Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore

V.J.T.I.

Strategy  -  Startup  -  Digital  -  -  ex-BCG  -  IIMB

United Arab Emirates

- Early member & Business Head – Insurance & Banking business, Bankonus, fin-tech startup incubated in Jan-18

BankOnUs

Director of Sales and Strategy

1) Strategic Initiatives & Investor Relations:
- Spearheading all fund-raising activities – interfacing with potential investors, providing strategic & financial inputs, valuation discussion
- Part of all board meetings & presentations related to business strategy formulation, financial projections, business plan, new concept implementation and performance review meetings
- Solely responsible for preparing all business models and projections as well as investor presentations right from storyboarding till final deliverables
- Devising go-to-market strategies for geographic expansion across GCC and MENA as well as business expansion to drive topline growth
- Accountable for new business ideas conceptualization, cost-benefit analysis, financial modeling, budgeting, use case presentation & running PMO
- Strategizing organizational and financial restructuring in order to optimize costs and improve profitability
2)	Digital & Data:
- Led an industry-first online credit card application journey, from OCR-led data collection, APIs-powered bureau check for validation, rating engine-driven approval probability to real-time application submissions to banks
- Onboarded AI-based data modeling tool to build propensity model to drive cross-sell for high ARPU products; Formulated ML-based hiring model to filter out irrelevant candidates ands sharpen hiring strategy
- Steered product roadmap of BankOnUs consumer app right from features shortlisting, wireframes finalization to deployment; Improved renewals by 50% and enhanced post-sales stickiness across banking & insurance customers
- Leading the digital marketing, customer outreach & automation functions
- Solely responsible for design and development of real-time management dashboards and visualizations using Google Data Studio to monitor overall health and key performance metrics across business units and processes

Innovations Group UAE

Head of Strategy - Banking, Insurance and Digital Divisions

- Leading 2 client assignments & simultaneously involved in 1 more project across varying domains & objectives
- Leading a project involving setting up a Marketing Command Centre giving the FMCG major a real-time tab on their marketing efforts and acting as the base for all digital marketing efforts for the Foods
- Leading a project for setting up a Consumer Data Hub and integrating with DMP to aggregate all customer facing data to create single view of customer, thus helping to mass-personalize all digital efforts to get better marketing ROI
- Leading digital assets monetization efforts for a major vernacular publisher, leading to more than doubling of their digital revenues within a month of taking over the project, with projected improvement of over 3x within 5 months
- Involved in media mix optimization for an ecommerce company to improve their ROAS (Return on Advertising Spend)

Dentsu Aegis Network

Principal Consultant

Media Sales:
- Overseeing finance & strategy functions for Media Sales division, contributing 50+% of overall company topline
- Responsible for financial reporting, budget variance analysis, financial modelling and business plan projection with ROI analysis for new business unit proposals, with actionable go-to plan for implementation and execution
- Preparing and presenting division level strategy and financials in board meetings; Instrumental in conceptualizing and setting up innovative media solutions like Audience Data Mapping and Targeting, Optimized SEM & Native Advertising Solutions, Integrated Content & Branding Solutions, Programmatic Buying, in line with industry trends
- Significant contributor to the strategy behind improvement in monthly revenue rate from INR 2 cr to INR 5 cr
- Spearheading Future of Advertising project which entails integrating Data Management Platform (DMP), exploring new Ad Tech solutions and offerings, entering into strategic alliances with marquee Indian digital publishers like Times Internet Ltd (owner of digital assets of TOI, ET, etc. & programmatic tech, Columbia)

Bike OEM:
- Given additional responsibility of heading Bike OEM Business from Aug-16; Managing annual revenue base of INR 16 cr, with 100% YoY growth in FY17-18 across Media Sales, Technology Solutions & Operations business
- Multiplied monthly CPS revenue four times over a period of six months, from INR 8 lakhs to INR 32 lakhs
- On-boarded several new clients including Hero, Suzuki, Mahindra, KTM, Indian, UM, Piaggio, apart from increasing business from TVS and Honda by cross-selling and upselling new and existing solutions
- Instrumental in getting things rolling within the company across finance, sales, operations, product, technology, marketing and top management to ensure all teams are moving towards the common goal of revenue maximization

GirnarSoft

Sr. Associate Director - Strategy & Finance

- Early member of Broker Monetization team; Responsible for handling entire sales operations for all broker ad products
- Actively involved in ad product conceptualization, product implementation, sales strategy, client servicing, renewal
- Supervised sales of ~INR 1.6 mn+ over 3 months; managed team of 8, responsible for renewal and client satisfaction
- Devised and implemented pilot plans to improve sales and renewals like deciding pilot locations, pricing, eligibility criteria, product pricing and designing & distributing product brochures, setting up a team of community managers, etc;
- Setup real-time performance tracking sheets & monitored ad product performance; Planned and implemented strategies to enhance performance by inorganic means like lead pooling, social media marketing, etc.
- Planned & addressed Broker Meets to increase awareness about new offerings from Housing and understand issues faced by brokers & work towards solving them, thus ensuring tighter integration of Housing in the broker community
- Conceptualized and implemented several tasks and ideas throughout the broker journey with Housing that will enhance broker experience and ensure longer & closer affinity, thus enhancing the broker lifetime value (LTV) for the company

Housing.com

Broker Monetization

- Actively involved in all aspects related to the company including product conceptualization, product management, vendor management, business development, customer account management, recruitment, internal processes and HR
- Instrumental in securing 80+ clients including marquee customers like Monginis Foods Pvt. Ltd., Mahindra Finance Ltd., Times Global Broadcasting Ltd., Bennett Coleman & Co. Ltd. , Deepak Fertilizers and Petrochemicals Ltd.
- Expanded company from 2 member team with nil revenue to 12 member team with revenues of INR 6 million+
- Solely responsible for implementation of the first successful standard offering of the company, Elixia Speed, which went on to contribute more than 90% of the company’s revenue within 6 months of its release
- Single-handedly set up the sales and account management teams which were instrumental in powering the dual aspects of sales, fishing and farming respectively; Also, helped set up distributors in other states to boost sales revenue
- Streamlined operations with daily field reports and did strategic alliances with Carnation as well as 20+ local field force to offer a wider service network and thus, enhance our credentials as an established service provider

Elixia Tech Solutions Pvt. Ltd.

Cofounder & Chief Operating Officer

- Actively involved in 4 live projects spanning automotive, pharmaceutical, white goods and technology sectors
- Market Gain Strategy – Devised 3 year strategy to help mobile handset manufacturer to regain lost market share and increase market offering; project scope included recommending channel (urban & rural) & consumer specific measures
- Cost Optimization – Assisted client in reducing costs by INR 250 mn across sales, services, sourcing & other functions; responsibility included ideating several cost reduction projects & assisting client team in implementation
- Production Planning – Responsible for overhauling planning & production processes to increase production by ~28%

Ankit Zatakia