Summary

 

An entrepreneur at heart, a communicator by practice and an engineer by education, I bring 20 years of experience in high-growth startups and at-scale companies in areas of e-commerce, brand building, social media, content marketing, digital customer experience, and product management.

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I was the first employee at Pagalguy.com, which started as a discussion board for MBA aspirants and the work we did there went on to become a case study at IIM Bangalore.

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Besides co-founding a digital marketing agency and consulting 100s of Indian and International brands, I have worked in Education, Travel, Robotics, e-Commerce domains.

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Work Experience

 

Sr. Director - Marketing | Verteil Technologies, Bangalore (Sept 22 - Aug 23)

 

Verteil is a startup providing NDC technology platform in the airlines distribution space. I was leading a team of three members, setting up marketing ops, creating collaterals, while also organizing events like webinars and local and international sales outreach. 

 

Highlights:

 

• End-to-end setting up of event booths/stages and representing the company at major travel events like WTM London, ATM Dubai, WPS Bahrain, OTM Mumbai, resulting in significant inquiries from global airlines and travel agencies, many of whom were converted to valued customers.

• Launched ndc.deals , an airline ticket booking portal, onboarding 1500+ Indian travel agencies.

• Executed PR strategy, securing multiple mentions of Verteil's airline partnerships across indian publications.

• Built and managed digital presence of Verteil and ndc.deals by launching Verteil new website, setting up measurement and marketing communication tools stack.

• Strategically formulated and managed regular omni-channel communication of new platform features and airline offers through email, WhatsApp, social media, and webinars, enhancing ticket bookings and active agency onboarding.

 

Career Break  (Apr 21 - Aug 22)

 

Took a break to invest in my health and prepare myself for the next 20 years of professional life. 

14+ hours/week in the gym and good company helped me build a positive mindset, write 50+ poems, rejuvenating my drive to dream larger than life.

Consulted a few companies on GTM, lead generation and brand positioning towards the last 6 months of the break.

 

Product Marketing Lead | Rapyuta Robotics, Bangalore/Tokyo (Jan 20 - Mar 21)

 

As the first marketing person in the team, I was responsible for designing the brand and marketing foundations for this exciting global startup in robotics.

 

• Research and Recommendations: I was responsible for competition research, identifying product market fit and defining user persona to reach out to the right customer. I was responsible for testing and engaging with users and recommended how our new products can fill those gaps.

• Collaterals: Created collaterals for marketing purposes such as Value Proposition Document, Sales Brochure, Pitch decks to enable business development team outreach.

• Social Media: Company updates and focused on building the linkedin community of robotics professionals. 3.5x growth in Linkedin Page followers in 13 months.

• Events: Created material and communication for events and demos. Sponsored one of the biggest events in robotics, ROSCON and generated 22 leads.

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AVP Marketing, Brand & Communications | Edureka, Bangalore, India (Sept 18- Dec 19)

 

I started as a consultant in April 2018 and joined fulltime in Sept 2018. Key highlights:

 

• Email: Increased open rate (4.19% to 8.41%), CTR (0.13% to 0.22%) and achieved 443% boost in referrals using new content ideas, user segmentation and data insights

• Affiliate: Onboarded more than 200 publishers and grew affiliate business by ~110%

• Social Media: 10x+ growth in Social Media impressions, engagements & referrals

• PR & Communications: Spearheaded integration of various marketing operations, communications, public relations activities to bring consistency, impact and clear articulation of our unique proposition, leading to superior brand health and Share of Voice>54%

• Led data-driven conversion optimization exercises to increase CTRs across the e-commerce funnel making a impact on revenue, achieving KPI benchmarks, e.g. 20% increase in CTR on GDN ads

• "Ridiculously Committed" Campaign on Radio, Out of Home and offline activations led to 22% increase in user visits from Bangalore city

 

Co-Founder & Creative Head | Solomo Media, New Delhi, India (Oct’12-Sep’18) 

Co-Founder & Product Head | Solomofy, New Delhi, India ((May’15-Sep’18)

 

Started digital agency business and achieved headcount of 90 people, $0.8M revenues, serving over a 100 of clients across India, Middle East, Asia Pacific and Africa. We won multiple pitches and worked with clients such as Yahoo, UC Web – Alibaba, Gaana.com, Dr Lal PathLabs, Instapizza, Amity University and Sobha Dubai

 

• Solomo Media executed projects in the areas of Brand Positioning, Creatives & Communication, Social Media Strategy and execution, Online Reputation Management, Influencer Marketing, Paid Digital Marketing with over 200 brands in a span of 6 years.

• Launched Solomofy app to aid small businesses in managing their growth and Social Media Engagement at a very low cost with help of predefined workflows, templates and content ideas.

 

Head, Online & Communities | hoppr (now Hike Messenger), Gurgaon (Apr’12 - Sept 12)

 

I was responsible for communication and creative strategy and enhancing user engagement in the app and on social media. 

 

Head - User and Communities Engagement | Snapdeal.com, Delhi (Apr’11 - Mar’12)

 

• As we built this e-commerce giant, I defined and executed a social media strategy with a data-driven approach to accomplish business goals and drive revenues, achieving the highest engagement rates for any e-commerce business in India and contributing 400+ transactions a day organically attributable to social media channels.

• Instituted systems and processes for faster resolution of customer complaints and questions originating from various social channels.

• Managed & led creative direction for advertising campaigns (~$20,000/day) on Facebook for customer acquisition.

 

Head - Audience & Community | pagalguy.com, Mumbai (April 09 - Oct 10) 

Head - Product & Audience | pagalguy.com, Mumbai (April 08 - Mar 09)

 

• Sponsorships - Planned, organized and sold sponsorship deals for ‘All India PaGaLGuY Meet’ offline user events consecutively for six years

• Public Relations – Managed 200+ news media mentions for Pagalguy.com by developing value-based relationships with national and local journalists

• Syndication - Pitched, negotiated and signed outward content syndication agreements with major Indian content portals such as MSN India, Rediff, Sify

• Community - Conceptualised and implemented the MadCapz volunteer program for site users across 70 cities, crowdsourcing PaGaLGuY.com’s marketing activities to passionate users at low cost

 

Product Manager, People Group | Fropper.Com, Mumbai (Aug’07 - Apr’08)

 

• Added “socially aware dating website” brand halo to Fropper.com by leading campaigns such as EcoGanpati, AIDS Awareness and Toybank from concept to delivery

• Increased landing page to sign-up conversion rate by 10% through targeted interventions in the registration process

 

Head - Marketing & Sales | pagalguy.com, Mumbai (Jan'06 - Aug '07)

 

• First employee at Pagalguy.com. Generated revenues of INR 4.5m ($65,000) through direct advertisement sales and increased the user base by 500% in 18 months through media partnerships

• Ideated and executed two products at PaGaLGuY.co—Quant Question a Day and PG Connect—which were voted the best products of the year by the PaGaLGuY.com community.

 

Software Engineer | Patni Computer Systems, Mumbai (Sep'03 - Oct '05)

 

• Development and maintenance of GE Asset Management websites.

• Part of the development team in GENIUS, one of the biggest projects undertaken by Patni Computers for GE, for the processing of insurance forms.

 

Education

 

Bachelor of Engineering, NIT Calicut (India)   

 

(1999 - 2003)

 

Graduated First Class with Electrical and Electronics specialization 

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Languages

 

• English (Fluent)

• Hindi (Mother Tongue)