Ashwin Kumar

• Defined and drove the product strategy for a key product line, aligning business goals with customer needs, leading to a 30% increase in user engagement, thereby increasing ARPU by 33%.
• Led the execution of key features that aligned with measurable outcomes, while securing support from stakeholders and contributing to long-term user and revenue growth.
• Managed and mentored a team of product managers, guiding their growth in product thinking, strategic decision-making, and effective communication by introducing critical thinking processes that helped question and challenge existing thinking patterns within the organization. This enhanced team efficiency by reducing and decentralizing decision overload.
• Initiated AI-driven product initiatives to optimize content categorization, natural language processing using existing LLM systems, and a B2B product powered 80% by AI, driving significant improvements in user engagement and personalization. User engagement increased by 25% due to the categorization and matching systems.

Key Projects:

• Identified the need for an enhanced article page to improve user reading experience and focus on story completions. Oversaw the execution by aligning UX philosophy, convincing stakeholders, and optimizing design. Achieved significant improvements in user engagement and article completion rates where article completions increased by 30%, leading to further UX investments.
• Identified a gap in the article page design where limited space hindered new article discovery, and converting flyby users into direct users was a challenge. Oversaw the execution of a feature by collaborating with the design and development teams, ensuring seamless integration and optimal user interaction, that homepage visits increased by 100%, strengthening brand identity and becoming a key driver for user retention strategies.
• Envisaged an opportunity to increase user engagement by allowing users to follow companies they had invested in and receive personalized news updates. Convinced stakeholders of the potential for increased user retention and executed the feature to implement follow functionality and automated email notifications. The feature helped acquire around 10K new users every month, contributing to increased user engagement and retention.
• Attract new users and engage existing ones by introducing utility tools such as financial calculators. Engaged stakeholders by highlighting the value these tools would add to user experience and retention. The feature drove significant increases in both new user acquisition and engagement, where it added 1M MAU every month.
• Introduced a unique short form news consumption format in the Businessline app called BL Discover which enabled users to quickly consume news using a 'T' model. Users could quickly skim a particular news item and go to the next news or dive deep into the same news item and understand it better. This feature helped increase screens per session per user exceeding 20+, making BL Discover a pivotal feature for boosting app interaction.

• Created a dedicated Value Added Services portal, “Smart Savers.” The platform contributed to the existing revenues by adding 150,000 USD in the first year.