Haja J. Deen

Homegrown is an innovative digital property crowdfunding fintech business that democratizes access to quality property investment opportunities for investors. It is a revolutionary way of connecting savers directly with quality investments through an FCA-regulated crowdfunding platform.
Project Highlights:
• Created a customer-driven platform roadmap and digital marketing automation to scale globally and was crowdfunded by £100,000 within 36 hours.
• Executed technology and digital marketing strategy and program to drive customer acquisition.
• Homegrown.co.uk was recognized as a top-three crowdfunding platform (2017) within the first year of operations.
• The business seed funding round was oversubscribed.

Saint-Gobain is the global leader in construction product manufacturing and distribution with global revenues of £30 billion and 190,000 employees. In the UK, the SGBD UK operates 15 brands and has £2.5 billion in revenues and 12,000 employees.
Project Highlights:
• Served as the group digital director and directly reported to the group CEO and led SGBD UK’s strategic digital transformation and tech program.
• Created and gained buy-in from the board for Jewson’s digital transformation strategy and program.
• Launched a new eCommerce site that was recognized as the best B2B eCommerce in the UK in 2015.
• Achieved £3+ million in first-year eCommerce sales.
• Built the business case and won the CEO’s approval for a multi-brand eCommerce platform implementation using SAP Hybris, Kerridge ERP, and IBM MDM.
• Architected an innovative image recognition, geo location-driven mobile app for Jewson.
• Hired a team of 17 digital pros and established the digital customer experience center.
• Increased ROI in £3 million in digital investments.
• Delivered engaging social media content and competitions and acquired over 100,000 new email sign-ups.
• Shaped Saint-Gobain’s global digital plans through European eBusiness and data working groups.

Holland & Barrett is a global leader in health and wellness with over 1,300 international store locations and one of the UK’s most successful eCommerce sites. In 2017, H&B has embarked on a digital-driven global expansion. I was headhunted as part of the digital leadership team to deliver its next-generation digital platforms.
Project Highlights:
• Planned and designed Holland & Barrett’s next-generation microservices API based digital platforms architecture.
• Led the next-generation internal build-out of a cloud app-based point of sale (PoS) for 1,300 stores
• Led an innovative hackathon process to select the right-sized partners for the delivery of the new platform
• Led the technology stream for a store of the future to deliver Amazon Go-like store concepts

In 2000, I co-founded Fast-Foods.net, a forerunner of Delivaroo, which enabled online ordering for KFC and Pizza Hut.
Project Highlights:
• Expanded operations to three countries in three different languages in Singapore, Hong Kong, and Japan and achieved over 40,000 registered users and a valuation of US$50 million.
• Pioneered Coldfusion-based mobile internet services.

NTT Singapore is the Singapore office of Japan’s largest telecommunication company with revenues exceeding US$100 billion.
Project Highlights:
• Designed, built, and scaled a fully web-based VoIP service for NTT Singapore.
• Grew revenues at NTT Singapore’s VoIP business 300% by introducing SMS callback, PINLess prepaid, and channel partners and took the business from a new entrant in 2006 to a profitable niche player by 2008.
• Designed and delivered a carrier-grade VoIP system with 99.9999% (Five 9s) reliability within two months by managing vendors, carrier partners, and internal stakeholders.
• The service ran with high profitability for over 12 years.