Feb 2025 – Jul 2025 · 5 mos · Bengaluru, Karnataka, India · Remote

• Day Zero is venture syndicate based out of India where we back early stage companies focused on global markets.
• We typically do $100k-$200K early stage investments in teams with a global outlook.
• If you are building in Consumer-tech, Gaming, HR-tech, Education or AI SaaS for GTM please write to me at Yash@dzero.vc
• We are Early backers of companies including:
• Exponent.Energy - backed by Lightspeed, 3One4
• Requestly.io - backed by YC, PeakXV
• SpryHealth.care - backed by EightRoads, Together Fund
• ByteBeam.io - backed by Accel, Together Fund
• GetBinks.com - backed by YC, Unannounced
• Chattybao.com - backed by InfoEdge & Vertex Ventures
• Gosupernova.live - backed by Lumikai, Kae Capital
• Useplaza.com - backed by EM VC
• Riyalto.com - backed by Riverwalk VC

Jan 2025 – Jul 2025 · 6 mos · On-site

• Sailing through uncharted waters and learning to build distribution at a grassroot level

Jan 2024 – Feb 2025 · 1 yr 1 mo · On-site

• I lead admissions & strategic initiatives for Scaler School of Technology on paper, what I really do is anything and everything that needs to be done to get the job done asap! I go by principles - "Hustle" & "Figure", so does my fab team!
• I was a true generalist, trying to bring his founder stint chops into the operator play here. There are things I built here:
• 1. Leadership - Built & led a 7-member cross-functional team, driving 440+ admissions and scaling revenue 3x from $4M to $12M+ across Growth, Sales, Ops, CX, and FinOps (My team hustled alot!)
• 2. Strategy - Collaborated with founders & leadership to solve critical offline business challenges using data-driven insights, improving efficiency across functions (Fire fighter & plumber at heart!)
• 3. Revenue Ops - Developed GTM playbooks for content-led sales & customer engagement, exceeding conversion targets by 20%, reducing sales TAT by 40%, and improving NPS by 25% (Brought back authority & brand pull, we never really did "sales")
• 4. Growth & Brand - Developed flagship digital IPs, generating 70K leads, 25K+ learners, 3K+ UGC posts, and $300K additional revenue, with a 9.2/10 NPS (Students loved the experience and showered their organic love!)
• 5. Product & Analytics- Built a Notion-based student directory, wrote PRD's & BRD's for paid student dashboards increasing trust & boosting conversions by 5%; led data analysis of user personas X conversion metrics to improve m-o-m revenue predictability, exceeded benchmarks in 7/10 cycles (Building Excel chops, learnt new tools & wrote clean docs)
• 6. B2B Partnerships - Led partnerships with 6+ banks, enabling financing solutions for 400+ students
• & 10+ regional counselling agencies, securing $300K revenue (Realized building relationships is my biggest strength)
• Focus areas for year 2 -
• 1. Solving ambiguous & complex 0-1 problems
• 2. Scaling relationship-driven growth strategies

Jan 2024 – Jul 2025 · 1 yr 6 mos · Bengaluru, Karnataka, India · On-site

• I am onto my next adventure, building India's Ivy League for Tech Education in India at Scaler School of Technology. We are valued at $700M, backed by marquee investors such as Sequoia Capital, Tiger Global, Lightbox Ventures and more.
• Each year over 1.6M engineers graduate from colleges in India, yet only 2% are employable. The current education system is broken - outdated curriculum, faculties with no building experience, poor infrastructure and lack of Industry X Academia intersection.
• To solve for these perennial problems that affect the employability and learning experience of students, we are building a world class institution - Scaler School of Technology (https://www.scaler.com/school-of-technology/)

Jun 2023 – Dec 2023 · 6 mos · Hybrid

• What we do:
• Fasthr.AI is the world's first talent screening platform powered by GPT-4. We create unhackable personalized hiring assessments to help close positions 5x faster.
• Raised: $700K
• Investors: 35+ Founders & CXO's of BookMyShow, Network18, Park+, IIFL Wealth, Epigamia, PazCare, Reflexical, FlipKart, The Label Life, Verak, PopClub and more.
• My role:
• 1. Built and executed B2B Marketing, Growth & GTM function, playbook and outcomes from 0-1 for India and US market. Conducted cold reachouts, customer discovery calls, navigated through cultural and regional nuances, buying cycle discovery and set-up outbound and inbound GTM motion for market discovery - US & India.
• 2. Led a team of 100+ for our human assisted SaaS recruiting platform, driving $250K revenue in our first year.
• 3. Partnered with 150+ orgs like NoBroker, PayPal, Agoda, Webengage, Hike, Onsurity, Turtlemint, Khatabook and more for recruiting. Initiated sales cycle and pilot discussions with C-suite folks at large enterprises such as Infosys, Citi bank, Godrej, ICICI Bank, Google and more.
• 4. Created a marketing & sales enablement playbook to drive high quality MQL pipeline (200+ inbound MQLs), create strong brand identity and reduce sales cycles by 40%. Channels tapped - Thought Leadership, IAB, Expert Communities, Content Marketing, Personal Branding, Sales Automation tools and Growth Hacking.
• 5. Led fundraise efforts across 2 rounds, managed P&L, created detailed financial models across our 7 pivots and managed investor relations smoothly.
• 6. Defined product vision, roadmap and technical feasibility, collaborated with Tech & Product team to ship 4+ enterprise SaaS products in 1 year. Executed product roadmap from prod research, Lo-fi/hi-fi UI Mockups to development, launch and initial p-m-f discovery.
• 7. Drove 10+ strategic initiatives across new market discovery, cost reduction, operational efficiency, product development sprints and more.

Feb 2022 – Jun 2023 · 1 yr 4 mos · Hybrid

• Vision:
• Build a global job-talent platform to solve for cross-border talent discovery and deployment.
• What we built: -
• 1. Cross-border remote hiring/ jobs platform
• 2. Human+SaaS platform for Bulk & Tech hiring
• 3. Micro-learning/ LMS based Interview prep modules to improve employability and selection of candidates.
• 1. Solved talent search for 150+ global orgs such as PayPal, Expedia, Hike, NoBroker, Khatabook, Digit and more.
• 2. Scaled from $0 to $250K Revenue in 8 months.
• 3. Built 3 SaaS tools to reduce time to hire by 70% and cost of hire by 30% for clients.

Oct 2022 – Dec 2023 · 1 yr 2 mos · India · Remote

• The Talent Deck community is building something extraordinary for Talent & People success leaders which has been missing for a long time.
• I am a cheerleader, who is always rooting for them from the sidelines and trying to learn and actively contribute toward revolutionizing HR-tech industry.
• Sufiyan, Ashish, Alex and others are absolutely killing it with the community 🥳

Sep 2022 – Dec 2023 · 1 yr 3 mos · India · Remote

• I invest in super early stage founders who I strongly believe in via small cheques, my time and network. I support via making relevant customer and investor introductions, idea validation and sharing micro & macro insights.
• Startups I am currently excited about:
• 1. Workhack.io - Hyper personalized AI forms for websites and landing pages to increase conversions and lead capture
• 2. https://www.8club.co/ - AI Platform to discover, invite and interact with handpicked individuals around experiences in any offline setting
• 3. Stealth mode D2C brand - Skincare
• 4. SalesUp - AI Sales Automation platform
• 5. Stealth mode wealth-tech startup
• 6. NoSupport AI - Gen-AI CX Automation platform

Apr 2021 – Jan 2022 · 9 mos · India

• Explored and rapidly experimented across various Ed-Tech biz models
• Community based learning
• Cohort based learning
• Micro-learning
• Workshop based learning
• Outcome oriented learning
• Job specific upskilling
• Vernacular upskilling

Oct 2020 – Mar 2021 · 5 mos · London, England, United Kingdom

• LBSBuilds: - http://www.lbs-builds.com/
• D/ Club: - http://lbs.design.com

Sep 2020 – Apr 2021 · 7 mos · London, England Metropolitan Area

• Building cutting-edge technology driven learning tools for the future. Enabling students to become smart learners and better memorizers via BrainHack's.
• Role & Responsibilities: -
• 1) Conducted ethnographic research to analyze user pain points and implemented new product features to improve user experience, reporting directly to Chief Product Officer.
• 2) Developed product marketing strategies to grow userbase & increase the session duration on platform while deploying Google Analytics to track key metrics and value drivers
• 3) Collaborated with product & tech team to develop new products, conduct market research and design new MVP’s
• Company website: - https://www.brainhack.io/

Sep 2020 – Mar 2021 · 6 mos · London, England, United Kingdom

• Executive Committee Member at LBS Entrepreneurship Club, leading Operations at one of the largest business Hackathons in UK!
• HackLBS is hacked by BCG Digital Ventures & Entrepreneurship Institute at LBS.
• Check out the website for more details: - https://hacklbs.org/

May 2020 – Oct 2020 · 5 mos · Mumbai, Maharashtra, India

• BePlutus is an Ed-Tech start-up which enables finance professionals & enthusiasts to become Expert Traders via gamified and highly interactive Live learning experiences by Industry experts & master Traders.
• Become a part of our elite community of Finance professionals & proud Plutocrats!

May 2020 – Sep 2020 · 4 mos · Mumbai, Maharashtra, India

• InCa focuses on building new ventures across hospitality, advanced manufacturing, financial analytics, education, e-commerce and life sciences. If you are a founder building the next big thing that you believe can create a large scale impact, we would love to hear your story and be a part of your entrepreneurial journey.
• Role & Responsibilities: -
• Conducted research in gamified learning, professional education & AR/VR enabled learning solutions in Edu-Tech sector and supported the Managing Partner to source 3 incubation deals by networking extensively with founders
• Led a team of 4 interns to create business model & detailed financial model to launch virtual Start-up Accelerator & Incubation programs to expand investment pipeline by 50% in 4 quarters
• Supported portfolio start-up team to lower fixed costs by redesigning pricing & distribution strategy
• Connect: -
• Yashdandavate89@gmail.com

Sep 2019 – Sep 2019 · 0 mo · Mumbai

• Winner of Google Techstars Start-up pitch competition, representing India in Google summit at Singapore.

Jun 2019 – Jul 2020 · 1 yr 1 mo

• Secretary of Rotaract club of ISME
• Zone 1B, Rotaract District 3141
• Parent Club :- Rotary club of Bombay
• Project Lead :-
• 1) Project Bhavishyaan (STEAM Education)
• 2) Project Saathi ( NGO Conclave)
• 3) Bollywood Treasure Hunt
• 4) Global Village Inter-Club Cultural Festival
• Responsibilities :-
• Overlooking execution of all the club projects & reporting these projects to the Rotaract District.
• Second-in-Command and responsible to lead the club during event execution & planning.
• Advisor to the President on key objectives & growth of the Rotaract Club of ISME.

May 2019 – Jun 2019 · 1 mo · Mumbai, Maharashtra, India

• Designation :- Business Research Intern
• Department :- Business Research
• sub department :- Banking & Financial services
• Reporting directly to Assistant Manager & Senior Consultant
• Business research project :-
• Conducted secondary research of over 32 sectors
• Qualitative analysis and creation of Data stacks
• Data extraction and insight derivation
• Trait Analysis research

Nov 2018 – Jul 2019 · 8 mos · Mumbai, Maharashtra, India

• Apart from my administrative role at ThinkYoung Academy I also facilitate sessions and workshops on various topics.
• The USP of my sessions :-
• No Book or Pen needed
• Experiential learning
• Activities and games oriented learning
• Challenging and lots of discussions
• Complex concepts made super easy
• (Check feedback and Reccomendations from my students on my profile)
• MODULES:-
• Design Thinking
• Entrepreneurial business model canvas
• Art of storytelling and pitching
• Thinking Processes & Patterns
• Personal Branding & Linkdln
• Pitchdeck building
• Evolution of Start-ups
• Rapid Prototyping

Jun 2018 – Jul 2019 · 1 yr 1 mo · Mumbai, Maharashtra, India

• We at Think Young are on a mission to become a guiding light and mentors to upcoming and future entrepreneurs.
• Our variety of Entrepreneurial education workshops range from age groups of 13 to 21 years.
• ROLE :-
• Early member of the start-up and developed curriculum to teach Entrepreneurship to school and college students, also taught as a faculty.
• Generated marketing strategies as well as brand awareness strategies to improve the brand visibility.
• Managed program budgets and used Financial analysis to determine product pricing and ROI.
• Improved client conversion rate by 40% through personal selling tactics.

Aug 2018 – Jul 2019 · 11 mos

• The ARTIST'S Guild (TAG) is the Literary Arts and Fine Arts society of Indian school of management and entrepreneurship.

Aug 2018 – Jul 2019 · 11 mos

• Elected as the Director at Students Council of Indian school of management and Entrepreneurship