Arjun Sharma
Bengaluru
Summary
B2B product expert with ~16 years of experience spanning Enterprise SaaS, strategy consulting, program management, portfolio strategy, macroeconomic research, and sales growth planning.
Overview
20
20
years of professional experience
Work History
Partner, Business & AI strategy
Golden Jackal Studios
Bengaluru
07.2025 - Current
- Led commercial strategy and operating model design for an AI-first media and content studio, partnering with enterprise and media clients.
- Managed $1M+ in client proposals, defining pricing models and delivery structures across OTT, Kids YouTube, and ad film production.
- Developed internal AI operating system—tooling, workflows, automation backlog—to scale content production and enhance speed, consistency, margin control.
Faculty, Management consulting
Growthschool.io
Bengaluru
10.2024 - Current
- Served as core faculty member for Management Consulting cohort. Delivered 30+ live sessions and led B2B workshops on AI for finance professionals, enhancing their strategic understanding of technology in finance.
Family Business Wind-down
Self employed
04.2024 - 05.2025
- Managed end-to-end wind-down of a family owned wholesale business in Delhi, including tax compliance closure, inventory liquidation, receivables recovery, and shop lease transition.
Chief of Staff to Product Co-Founder (Associate Director - Product)
Cleartax
Bengaluru
10.2021 - 03.2024
- Strategic partner to the Co-Founder (Head of Product), enabling high growth execution by driving operational transformation across Product, Engg, and Design organizations while managing executive communications and cross-functional strategic initiatives.
- Revamped Product Ops at Clear by standardizing cross-functional processes (Amazon's working backwards), centralizing documentation on Confluence (more transparency less meetings), and leading executive updates (WBRs, LBRs). Reduced roadmap slippages from 40% to 5-10% while saving 4 hours/person/week across teams.
- Acted as the gatekeeper for strategic product updates to the CEO, covering five product teams representing 90% of company ARR ($15mn+).
- Partnered with Engineering to standardize pre-sprint PRD formats, enhance infrastructure monitoring, and implement dedicated bug-fix sprints. Reduced critical bugs (P0) from 12-15 to under 3 per release within one quarter.
- Unified our release strategy by moving from fragmented 4-5 product messages to one primary quarterly theme (secondary updates in release notes), enabling focused Sales & Marketing campaigns and clearer client communication.
- Acted as an extension to the CPO, leading three 0to1 programs for vendor financing, Bookkeeping app for SMEs, and Accounts payable platforms (US, India). Acted as a thought partner, supporting financial modelling, running customer interviews, identifying vendors, planning leadership reviews and working with org leaders to plan resourcing.
- Built the payment infra for our US AP platform, enabling clients to automate vendor payments. Identified, evaluated and negotiated with 5 US fintechs to enable transfers via ACH, cheque, CC, and intl wire (run rate of $500k p.m). Secured ~$1mn in startup incentives from a leading CC company to launch co-branded cards, effectively financing our opex for 6 months.
- Launched Clear Assurance (as IC supporting a 0to1 launch), a compliance tool for Tax Heads streamlining notice handling, audit reporting, and compliance tracking. Managed cross-functional team of 8 (product, engineers, tax experts, designers) to deliver V0 within 3 months (repurposed existing dashboards+open-source tools), reducing dev time by 30%. Secured 3 beta clients who reported a 40% reduction in compliance gaps and 20% decrease in errors within 30 days. Strategic impact: Product enabled shift from point solutions to end-to-end compliance suite, increasing bundled ASP from $6K to $24K.
- Led payment partnership discussions for Clear (requirements, pricing, and legal), both in India (Banks - ICICI, Axis, NBFCs - Bajaj, DMI, Rupify, PGs - Razorpay, PayU) and US (MX, Dwolla, Lithic, CurrencyCloud, Sila, and Compliance consultants).
- Overhauled product hiring, onboarding 8 SPM-to-Director level hires. Refined targeting, interview strategies, and evaluation criteria, cutting interview-to-hire time from 3 wks to 8 days and improving hire-to-join ratio from 20% to ~85%.
Product Manager II
Boston Consulting Group
09.2016 - 10.2021
- Led enterprise-wide digital transformation for BCG X's 200+ data products, managing integrated roadmaps, technology standardization, and stakeholder alignment across global markets.
- Career progression: Product Manager (Jun'16 - Dec'19), Product Manager II (Dec'19 - Oct'21).
- Led 'One Data Platform' - a $10mn BCG investment supporting its experts (industry/function) in delivering data services to clients. Managed 20+ product releases including 2 platform rewrites, leading a global team of 35 specialists across Germany, UK, and USA.
- Responsible for annual investment cases, product strategy, and senior leadership reporting including solution delivery, vendor management, and customer success.
- Platform supported $200mn+ in client casework and served > 2,500 client users and > 900 BCGers across Financial Srvcs, Healthcare, TMT, and Industrials. Generated $4.5mn in annual savings and enabled a shift to a digital-first client engagement.
- The web app 'data.bcg.com' helped clients securely share files (vs over emails), interact with data and insights in Tableau(vs PPT), enabled our teams to run quick client diagnostics (Qualtrics) and publish reports to multiple clients in one click (vs managing email rollouts) within a GDPR and ISO27001 compliant architecture.
- Drove platform modernization from PPT to Tableau, XLS Macros to Alteryx/DataIKU, Shared drives to Snowflake data warehousing, and enhancing forecasts from rule based engines to predictive analytics (Prophet+Arimax). Significant focus on reusability (central team+algo repository) reduced FTE needs from 1.5 to 0.5 FTEs per data product annually.
- Managed a complex stakeholder matrix across Legal, IT, Finance, Design, and key vendors (DataIKU, Qualtrics, Tableau, DataRobot). Contributed to BCG's data strategy through API integrations (EIU, Refinitive), process automation (XLS to FTP), and new revenue streams (data hub, custom integrations).
Sr Product Manager
Absolutdata Labs, Absolutdata
Gurgaon
06.2013 - 09.2016
- Managed 2 analytical SaaS B2B products, aimed at the Sales and Marketing functions of large corporations. Responsible for the entire value chain from conceptualization, product demos, client deployments, to operations, sales and marketing.
- Career progression: Consultant (Jun'13 - Dec'15), Product Manager (Jan'15 - Dec'15), Sr Product Manager (Jan'16 - Sep'16).
- Led a team of 8 (incl 4 data engineers, 2 FE, 2BE developers), developing 2 AI tools for marketing and sales effectiveness.
- Reported to the CEO and coordinated the entire process from business case to sales pitches.
- Deployed our marketing analytics app at a large US based file sharing and sync firm over a 4 month 'onsite plus offshore' delivery model. The project helped the client use ML algorithms to identify target consumers (K means), align appropriate marketing campaigns (Random Forest) and their frequency leading to a +30% uptick in MRR.
- Led a 3 month pilot of a salesforce effectiveness model for a Fortune 100 B2B Industrial Supplies Company. The project saw an increase of 3% in the Test market (+$1mn) vs a -1% decline in the Control group. For a $10bn conglomerate this translated into a $200mn savings opportunity on full deployment.
Sr Consultant
Strategy&, PwC India Ltd
Mumbai
06.2012 - 06.2013
- Built the growth strategy for a leading Australian consulting firm to 2x revenues in 5 years. Efforts led to a merger and my role included benchmarking competitors, analyzing current revenue pools, and identifying industry/functional opportunities.
- Supported an FMCG brand diversify into the Indian Mass Retail Market via a $39mn investment. Developed their B2B customer strategy, merchandising master, in-store customer experience design, and store format recommendations.
- Drove individual workstreams on two client projects, across retail and professional services alongwith building multiple RFPs with senior partners.
Sr. Research Analyst
McKinsey & Company
Gurgaon
06.2006 - 03.2011
- Strategy consultant who built two McK products that became permanent servicelines, including Global Economics Intelligence serving 200+ executives.
- Career progression: Jr Research Analyst (Jun'06 - Jun'08), Research Analyst (Jun'08 - Dec'10), Sr Research Analyst (Jun'10 - Mar'11).
- Worked across multiple industries/functions as an analyst supporting financial modelling, competitor deep dives, and industry research.
- Founding member of two key McK investments - Global Economics Intelligence report and McK Asia center.
Education
MBA -
Indian School of Business (ISB)
Hyderabad, India03.2012
CFA Level 1 -
CFA Institute
U.S.A06.2009
Bachelors of Commerce (Hons) -
Delhi University
Delhi, India06.2006
Skills
- Product Management
- Customer Success
- Product Strategy
- Go-to-Market
- B2B SaaS
- Data Platforms
- Cross functional leadership
- Strategy Consulting
- Vendor Mngt
- Agile development
Websites
Hobbies and Interests
- Science fiction (books/cinema)
- Spending time with my pets
- Fitness
- Global markets
- Astronomy
Timeline
Partner, Business & AI strategy
Golden Jackal Studios
07.2025 - Current
Faculty, Management consulting
Growthschool.io
10.2024 - Current
Family Business Wind-down
Self employed
04.2024 - 05.2025
Chief of Staff to Product Co-Founder (Associate Director - Product)
Cleartax
10.2021 - 03.2024
Product Manager II
Boston Consulting Group
09.2016 - 10.2021
Sr Product Manager
Absolutdata Labs, Absolutdata
06.2013 - 09.2016
Sr Consultant
Strategy&, PwC India Ltd
06.2012 - 06.2013
Sr. Research Analyst
McKinsey & Company
06.2006 - 03.2011
MBA -
Indian School of Business (ISB)
CFA Level 1 -
CFA Institute
Bachelors of Commerce (Hons) -
Delhi University