Nikunj Thakkar

Co-Founder

Bangalore Urban, Karnataka, India11 yrs 11 mos experience
AI Enabled

Key Highlights

  • Founder of multiple successful startups
  • Expert in product management and development
  • Strong focus on user-centric validation and rapid prototyping
Stackforce AI infers this person is a SaaS and AI-focused entrepreneur with extensive product management experience.

Contact

Skills

Core Skills

Interpersonal SkillsProblem SolvingProduct ManagementBusiness PlanningLeadershipTeam ManagementSoftware Development

Other Skills

Artificial Intelligence (AI)Attention to DetailBusiness RequirementsBusiness StrategyCommunicationCompetitive AnalysisConcept DevelopmentCreative IdeationCustomer AnalysisDesign ThinkingDigital TransformationEntrepreneurshipExecutive LeadershipFull-Stack DevelopmentGo-to-Market Strategy

About

I’m Nikunj Thakkar, the founder of UpSurge Ventures and Creator. At UpSurge Ventures, we help entrepreneurs transform their ideas into powerful products with fast, high-quality MVPs. We specialize in turning vision into reality through smart development and strategic validation. Having built and exited startups myself, I know the pain points firsthand—limited budgets, tight timelines, and the constant pressure to validate your idea before scaling. That’s why at UpSurge Ventures, we’ve built a system that focuses on: 🔹 Rapid Prototyping & Full-Stack Development – We don’t just build; we iterate fast. From wireframes to working products, we deliver at startup speed. 🔹 Scalable Architecture – We design systems that grow with your user base, ensuring that your MVP isn’t just a throwaway prototype but a foundation to scale. 🔹 User-Centric Validation – We help you launch early, learn fast, and pivot quickly based on real-world feedback. Why UpSurge Ventures? We’re a team of ex-founders and seasoned techies who’ve been in the trenches. We understand the urgency of building the right product with the right features. We don’t just code; we collaborate, bringing strategic insights that go beyond tech. Who Do We Work With? ❇️ First-time founders who need a reliable tech partner to bring their vision to life. ❇️ Established startups looking to pivot or add new product lines. ❇️ Corporate innovators aiming to test new ideas without disrupting their main business. Our Philosophy: We believe in building smart, launching fast, and validating in the real world. We focus on solving real problems rather than building bloated features. Your “small” startup isn’t a weakness; it’s your superpower—agility, focus, and speed are your competitive advantages. Drop me a message if you’re ready to transform your idea into a product that matters.

Experience

Snezzi

Co-Founder

Oct 2025Present · 5 mos · Bengaluru, Karnataka, India · On-site

  • Building Snezzi, an AI Visibility Platform that helps brands understand how they appear across AI-powered search experiences like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Copilot, and take actionable steps to improve it through Generative Engine Optimization (GEO).

Creator

Building

Mar 2025Present · 1 yr · Bengaluru, Karnataka, India · On-site

  • Building Creator.li—an AI-powered content automation platform designed for SMBs, D2C brands, and B2B businesses that need high-quality, SEO-optimized content at scale.
  • With Creator, brands can:
  • ✅ Generate high-ranking SEO keywords effortlessly
  • ✅ Create authentic, brand-aligned content in minutes
  • ✅ Publish seamlessly to WordPress, Shopify, and other platforms
  • ✅ Reduce CAC, increase organic traffic, and scale content output
  • As search shifts from traditional web results to AI-driven LLMs, businesses that don’t prioritize consistent, high-quality content will struggle to stay visible. Creator helps brands stay ahead.
  • 📈 Results:
  • 📉 67% lower customer acquisition costs
  • 📈 250% more organic traffic
  • ⚡ 3X content output with the same resources
  • 🚀 Want to see how it works? Visit https://creator.li

Upsurge ventures

Founder

Jan 2025Oct 2025 · 9 mos · Bengaluru, Karnataka, India · On-site

  • Building stuff!

Freelance

Product Management Consultant

Feb 2024Jan 2025 · 11 mos

  • Projects:
  • US-based SaaS Firm
  • Successfully conducted market research and crafted a product roadmap for the MVP of a new product line, laying the groundwork for development and ensuring a strategic approach to market entry.
  • Canadian University Careers Services Portal
  • Currently leading the conceptualization and development of a careers services portal aimed at enhancing student and alumni engagement. Overseeing a team of freelancers and consultants to ensure the portal meets comprehensive stakeholder needs.
  • UK-based Fintech Firm GTM Strategy
  • Directing the go-to-market strategy for a UK-based fintech firm's entry into the Indian market. Responsibilities include overseeing website redesign, establishing a content strategy, coordinating PR activities, and other marketing efforts to secure a robust market introduction.
  • B2B SaaS Startup - Head of GTM Strategy
  • As the Head of GTM Strategy for a B2B SaaS startup, I focus on developing and executing detailed go-to-market plans. My work includes conducting market analysis, defining product positioning, outlining sales strategies, and leading customer acquisition efforts to encourage product adoption and drive business growth.

Startup og (previously entrepreneur’s cafe)

Founder & Host

Dec 2023Present · 2 yrs 3 mos · Bengaluru, Karnataka, India · Remote

  • At Startup OG, I drive our mission to build a thriving community for entrepreneurs, innovators, and doers. Through podcasts, meetups, and events, we connect industry leaders with aspiring founders to share real stories, challenges, and wins.
Interpersonal SkillsBusiness RequirementsProblem Solving

Plivo

Associate Director, Product Management

Apr 2023Jan 2024 · 9 mos · Bengaluru, Karnataka, India · Remote

  • ● Heading the Contacto Product, an Omnichannel Contact Center Solution that forms a key part of Plivo's B2B SaaS offerings in their solutions business line.
  • ● Responsible for defining and managing both short-term and long-term product roadmaps, ensuring efficient execution and delivery.
  • ● Led the successful migration of an agent desktop application to a more efficient web-based platform.
  • ● Quickly integrated Knowledgebase capabilities into the system by leveraging open-source projects.
  • ● Undertook extensive market research to explore AI capabilities and applicable use cases specifically in the Contact Center domain.
  • ● Implemented Conversational AI to optimize the response process to frequent queries, significantly reducing the time and effort required by human agents.
  • ● Actively involved in the recruitment process, conducting interviews for Product Manager, Senior Product Manager, and Business Analyst roles to expand the Plivo team.
Business PlanningInterpersonal SkillsPerformance MetricsProduct StrategiesBusiness RequirementsWorkload Prioritization+14

Whatfix

2 roles

Senior Product Manager | Analytics

Promoted

Jul 2022Mar 2023 · 8 mos

Business PlanningInterpersonal SkillsPerformance MetricsProduct StrategiesBusiness RequirementsWorkload Prioritization+14

Product Manager | Analytics

Dec 2020Jun 2022 · 1 yr 6 mos

  • ● Whatfix is amongst the top 50 fastest growing SaaS companies in the world as well as Top 20 B2B Tech Companies in San Jose
  • ● Owned Product Roadmap for Analytics Pod (Team of 20: Engineering 12, QA - 3, UX - 2, UI -3)
  • ● Overlooked implementation of in-house built analytics platform that reduced analytics SLA from 14 hours to Near Real-time (<30 mins)
  • ● Led migration for 600+ enterprise customers from legacy analytics solution to in-house built advanced
  • analytics solution
  • ● Delivered major features which directly translated in bettering key Business Objectives of Improving
  • sales closure, customer satisfaction and feature adoption
  • ● Conceptualised a new product line and currently doing PoC with few major customers
  • ● Identified feature-user persona fit, prioritised roadmap based on targeted user persona to align
  • company’s overall vision
  • ● Liaised with various internal and external stakeholders to understand customer needs to improve team
  • KPIs
  • ● Biweekly interaction with Leadership, Sales, Customer Success, Product Marketing and Partnership
  • team to understand what’s working, what’s not working and what needs improvement
  • ● Customer discoveries and pre-sales demos to Enterprise/Fortune 500 customers primarily in North
  • American and EU Markets
JiraBusiness PlanningInterpersonal SkillsLeadershipPerformance MetricsDesign Thinking+34

Dhirubhai ambani institute of information and communication technology

Joint Secretary, DAIICT Alumni Association

Dec 2017Feb 2020 · 2 yrs 2 mos · Gandhinagar

  • DAIICT Alumni Association is established to strengthen relationship between alumni and the institute.
JiraBusiness PlanningInterpersonal SkillsLeadershipPerformance MetricsDesign Thinking+34

Dataone innovation labs

Co-founder & CEO

Mar 2016Dec 2020 · 4 yrs 9 mos · Ahmedabad Area, India

  • DataOne Innovation Labs - A Company founded in March, 2016 with an aim to create range of products to help enterprises move faster with Big Data.
  • My role as CEO is more of a Chief Everything Officer. I do following activities on a day-to-day basis and constantly looking for people who are good at it and wants be part of this journey.
  • Hiring, training, grooming and motivating team members
  • Business Development
  • Marketing and Lead Generation
  • Social Media
  • Email Marketing
  • Blogging
  • Resource Planning and Management
  • Making sure of Customer Satisfaction
JiraBusiness PlanningInterpersonal SkillsLeadershipPerformance MetricsDesign Thinking+34

Ishi systems inc.

2 roles

Junior Programmer Analyst

Promoted

May 2014Feb 2016 · 1 yr 9 mos · Ahmedabad Area, India

  • Design and Implementation of accessible big data storage products based on Hadoop Eco-system.
  • Implementing and managing scalable, complex mission critical applications which requires high performance and availability
  • Recently worked on creating custom Ambari stack. Goal is automated deployment and management of services (start, stop, configure, scale)
  • Designed and implemented scaled down version of Data retention system (serving telcos from across the world) for clients with budget constraints (local/regional CSPs) without dependency of Hadoop and Cloudera
  • Worked with remote team (Switzerland and USA) and converted business requirements to production ready features following Agile processes and rapid development
  • Participated in POCs related to Apache Ambari, Apache Drill and Apache Phoenix which are now part of production
  • Owned and delivered end-to-end features
Interpersonal SkillsLeadershipResearchRisk ManagementCommunicationTeam Management+8

Intern

Jan 2014May 2014 · 4 mos · Ahmedabad Area, India

  • As a DevOps Intern, worked on prototype to production cycle. Some of tools and technologies on which I worked upon during this period includes :
  • AngularJS
  • Django
  • Dropbox API
  • LinkedIn API
  • Ansible, nginx, uwsgi
  • Log monitoring tools
  • Analytics tools
  • Docker
  • Nltk & Scikit-learn libraries ( for machine learning and Natural language processing)
  • TextBlob
  • Other learning during this period includes :
  • Agile practices (Worked as a part of Scrum team, knows about Extreme Programming and Kanban development)
  • Rapid development - Weekly or 10 days releases
  • Client interaction
  • Deployment automation using Ansible
  • Writing unit tests (Knows about TDD and BDD)
  • Successfully implemented Machine learning and Natural Language processing tasks
  • Monitoring and Analysis using tools such as PSDash and splunk
JiraInterpersonal SkillsPerformance MetricsDesign ThinkingResearchRisk Management+11

Google

Contract Software Developer

May 2013Sep 2013 · 4 mos · India

  • As a part of Google Summer of Code 2013, Designed and Implemented Apache Cassandra Based NoSQL Storage solution for Monitoring System Toolkit - Building monitoring system (http://most.bpi.tuwien.ac.at/) at Vienna University, Austria.
  • Designing storage strategy for building data streams (energy use, occupancy, comfort, etc.)
  • Data Migration from MySQL to Apache Cassandra
  • Storing time-series based sensor data
  • Supporting point and range queries for stored data
  • Implemented algorithms for Persistence validation and Periodic value generation to carry out further analysis.
JiraInterpersonal SkillsResearchCommunicationTeamworkProblem Solving+1

Add-on-gyan educational services

Intern

May 2013Jun 2013 · 1 mo · Bengaluru Area, India

JiraInterpersonal SkillsResearchBusiness RequirementsCommunicationTeamwork+5

Education

Dhirubhai Ambani University

Master of Science (M.Sc.) — Information Technology

Jan 2012Jan 2014

B.D.K.M B.C.A College

Bachelor of Computer Application — Information Technology

Jan 2009Jan 2012

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