. Had an opportunity to work on the initial structure of Flipkart First.
• Flipkart was my first exposure to a fast growing startup, and I liked what I saw! But after 6 months I was pretty sure I didn't want to spend my career neck deep in excel sheets (this was why I stayed away from banking post MBA). Took a risk and quit in 6 months to join an early stage startup in a more customer facing role.

Apr 2013 – May 2013 · 1 mo · Hong Kong

• Summer Intern at Balance Sheet Management (Treasury). Worked with internal analytics team on weekly regional projections, and with the Investments desk on building a portfolio analytics suite.
• Did a bunch of excel and number crunching, explored Hong Kong, and then realised that banking was not for me. So now what?

Jul 2010 – Jun 2012 · 1 yr 11 mos · Singapore

• Separately - my first job was in Singapore, for someone who had never traveled abroad this was a dream come true! Spent 2 years learning a little bit about banking and a lot about why tech is important.
• Details
• Analyst, US Fixed Income Technology: I was part of a team of engineers building and maintaining an in house application which acts as a hub between Fixed Income trading applications and a third party vendor application. My team was the touch point for all Fixed Income trades done in the US market on US dollar securities. My role involved analyzing requests for trade/system related information from traders and the middle office, and providing timely and accurate solutions. Tools: SQL, Perl, UNIX.

Jun 2010 – Jun 2012 · 2 yrs

• Combining both my passion for writing, and a desire to work in the social sector, I lead the editorial team at Grassroutes. From the Grassroutes website - Grassroutes is a Fellowship Program which enables outstanding and passionate youth to travel across rural India, discover and work with changemakers, do their bit to change the world and inspire more youth into social action.
• The editorial team works with Grassroutes fellows to hone their story telling skills, enabling them to get potent, human stories out to the general public, and also facilitates the spread of these stories through mainstream and social media.

May 2009 – Jul 2009 · 2 mos · Singapore

• Analyst in the Asia Pacific IT COO's office. The team's work dealt primarily with administration and reporting for all Technology teams in Asia Pacific.

Sep 2008 – May 2010 · 1 yr 8 mos

• Wrote a bunch of articles for a student run newspaper, where we actually printed and distributed hard copies throughout campus. Yes, I'm that old. Talk to me about the death of newspaper advertising.
• Led a team of 30 that published 5000 copies of the campus newspaper every fortnight.
• Revamped the website and mailing list, resulting in our issues reaching over 5000 alumni worldwide, and the website averaging 10,000 hits a month.
• Initiated content collaboration with campus newspapers in IIT Bombay and Delhi, and with the technology magazine Digit.
• Comprehensive coverage of campus events has led to reports from The Scholars’ Avenue being quoted in The Indian Express and The Hindustan Times.
• First hand experience in newspaper layout using CorelDraw and Photoshop

May 2008 – Jun 2008 · 1 mo · Singapore

• Developer for Compliance Technology

May 2007 – Jul 2007 · 2 mos · New Delhi Area, India

• Worked under Prof. Sanghamitra Das on a Government of India Sponsored Project to assess the environmental impact of poverty using evidence from firewood use in rural India. Recommendations were acknowledged in the publication.