G. Kalra (GK)
Verified Expert in Product Management
Product Manager
Toronto, ON, Canada
Toptal member since October 10, 2019
GK is a seasoned product manager and a Queen’s MBA graduate with over five years of delivering consistent excellence in end-to-end product life-cycle management, following Agile methodologies. He is experienced in the retail, online marketplace, and automotive industries. Having worked in both startup and Fortune 500 enterprises, GK understands challenges and has excelled in leading cross-functional teams to achieve business goals.
Project Highlights
Expertise
- Agile Product Management
- Customer-centered Product Development
- Jira
- Lean UX
- Mobile Apps
- Product Roadmaps
- Product Strategy
- Web Platforms
Work Experience
Director of Product Management
MaxSold
- Tasked with building a project management function from scratch while managing a team of seven members, including UX and UI designers, developers, and a data analyst.
- Shifted the company to an Agile development process with bi-weekly release cycles while managing the product backlog with user stories and prioritized business needs.
- Integrated two legacy systems to automate a back-end process, reducing missed calls rates from customers by over 40%.
- Identified a major bug in the in-house contract application. Briefed change in the UX for lean design, decreasing contract abandonment rate by 18% and increasing corresponding NPS score from 5.7 to 6.2.
- Instituted an automated contact system, with a response rate of over 50% to assist consumers through the sale process, increasing the throughput by 6%.
Associate Product Manager
Apollo Tyres, Ltd.
- Spearheaded product management for Asia, Middle East, and Africa (AMA) region, managing an over $200 million business with two brands: Apollo and Vredestein.
- Led a nine-member cross-functional team for the development and launch of a product designed for high-income group consumers, resulting in a 23% higher volume and 0.9% market share gain for the company.
- Received the Teamwork Champion award by the Global Chief Marketing Officer in 2016 for successfully leading and delivering multiple cross-functional projects and training over 600 sales reps across India, Thailand, Dubai, The Netherlands, and South Africa.
- Utilized Nielsen reports introducing a 5-tier product segmentation to bring focus on low-volume, high-margin products, increasing category EBITDA by 4%.
- Identified improper product positioning due to an overcrowded portfolio; streamlined product mix by rationalizing six under-performing products resulting in a 9% increase in sales over the next ten months.
Product Marketing Associate
Apollo Tyres, Ltd.
- Acted as the central point-of-contact with the global product management team and lead on the execution of product strategies for the AMA region.
- Initiated Brand Tracker and Path to Purchase research studies for India in partnership with Milward Brown to create the customer journey map. Presented results to C-level executives.
- Strategized and implemented the Customer Advisory Board (CAB) in 2015 and standardized the annual format.
- Onboarded the GFK-Nielsen team to develop quarterly market reports, covering the top ten competitors and published the Eye & Ear market insights and analytics report to all internal stakeholders.
Project History
Digital Strategy and Roadmap
Crafted the digital strategy and product roadmap for a large Canada-based retail company.
Integration of Legacy Systems
Integrated two legacy systems to automate a back-end process, thereby saving the support team over five hours per day.
Automated Customer Follow-up System
Led the design and development of an automated contact system to nudge consumers to complete purchases, improving throughput.
Education
Master's Degree in Business Administration
Queen's University - Kingston, Ontario, Canada
Bachelor's Degree in Mechanical Engineering
Amity University - New Delhi, India
Certifications
Certified Scrum Product Owner® (CSPO®)
Scrum Alliance®
Skills
Tools
Jira, Trello, Asana, Slack, Confluence, Atlassian Suite
Paradigms
Agile Product Management, Scrum, Kanban, Marketplace Platforms
Industry Expertise
Automotive
Other
Customer Journeys, Product Strategy, Product Roadmaps, Lean UX, Agile Sprints, Customer-centered Product Development, Story Mapping, Web Platforms, Customer Research, Lean Product Development, New Product Development, User Research, Net Promoter Score (NPS), Minimum Viable Product (MVP), User Acceptance Testing (UAT), Mobile Apps, Mobile UX, Microsoft, Google
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