Left CRED mid-momentum to build Soca full-time with Soham and Takshit. Owning GTM, brand and product from day one. The bet: professional trust is the most undervalued currency in tech.
Program managed the launch of Apparel on CRED Store — in six months, the highest revenue-contributing category by GMV. P&L, category planning, brand management. Portfolio included XYXX, DaMensch, Snitch, Comet, TURMS, Bewakoof, Sneakare.
Managed 180 restaurant partners generating 34% of total GOV from my portfolio, growing 8–10% MoM. Piloted Zomato's first student plan via SheerID across 10,000 students in Pune. Helped GTM the Go-Out Pune Instagram from scouting talent to content buckets.
Worked closely with the founder (IIM-B MBA) on stakeholder management, expectation setting and marketing methodologies. Ran strategy for 8 clients across 6 sectors. Revamped the company's own socials — 175% reach uplift. Offered a PPO.
Food cart with 33 tea variations. Cooking, community events, customer delight. First time I understood: you're not selling a product, you're selling an experience. That food cart is now an 8-cafe QSR chain across four tier-2 cities.
Ambient meeting capture as wedge. Weekly snapshots as habit. AI-driven intros as the core loop. The collider, not the photon.
Gated social platform with gamification, quests, community. Full MVP + PMF pilot built. Parked to focus on Soca.
Sponsored events as the beverage vendor, sold ad space on bottle labels to hyperlocal ventures whose ICP matched the event audience. Executed the India International EV Show 2023 — 11,300 bottles distributed, 4 advertisers onboarded, ₹1.4L gross, 37% net margin in a 7-week sprint with a 3-person team. Wound down to move to Bangalore.
Custom bulk apparel for college events, student clubs, corporates. ₹7L aggregate revenue across 9 orders · AOV ₹77k · 31% net margin. Low repeat rate, decent margins at small scale. Shut down to explore something more scalable.
Three-sided flywheel: collect segregated waste from residents → deliver to upcycling ventures → host a marketplace where conscious consumers redeem credits for eco-products. Won 2nd place at TCS Sustainathon 2021 (₹1L grant), entered the TATA Digital Impact Square '22 cohort, partnered with PMC for logistics. Three pilots over six months. Couldn't crack PMF — user intent and awareness were the blockers. The lesson: timing matters as much as the idea.
Innovation Hub, Cosmos, SoCE. Marketed and ran MIT-WPU Summit, NIRMITEE, RIDE — intercollegiate sports, technical symposium, the largest campus startup fest in the country at the time. First real taste of building for audiences, not grades.
Class coordinator. Hosted school events on national holidays. Leadership & drama workshops conducted by the National School of Drama.
Debates, drama, dance, assemblies. The early arc of learning by performing.
Obsessively following the strides in Indian D2C over the last two years, and the consumer AI venture landscape globally. Learning, working, building here.
Print → radio → television → cinema → social — the medium changes, the patterns repeat. I try to personify each project with elements that communicate beyond the tangible.
Investment theses, public market movements, private market M&A and early-stage venture capital. Reading thesis memos more than charts.
Rides through the Deccan. Built Rydr Club out of this obsession.
Hindi and English, usually mixed. A separate voice from the builder identity — the world through my eyes on @wavedant_.
Recently picked this up. Working on the mental block of 5km in 30 minutes.
Blue Tokai regular. Run Ctrl+Vibe and Playpals in Indiranagar / Koramangala.
Primary sources — the product I'm building, two voices, and the inbox.
Born in Vapi. Silvassa for primary, Udaipur for middle school, a boarding stint for ninth and tenth, Jaipur for pre-university, Pune for college, Bangalore for work. Somewhere in the middle of that, I wanted to be a theoretical physicist — until life happened and I applied to engineering instead. Moving that much wires you for adaptation. It also teaches you to read rooms fast. I think that's the only real skill underneath everything else I do.
First month at CRED. Handed Apparel with no playbook. I cold-sourced brands, taught myself merchandising, wrote the pricing framework. Six months: CRED Store's highest revenue-contributing category by GMV. Changed me more personally than professionally — the most revealing thing I can say about how I measure my own work.