Abhishek Sharma, Product Manager in Vancouver, BC, Canada
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Abhishek Sharma

Verified Expert  in Product Management

Product Manager

Location
Vancouver, BC, Canada
Toptal Member Since
February 10, 2022

Abhishek has built and scaled product, growth, design, and engineering functions for over a decade. As head and VP of product, he has solved zero to one for some of the world's largest social, retail, and marketplace platforms. His expertise grew GreyOrange gStore ( >$1 billion valuation), Apna ($1.1 billion valuation, 10+ million MAU), Pratilipi ($265 million, 30+ million MAU), and Vokal ($150 million, 25+ million MAU). Abhishek has also built successful products in consumer SaaS as a hobby.

Project Highlights

Pratilipi Android App (10+ Million Installs)
Led the product, design, and growth of the project. Grew it to $1 million installs within a year of launch. It has ten million+ MAU today. Launched the app in four months while leading a team of five developers.
Apna App (10+ Million Installs)
Led product and strategy for Apna app with 5+ million MAU. Solved zero to one for community organization. Delivered critical features around the social network, personalized feed, experimentation platform, notification services, and ASO.
Pratilipi Website (30+ Million MAU)
Led the product, design, and growth of the project. Evolved it from a blog to a social platform. Took it from 100,000 to one million MAU in six months.

Expertise

Work Experience

Product and Design Lead

2022 - 2023
GreyOrange Inc.
  • Led the Product and Design charter of gStore, an omnichannel retail solution for global clients like H&M, GAP, and Petsmart.
  • Designed and built industry-first end-to-end retail experience on mobile and tablet apps, including features like stock receiving, stock replenishment, buy online pick in store, ship from store, and fitting room management.
  • Unified customer journey with store sales using innovative solutions like a smart mirror, RFID scanners, purchase behavior, and many more.

Head of Community Organization (Product, Strategy, Engineering)

2020 - 2021
Apna
  • Served as an executive team member at Apna ($1.1 billion valuation, 10+ million MAU), the LinkedIn for blue and grey collar workers. Led the community organization and reported to the CEO.
  • Evolved the community organization from an experiment to a powerhouse (30% growth MoM). I drove the strategy and day-to-day operations of a 20+ member team.
  • Shaped the company strategy and product roadmap. My team solved the zero to one social network, subscription models, personalized feed, engagement, user activation, and retention.
  • Set processes around product strategy to roadmaps and agile sprints. Created product pods and established best practices around project delivery, metrics, QA, and hiring.
  • Led multiple company-wide initiatives across the experimentation platform, notification services, data analytics, design strategy, SEO, and ASO.

Co-founder and CEO

2019 - 2020
Tripspell
  • Co-founded Tripspell, a new-age travel social platform to help users plan travel end-to-end.
  • Spearheaded product, growth, design, and strategy. We created a sleek single-page application to help users find the best destinations for travel dates, plan trips with friends, write, and discover travel stories.
  • Grew the platform to a few thousand users within a few weeks of launch in Feb 2020 but had to eventually pause operations taking into account the impact of COVID-19 on the travel industry.

VP of Product

2018 - 2019
Vokal
  • Led product and strategy for the company and reported to the CEO. Vokal ($150 million valuation, 25+ million MAU) is India's Quora. Koo and Twitter for India branched out of Vokal.
  • Started as a founding product and engineering manager, leading five engineers and two QA's. Scaled my team to two product managers, one designer, ten engineers, and four QA's.
  • Solved zero to one and transformed Vokal from a content aggregator to a social platform.
  • Delivered 10x growth across metrics for users, content, creators, and languages.
  • Built a scalable platform for personalized feed, content recommendation, content classification, and spam identification.

Head of Product and Growth

2016 - 2018
Pratilipi
  • Led product, growth, and strategy for the company and reported to the CEO. Pratilipi ($265 million valuation, 30+ million MAU) is India's YouTube for stories.
  • Solved zero to one for the company. Served as the first project manager, executive manager, designer, growth hacker, QA, and analyst. Made key hires for each of these roles.
  • Designed and executed thousands of experiments across the AARRR funnel, subscription & monetisation models to deliver 20x growth in users and content.
  • Set the foundation for everything product, design, growth and engineering, including discovery, recommendation engine, experimentation platform, content creation tools, and design language.
  • Set processes around product strategy to roadmap to agile sprints. Created product pods and established best practices around project delivery, metrics, QA, and hiring.

Sales Manager and Product Manager (Brand)

2014 - 2015
L'Oreal
  • Served in various leadership roles across marketing, sales, and business development.
  • Led sales for one of the largest provinces and delivered 14% sales uplift-highest nationwide growth. Won best Area Sales Manager award.
  • Delivered various marketing initiatives for the Maybelline brand to increase primary sales by 5%.
  • Spearheaded a global pilot of the retail store expansion. Increased distribution from 8,000 to 16,000 outlets in two months.

ERP Consultant

2010 - 2012
Tata Consultancy Services
  • Led various projects for US clients. TCS is one of the world's largest IT services providers.
  • Started as PL/SQL developer and became one of the youngest project leads to manage an offshore team of developers, database administrators, and QA.
  • Led critical HRMS ERP projects for fortune 500 companies in record time and received accolades for the same.

Pratilipi Android App (10+ Million Installs)

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.pratilipi.mobile.android

Led the product, design, and growth of the project. Grew it to $1 million installs within a year of launch. It has ten million+ MAU today. Launched the app in four months while leading a team of five developers.

Pratilipi is one of the world's largest story platforms with a $265 million valuation and 30+ million MAU. I built and led product, growth, design, and data functions. The Pratilipi Android app was very well received and became the primary driver behind reaching product market Fit. The app made it possible to have the viral loop at scale, wherein the consumers became creators.

Apna App (10+ Million Installs)

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.apnatime

Led product and strategy for Apna app with 5+ million MAU. Solved zero to one for community organization. Delivered critical features around the social network, personalized feed, experimentation platform, notification services, and ASO.

Apna ($1.1 billion valuation, 10+ million MAU) is the LinkedIn for blue and grey collar workers. I led the community organization, set processes around product strategy to roadmap to agile sprints. I created product pods and established best practices around project delivery, metrics, QA, and hiring.

Vokal App (1+ Million Installs)

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.oktalk.app

Led product, design and engineering for the project with 1+ million MAU.

Vokal ($150 million valuation, 25+ million MAU) is India's Quora. Koo and Twitter for India branched out of Vokal. I led product and strategy for the company. Solved zero to one and transformed Vokal from a content aggregator to a social platform. Delivered 10x growth across metrics for users, content, creators, and languages.

Pratilipi Website (30+ Million MAU)

https://www.pratilipi.com/

Led the product, design, and growth of the project. Evolved it from a blog to a social platform. Took it from 100,000 to one million MAU in six months.

Pratilipi is one of the world's largest story platforms with 30+ million MAU valued at $265 million. I built and led product, growth, design, and data functions. The Pratilipi website is a single-page application built in Vue.js. We conducted thousands of A/B tests across the web app to deliver one of the best content creation and consumption experiences in the world.
2012 - 2014

Master of Business Administration (MBA) in General Management

Indian Institute of Management - Lucknow, India

2006 - 2010

Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science

KIIT - Bhubaneswar, India

Tools

Asana, Marvel App, Jira, Slack, GitHub, Branch.io, Google Analytics, HubSpot

Platforms

Mixpanel, Firebase

Paradigms

Agile Project Management, Marketplace Platforms, App Store Optimization (ASO), B2C, Agile Product Management, Scrum, Mobile App Design, B2B2C, Agile, Requirements Analysis, Business to Business to Consumer (B2B2C), Data Science

Other

CleverTap, Systems, Strategy, User Experience (UX), Android, iOS, Amplitude, SaaS Product Management, Product Growth, Web, Data Structures, Algorithms, Product Management, System Design, Product Roadmaps, Launch Strategy, Analytics, Project Delivery, New Products, Consumer Technology, Social Networks, Social Marketplaces, Customer Acquisition, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Technical Hiring, Data Architecture, Project Management, Web Platforms, Software as a Service (SaaS), Growth Strategy, MVP Design, Minimum Viable Product (MVP), UI Design, Product Design, A/B Testing, Revenue Optimization, QA Testing, User Retention, Data Analytics, Mobile Apps, Business to Consumer (B2C), Consumer Behavior, Product Consultant, Mobile Product Management, UX Design, Hiring, Design Strategy, Organizational Design, Business Strategy, Data Strategy, Client Services, Client Relations, Vue, Consumer Applications, Product Owner, Digital Product Management, Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), Sprint Retrospectives, Agile Sprints, Sprint Planning, Design Sprints, Mobile App Development, Wireframing, Social Networks Development, Product Launch, Mobile, Mockups, Roadmaps, User Interface (UI), User Interviews, Mobile Applications, Startups, Early-stage Startups, Lean Startups, Growth, Lean Product Management, Lean Product Manager, User Journeys, User Stories, Backlog Grooming, APIs, UX Wireflows, Product Ownership, Community Management, SaaS, Feature Backlog Prioritization, Technical Product Management, Data, Product Strategy, User Research, Mobile Design, Mobile UI, New Product Development, Prototyping, Agile Leadership, Coaching, Cross-functional Collaboration, Data Product Manager, Data-driven Decision-making, Feature Prioritization, Requirements, Requirements & Specifications, Web Analytics, Stakeholder Management, Product Lifecycle Management (PLM), Data Analysis, Discovery, Product Discovery, Growth Hacking, Acceptance Criteria, Business, Go-to-market Strategy, Chief Product Officer (CPO), Education Product Manager, Education, User Behavior, Marketing Strategy, Marketing, Flutter, Product Marketing, Content Strategy, Databases, Machine Learning, Hybrid Apps, B2B, Retail & Wholesale, Sales, Subscriptions, eCommerce, HRIS, Over-the-top Content (OTT), Gift Cards & Certificates, Notion, YouTube Marketing, Video Streaming, SaaS Product Marketing, Messaging, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Planning, Business to Business (B2B)

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