Publication
Shipping Your Product in Iterations: A Guide to Hypothesis Testing
https://www.toptal.com/product-managers/data/product-hypothesis-testing
Kumara is currently unavailable
Kumara Raghavendra
Verified Expert in Product Management
Product Manager
Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Toptal member since August 6, 2019
Bio
For over ten years, Kumara has successfully delivered high-impact products in various industries, including eCommerce, healthcare, travel, and ride-hailing. He is experienced in working with data science and machine learning products, specifically in search, ranking, and recommendations. Having worked in early-stage startups as well as larger companies, Kumara is well-versed in the latest product development methods and is an effective leader.
Project Highlights
Careem | Driver Gamification
Delivered 4% incremental trips by improving engagement of drivers through various elements of gamification theory.
Booking.com | Highlighted Hotels
Led product design and development of this feature, to drive 2,000+ incremental transactions per day.
Booking.com | Nearby Destinations
Led product design and development of this feature, resulting in 700+ incremental transactions per day.
Expertise
- Agile Product Management
- Behavior-driven Design
- Business Analysis
- Digital Project Management
- Product Ownership
- Requirements
- User Experience (UX)
- User Needs
Work Experience
Senior Staff Product Manager
2021 - PRESENT
Disney Streaming Services
- Increased user retention by 0.5% by introducing an experience to surface upcoming and soon-to-be-released content to users.
- Built an automated content ingestion platform to scale Disney+ to 20 new countries in the Middle East, Africa, and Southeast Asia.
- Launched localization for the content catalog in eight languages, including right-to-left language support for Hebrew and Arabic.
- Delivered content catalog enrichment from multiple external sources like IMDb to enhance search and recommendation conversions on the platform.
Senior Product Manager Tech
2020 - 2021
Amazon.com
- Worked with senior executives to build a 3-year roadmap.
- Led the design for features in the returns and refunds space for EU customers.
- Delivered impactful features in the new Amazon marketplaces in the Netherlands, Turkey, Sweden, and Poland.
Lead Product Manager
2018 - 2020
Careem
- Worked on reducing driver incentives by 15% through personalized incentive structures based on their behavioral patterns.
- Introduced a driver loyalty program to increase retention by 2% and efficiency of spending on driver incentives by 5%.
- Increased the engagement of drivers on the platform by 4% through new experiences on the app based on gamification theory.
- Increased the effectiveness of driver incentives by providing drivers the experience to view their live performance towards their incentives.
- Took various projects from an initial idea to a fully realized feature—validating the idea with user research and data analysis, writing the requirements, contributing to the design and development decisions, and overseeing the build and release.
Product Manager
2017 - 2018
Booking.com
- Increased customer conversion by innovative personalization to the search ranking.
- Increased customer conversion by providing relevant and timely destination recommendations.
- Increased customer conversion by showcasing personalized hotel recommendations for the planned itinerary.
- Built a strong user profile with predictions for several aspects of the user like domestic/international traveler, preferred price range and the review score of the user, which were then used in personalizing their experience on the website and apps.
- Led a project to increase transacting users from emerging markets like India, Indonesia, and Mexico right from understanding the competitive landscape and the user base to developing and shipping relevant features and product improvements.
Product Manager
2016 - 2017
Flipkart
- Increased conversion by 4bps by personalizing search results for users.
- Increased the conversion through the push notification channel by 15% through personalized targeting using the preferred stores of users.
- Increased fraudulent user detection accuracy by 40% by linking the devices and addresses of fraudulent users.
- Led a project to understand and compute the life time value of users on the platform.
- Led a project from idea to development and execution on building a social graph of users for delivering better product recommendations.
Product Manager
2014 - 2016
Practo
- Conceptualized and built the data collection infrastructure for listing doctors on the platform.
- Delivered a scalable content management system to manage doctor, clinic and hospital information across multiple languages and geographies.
- Implemented a ticket-based workflow in the Content Management System to ensure seamless adoption by the 600+ member Operations team across the globe.
- Built the data collection app to work without an Internet connection to enable a seamless experience for the users in tier-2 Indian cities.
- Launched the Practo website and mobile app in the Indonesian market.
Product Manager
2013 - 2014
Reliance Jio
- Conducted comprehensive industry research and defined a realistic go-to-market plan to hit the revenue targets for the product.
- Launched a private cloud offering with a focus on use cases for large enterprises.
- Defined the product roadmap breaking it into milestones needed to hit the business goals.
- Defined the cost-based pricing model for the public cloud offering as part of the go-to-market strategy.
- Led the UX design for the self-serve portal of the public cloud offering.
Project History
Careem | Driver Gamification
Delivered 4% incremental trips by improving engagement of drivers through various elements of gamification theory.
Increased driver engagement by introducing various elements of gamification theory like leaderboards, streaks, points, badges, and communities.
First, the larger strategy and vision for introducing gamification on the app was outlined. Then, based on extensive user research, the various elements were scoped and prioritized for execution. Then, each of the elements was developed and shipped through A/B tests, with continuous iteration and improvements.
Booking.com | Highlighted Hotels
Led product design and development of this feature, to drive 2,000+ incremental transactions per day.
When a user searches for hotels in a destination on Booking.com, the first result they see in the ranking is highlighted as it is the most relevant result for them. The hotel to be highlighted is determined based on past behavior as well as the similarity of the user to other active users on the site.
Booking.com | Nearby Destinations
Led product design and development of this feature, resulting in 700+ incremental transactions per day.
When a user searches for a destination and all the properties are sold out, research showed that users were willing to stay farther away in a nearby town. This led to the development of a feature showcasing nearby destinations with an indication of how far away it was and how much cheaper hotels were on average in that destination.
Other Experience
Education
2011 - 2013
Master's Degree in Business Administration
IIM Calcutta - Kolkata, India
2007 - 2011
Bachelor's Degree in Information Technology
NITK Surathkal - Surathkal, India
Skills
Tools
Trello, Slack, Confluence, Figma, Google Analytics
Paradigms
Agile Product Management, Scrum, Kanban, Design Thinking, Gamification, Waterfall Development
Industry Expertise
Healthcare
Other
User Needs, User Requirements, Digital Project Management, Discovery Workshops, Requirements, Product Ownership, Business Analysis, User Experience (UX), Mobile Apps, Product Management, Product Owner, Feasibility Studies, Feature Backlog Prioritization, Technical Product Management, User Stories, Project Management, Project Timelines, Proof of Concept (POC), Go-to-market (GTM) Strategy, Minimum Viable Product (MVP), Mobile Applications, Product Roadmaps, Wireframing, Business Requirements, MySQL, Behavior-driven Design
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