Dharani Dharan
Verified Expert in Product Management
Product Manager
Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Toptal member since May 6, 2021
Dharan is a seasoned agile product manager with 8+ yrs of experience managing web and mobile sites and Android and iOS apps across eCommerce, ride-hailing, and food delivery. He has worked in Fortune 500 companies; in startups, taking products from zero to one; and as a consultant in gold eCommerce and edtech firms. Dharan's product management experience is backed by two years of software development at Accenture, an MBA, and a bachelor's degree in computer science.
Project Highlights
Expertise
- Agile
- Conversion Rate
- Figma
- Google Analytics
- Google Data Studio
- Jira
- Product Management
- Unit Economics
Work Experience
Lead Product Manager
Careem Networks FZ
- Generated incremental annual gross merchandise value (GMV) of $60 million by reducing cancellation rates in ride-hailing and food delivery.
- Built and improved booking flow experiences for food delivery and ride-hailing drivers in iOS and Android platforms in five languages, leading to a 15% improvement in driver CSAT scores.
- Reduced driver contact rates by 50% in both ride-hailing and food delivery.
- Enabled cross-utilization of the ride-hailing fleet for food delivery, thereby improving unit economics and reducing delivery costs for the firm.
- Advanced from product manager two (PM II) to senior PM and lead PM within two years and three months.
Product Manager
Melorra
- Led and launched a completely new mobile site and website, leading to improved user engagement with an uptick in pages per user, percentage of repeat users, and time spent on the site.
- Improved the conversion rate of the web and mobile site by 4x by revamping the homepage-to-checkout and checkout experiences.
- Set up the entire web and mobile site analytics framework, including data capture and logging, impact analysis, insights, customer journey mapping, and troubleshooting, and created real-time dashboards, using Google Data Studio.
- Enabled back-end store functions, such as inventory management, invoicing, and merchandising.
- Received the employee of the month award twice in one calendar year.
Associate Product Manager
Snapdeal
- Launched iOS and Android apps from scratch in a short span of three months, supporting the entire supply side of eCommerce use cases.
- Enabled first-of-a-kind returns management within the app by using the phone as a barcode scanner (2015).
- Increased the daily active userbase of the app by 3x within one year of launch.
Software Analyst
Scientific Games
- Promoted to a level-three software analyst in a record time of 19 months for exhibiting excellence.
- Developed and adapted physical slot-based games to web-based games in C#.NET.
- Implemented REST APIs for integration with third-party eWallet providers.
Associate Software Engineer
Accenture
- Developed a first-of-its-kind portable USB app for automating insurance sales to be used by on-field agents.
- Received an “Outstanding Performer” award in a greenfield training module on the .NET platform.
- Reduced report generation time by 10% through query optimization on a database with 10 million records.
Project History
Reduced Cancellation Rate in Ride-hailing and Food Delivery
Led user research, conceptualization, and execution to reduce cancellation rates in ride-hailing and food delivery, generating an incremental annual GMV of $60 million and an improved customer and driver experience.
Cancellation of a trip is a frustrating experience for any customer and driver. Not only does it bring down the GMV but it has a long-term impact on customer retention in ride-hailing and restaurants.
APPROACH AND SOLUTIONS
• Conducted in-depth quantitative funnel analysis by booking stage
• Analyzed key supply and demand metrics and gaps in positioning and time.
• Interviewed drivers and customers to understand the reasons behind
cancellations.
With insights from the above, I formed a comprehensive plan across drivers, customers, and the marketplace to tackle the issues with features such as:
• Customer and driver chat
• Automatic reassignments and driver backouts
• An improved booking offer experience for drivers
• An optimized ETA funnel for customers
• Marketplace cost function changes
• Cross-utilization of the ride-hailing fleet for food orders
All these features combined led to an incremental annual GMV of $60 million.
eCommerce Seller Mobile App
Conceptualized, led, and launched a seller mobile app in Android and iOS, resulting in a three-fold increase in the daily active seller base.
Users: Most of the small and midsize sellers, didn't have a proper office setup, and large sellers wanted to understand business insights on the go.
Firm: Because we wanted to increase selection for buyers, it became important to cater to mobile app-based sellers.
APPROACH
Conducted multiple in-person interviews, focus groups, user lab tests, and competitor benchmarking to identify the key issues faced by eCommerce sellers.
Based on the research, we enabled payments, a catalog, order and return management, and customer support through our mobile app. These features and continuous improvements on them led to the 3x growth of the seller base.
4x Increase in eCommerce Website and Mobile Site Conversion Rate
https://www.melorra.com/Led the ideation, design, and launch of new features, improving the landing-page-to-checkout and checkout conversion rate by 4x.
Melorra.com is a jewelry eCommerce website. The product conversion rate was challenging because of the high average basket value and the fact that retail had been a predominant channel for buying gold.
APPROACH
• Used Google Analytics and Hotjar to understand user behavior and funnels.
• Did competitor benchmarking, spoke to customers, and listened to their chats and calls with customer care to understand the pain points.
• Collaborated with designers and developers to turn these pain points into improvements across the user journey.
• Ran multiple A/B tests with mobile-first improvements across search, filtering, guarantees, one-day delivery, checkout, and PG optimizations.
Education
MBA in Management
Indian Institute of Management Lucknow - Lucknow, India
Bachelor of Engineering Degree in Computer Science
College of Engineering, Guindy - Chennai, India
Certifications
Advanced Google Analytics
Skills
Tools
Asana, Jira, Google Analytics, Moqups, Figma, Google Data Studio, Hotjar, ETL, Visual Studio .NET
Paradigms
Agile, User Testing
Platforms
Firebase, Google Analytics 360
Other
Product Management, Mobile UX, Conversion Rate, Unit Economics, Foodtech, Mobile Web, App UX, Rideshare Services, Food Delivery Services, Marketing, Systems, Software Development, Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC), SQL, User Conversion, Websites, Conversion, C#.NET, REST APIs, Microsoft SQL Server, eCommerce, User Research, User Interviews, Focus Groups, A/B Testing
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