Hiren Umradia

Tesco was using Oracle Endeca as a search engine where proprietary technology was seen as the right choice for a large enterprise. A small group of us bet against this idea. We decided to launch an open-source search engine using Elasticsearch. The search engine provided a "search-as-you-type" feature using Tesco's commercial data. The project was a great success where the importance of building our search engine was shown. Later I was invited to join an enterprise search team to help develop a scalable multi-purpose search engine for Tesco.

Led the development team of a VC-backed startup from idea to delivery. The product was created through a partnership with a global Smartphone operating system where the technology was sold and launched in emerging markets. Telecom operators in emerging markets were our primary customers, where our product was distributed to end-users through existing infrastructure.

There was limited infrastructure in place in relation to analytics where data was captured and kept in silos. I worked with the development team and a data scientist to build a data capturing tool using Segment. This tool was used to collect user insights for the 7 million members that used the website and mobile app. Data collected was transformed and collected in a data warehouse for analysis and visualization. Previously it was not possible to link transactions easily to downstream affiliate marketing events. This implementation allowed us to get a more vibrant picture of the customer journey. I also put a Kanban workflow in place to capture and prioritize new analytics tracking requirements. This allowed the business to move quickly when wanting to learn more about the users.