Vivek Gupta

SUMMARY Technology executive with over 16 years of experience providing cross-functional leadership in early-market strategy, business model discovery, product management, market validation and engineering implementation for growth of scalable and successful software products. Possess a combination of technical depth, marketing and business acumen, and a passion for designing large Internet based consumer products Data centric thinker who enjoys using data not only for making better decisions but also for creating intuitive, easy to use and innovative products. Can be both hands-on to build the product or step back to manage and grow a talented team of individuals that can deliver on the vision SELECTED ACCOMPLISHMENTS I, working closely with the cofounders, conceptualized Ethnico and built the technology that led to its acquisition by Craftsvilla. Founded a software services company and built it up from a 1-man venture to a company with head count of 80, spread across 3 locations. Managed the product at Masterpiece Solutions taking it from Concept to Market. The product is now in use by over a 1000 businesses including many of the top US galleries with a turnover of $2m+ Helped grow Search Engine Organic traffic at Mobango.com from 10000 to 1.5 m+ visitors a month within 9 months. WORK HISTORY Director - Technology, Cimpress Jan ‘17 – Dec ‘17 Cimpress is the World Leader in Mass customization through its many brands including Vistaprint.in in India. I headed technology at Cimpress, India as part of the Executive Team. My responsibilities were to provide strategic and technology leadership to the India business unit of Cimpress. I setup the technical roadmap for the BU, including both the immediate goals to be achieved within FY18 as well as a framework for the next 3-5 years. I also built local development capabilities and led the initiative to transfer engineering for the India BU to the local team. I was also responsible for setting up a framework for better collaboration between the global and local teams including business units in USA, Japan and other locales. Being part of the executive team, I was also responsible, along with other executive team members, for the overall strategic direction of the India business. Chief Technology Officer - Ethnico, Craftsvilla (previously Klip.in) Feb ‘15 – Jan ‘17 Ethnico is a discovery platform for everything Ethnic. It is pillared around Design, Services and Shopping. Brought on board when the technology team had just 1 member – recruited, mentored and trained team members to help build the product within a short span of time. Designed the architecture, led and guided the development of entire technology stack with an extremely hands-on and Solution-Oriented approach. Deeply entrenched in the product development and strategy. I setup product roadmap and strategy besides leading its execution. Used a data oriented approach to analyse user behaviour, build product features and optimize metrics. Believer and proponent of lean methodology – continue to build & scale the product – with over 1 million installs and over 6 million visitors / month with just a 7 member tech team. Our # of users to # of engineers ratio is one of the lowest in the industry. The current architecture supports- simultaneous requests with an average latency of 60 ms from only 5 app server nodes. Our uptime has been over 99.99%. We have had no security breaches. We did all this without Ops or QA teams, almost never "burning the midnight oil", or working on weekends. The company was recently acquired by Craftsvilla – a $250 million ecommerce company. Impact Worked closely with the cofounders in conceptualizing the product and building the technology that led to the acquisition by Craftsvilla Helped scale Ethnico to 1+ million installs, 40+ million screen views, industry best DAU/MAU & retention rates in 7 months since launch. It is top 5 lifestyle apps on Google Play store Setup and optimized digital marketing campaigns that led to one of the lowest CPI rates, as per industry benchmarks. Helped increase search organic traffic by over 5x for klip and over 10x for ethnico. Built the first version of the tech platform including full scale crawler, backend services, web site, mobile web, Android, and iOS platform within a span of 4 months with a 3 team tech team. Roles & responsibilities Wholly responsible for providing technical & product leadership Architecting complete stack Hiring and managing technical team Product management to improve adoption, conversions, and engagement metrics Responsible for organic growth via Organic Search and App store optimization Personally responsible for coding Image Processing and deep machine learning algorithms Auto-tagging Visually Similar Products De-duplication of products during aggregation Product Manager - Apps Daily Solutions Pvt Ltd May ‘14 – Feb ‘15 With a unique model of distributing apps using a chain of retail outlets AppsDaily is the world’s first offline app store having presence across 150+ cities and 15000+ retailers. Having built a strong offline presence, AppsDaily wanted to also move on to capture the online space. I was brought on board to lead this initiative. I defined their online strategy and provided top level leadership in its execution. Besides this I was also responsible for defining, and managing company’s education product. Their first product outside of the mobile security space. Impact Worked across organization functions to integrate and re-orient processes for integration with online sales Within a period of 6 months, not only built the complete online presence, reoriented processes but also started online sales – which went from near 0 to 1000+ within the first month of launch. Generated an ROI of 3x on all marketing spends. Roles & responsibilities Define company’s online presence including branding, positioning, product features and sales processes. Lead the digital marketing strategy for the company Innovate and improve products through research, analysis of consumer behaviour, competitor analysis and market research Use market research to set price points and define product variations. High level responsibility for execution and successful development of the products. Liaison with strategic partners as required for the success of the products. Helping with definition and improvement of product architecture Sr. Project Manager – Mobango, Mauj Mobile Jan ‘13 – May ‘14 With an active user base of a few million and millions of page views per day, Mobango is the largest alternative appstore in India. It lets users discover, search and download Apps, Games and Videos. I was brought in to lead the technology team - reporting to and working directly with the CTO. My stint at Mobango primarily comprised of 3 areas – Product planning & execution, Analytics and SEO. I led a team of 15 including developers, team leads and project managers. Impact Increased Organic Search Traffic from 10,000 visitors a month to 1.5 m+ within a short period of 9 months. Also worked on optimizing traffic conversions, making organic search traffic the best converting traffic source. Contributed to substantial improvement in all the major product metrics such as ARPU, CoA, DAU / MAU etc. Defined requirements and helped launch company’s MIS. This MIS resulted in developing deep insights in to the product’s consumer behaviour and helped improve the product in all key areas. Led the implementation of the latest UX of the product resulting in better conversions and customer engagement. Implemented automation projects to help improve efficiency and to streamline multiple manual processes. Some of them saving 100s of man-hours worth of effort. Improved site’s scalability against rapidly growing user base through several architectural improvements. Brought in the full Agile methodology process implementation Roles & responsibilities Worked on product changes based on customer behaviour, and market trends with an aim to improve major product metrics. Build and coordinate implementation of company’s SEO strategy. Lead and manage company’s MIS with an aim to provide deep product insights Streamlining product implementation and life cycle management.  Sr. Product Manager - Masterpiece solutions Inc, US (Work Location:Pune) July ‘10 – Jan ‘13 Masterpiece Manager is a SAAS based B2B product to automate the functioning of art galleries. I was brought on board by the Founder as the first member of the company. I took the idea, worked with all the stakeholders to turn it in to a complete product roadmap. I then hired a team, based out of different geographic locations, to execute the roadmap. I provided technology and product leadership through the entire life of the product – right from idea to product to market to post-launch maintenance and up-keep. I also defined the product’s GTM strategy and helped in acquiring customers. Highlights Planned, managed, forecasted, and budgeted all stages of company’s major enterprise product called Masterpiece Manager. Took the product from the stage of ideation to ultimate launch and realization. Took the product from its first customer to a customer base of over 1000 businesses including some of the top US galleries. Helped company reach a turnover of $2m+ Roles & responsibilities Responsible for taking the product from concept to market. Responsible for complete life cycle of the product. Involved in management and coordination of multiple teams spread across various geographical locations in order to achieve targets, deadlines and delivery expectations. Liaising between stake holders, clients and development team to keep everybody on same page with respect to the overall objective of the company. Responsible for high level planning, managing, implementation, and maintenance of over 450 customer websites and web projects driven through the product’s API Envisioned and conceptualized a web portal for POS customers to drive sales for them. Working with various social media experts to review, approve and formalize company’s social media strategy. Founder &Co-owner - Teckfusion Systems Pvt, India April ‘04 – June ‘10 Software outsourcing and services company. I founded Teckfusion as a 1 man company. I was then able to grow the company to a team size of 80 and three office locations including one small sales office in the US. Being the sole founder I flanked all the areas of the company – Technology, administration, HR, finance, Marketing & Business development – as I hired the team through the growth. I also conceptualized the idea of “Co-creation” model for Teckfusion. This gave us the opportunity to work with early stage US startups. Highlights Founded the company individually and expanded it to a base of 80 employees with three office locations including one in the US. Interfaced with clients from US, UK, Australia, Canada and other countries Architected, planned, and managed numerous high scale enterprise products Converted major clients including some fortune 200 companies. Built relationship with BDC client from a mere $500 beginning to a multi-million $ relationship Built customer base from 1 customer at the start to over 300 within the first 3 years of company’s operations Introduced and launched company’s flagship product Roles & responsibilities Managed all key aspects of the company including business development, client liaising, project management, and team management Managed and oversaw complete project life-cycle from proposal to final completion and subsequent maintenance. Largely involved with the architecting and solutions architecture for a number of projects Responsible for setting up development practices, and reporting systems for projects of various disciplines Responsible for growing multiple client accounts from a few thousand to multiple hundred thousand dollar accounts Responsible for identifying gaps in team skills, development and delivery practices and to initiate processes to bridge such gaps. Sr. Software Engineer, Chandra Software Feb ‘03 – Mar ‘04 Software Engineer, Chandra Software Jun ‘01 – Jan ‘02 EDUCATION Bachelors in Computer Application (BCA), Osmania University, Hyderabad, AP CONTACT Phone: - Email:-Twitter: @vivekbrijgupta LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/pub/vivek-gupta/63/647/924