Strategic Product Leader - PLG & AI Expert

GAYATRI PUWAR MAHENDROO

510-***-**** ******@*****.*** https://www.linkedin.com/in/gpuwar https://soloist.ai/gradientadvisoryllc Strategic Product Leader with 15+ years of experience scaling B2B SaaS and B2C platforms at Fortune 100s and high-growth startups. Expert in driving Product-Led Growth (PLG) strategies to achieve 20% Paid Account increase in customer user retention at the portfolio level and scaling ARR from $50M to $250M. Proven track record in 0-to-1 product launches, Applied AI, and multi-sided marketplace development. Skilled at managing cross-functional teams of 50+ members to deliver scalable inventory and digital infrastructure solutions that drive measurable business outcomes. Background in Mobile Innovation, and connected hardware/software experiences, with driving 15 million net user growth in emerging markets, launching AI features for 300 million+ monthly active users on a major messaging platform, and introduction of new plug-in marketplace around Chatbots, and AI/ML solutions, expanding revenue to $10 million, in revenue and increasing payment transactions in FinTech. EXPERIENCE

Head of Product & GTM Consultant, Gradient Advisory (Portfolio - AI & B2B2C SaaS Startups) San Francisco, CA April 24 – Now Fractional Strategic consultant on product strategy, development, and business models for AI and early-stage SaaS and Consumer platforms.

• AllyIn.ai (Gen AI Enterprise Startup) – Q2 2025 – Q4 2025. o Defined the ICP and product vision for a Gen AI telemetry platform, resulting in a successful M&A outcome. Architected a 'Software Defined AI Telemetry Platform' for data centers to compete with NVIDIA Run.ai to manage total TCO, resulting in a Google Cloud Startup Accelerator selection and a successful M&A outcome with Runara.ai after validating product-market fit. o Defined ICP and product-market fit for GenAI enterprise tools, leading discovery and design for EPC (Energy, Procurement, and Construction) workflows that improved workflow efficiency by 35%. Architected and deployed domain-specific RAG-based AI agents using open LLM models, LangChain, and Fast API, securing two Letters of Intent (LOIs) from clients and a channel partner for the full- stack framework for EPC contract evaluation, vendor comparison, lifecycle monitoring, and governance suite and platform UX.

• Wevise.org (B2B2C Startup and Mentorship Platform) – April 2024 – Q1, 2025 o Led discovery and customer interviews for ADA-compliant features for a tech mentorship platform, collaborating with the founders. Created RFP and selected a cloud partnership model (GetStream.io) to support user-engagement features and roadmap. Executed an MVP (chat, calling, scheduling) launch for over 50 members and the Chicago non-profit sector (Q1’ 25), and established early analytics. Director of Product, Platform Partnerships & GTM Passport Labs, Inc (B2B Fintech) San Francisco, CA Jan 23 – Sep 23 Passport provides the digital infrastructure and platform that cities need to manage and monetize their most valuable asset, their curb.

• Owned P&L, product strategy, and OKRs for the customer-facing analytics and AI/ML solutions (Enterprise platform), and native integrations and APIs (PLG), driving cross-functional execution across payments, governance, and permits, while managing two product owners and a cross-functional team of five product managers, UX, and 50+ engineers across the US and India.

• Launched three ML and analytics products with joint partners, managing specs, agreements, strategy, pricing, and GTM, resulting in

$2.5MM incremental ARR in 2023 and a 30% increase in MAU adoption on the platform.

• Defined 3-year product strategy and OKRs, including a new TAM opportunity for a 0-1 in-app marketplace for platform expansion, and phased plan. Launched listing only marketplace, with 40 certified apps and integrations (new and existing) in 8 months. Established new platform partner program structure, buy-in from c-suite, and established certification and readiness review operating practices.

• Owned the roadmap, partnerships, strategy, and go-to-market (GTM) execution for Full Parking Payment APIs and Event APIs on the developer portal, with a team of 2 Product Managers to drive the data and distribution roadmap. Piloted native mobile payment applications across three consumer-facing apps: hotel parking, ADA parking, and in-transit services, and delivered 360-degree revenue dashboards for cities. Scaled solutions to 150 cities, leading to a $10 million increase in transaction revenue from existing customers.

• Launched and expanded Text2Park, a mobile parking solution, achieving a 22% adoption rate across non-Passport’s customers to increase GTM coverage, supporting Passport’s payment rails, by leveraging a partnership with the leading parking operator, SP+, to establish go-to- market strategies that drove platform growth and revenue throughout North America.

• Spread-headed effort to expand into adjacent CarPlay integration strategies and evolution of the payment APIs and wallet solution with the car aggregator (Parkopedia) for 10+ car OEMs, owned business case, scope, execution, and key adoption and revenue metrics.

• Led industry forum and OMA (Open Mobile Alliance) committee to develop a standardized API roadmap and reduce fragmentation. Pursued emerging opportunities in electric vehicles and micromobility, accelerating GTM for 850+ NA customer base. Head /Principal Product Manager, Native apps Ecosystem & Growth Egnyte, Inc (B2B SaaS) Mountain View, CA Feb 20 – Nov 22 Led native apps and integrations platform roadmap, and execution for Enterprise Cloud File Sharing, Governance, and Intelligent document products during its 5X growth. Managed complex technology roadmaps with the Tier 1 Cloud Partners, execution, and beyond.

• Spearheaded GTM for a marketplace of 165+ apps marketplace, achieving 20% net MoM increase in MAUs and a 10-point improvement in admin NPS via PLG and Product development to improve activation, engagement, and retention. Managed a multi-product SaaS portfolio that grew 5X to reach $250M ARR, focusing on high-retention enterprise workflows and intelligent document processing.

• Built and mentored a high-performing Ecosystem product org, doubling engineering capacity, a data squad, 2 PMs, and delivering 20+ native integrated application experiences with 20% increase in paid account growth and users (paid users, admins) as a north star metric.

• Led native productivity initiatives within the Partner CSP network with Microsoft, Google, and Salesforce, managing UX, listing, and roadmaps, and program execution. Key launches included Egnyte Cloud file storage within Microsoft 365, MS Teams, Outlook, and Google Workspace products across Desktop, mobile, and web for collaboration and sharing, bi-directional sync on Egnyte and Salesforce, and Dynamic CRMs for files, as well as on Slack (Salesforce Exchange), as a first-class product surface for sharing files and content while keeping content-sprawl in control for the IT with OAUTH, Audit and versioning features supporting data and distribution strategy.

• Led the 0-1 co-development of the M365 reference architecture as one of three initial partners, defining file infrastructure and orchestration layer to cohesive UX and security experiences end-to-end, and launched the "Desktop and Mobile Co-Authoring Suite" in in M365 and Team apps, and o Egnyte’s apps featuring Egnyte as a storage and a cohesive user experience across seven internal and partner platforms for front-line workers with sync and offline to online collaboration suite – first in the industry as a differentiator for the front-line workers in vertical SaaS industry (AEC, FinTech and Lifesciences) with 65% paid adoption among enterprises.

• Managed Partner Framework for prioritization and investment in analytics, workflow, and secure content governance solutions, and designed an API-first roadmap with SIEM integrations (Sumologic, ServiceNow, Splunk) with the team to launch turn-key ITSM workflows with ML-driven policy enforcement (GDPR, CCPA, HIPAA) for the new Content Governance Product line, generating over

$20M in partner-influenced revenue within six months through the new Governance product line and expansion.

• Defined and built Churn vs. Adoption regression models combined with Salesforce and billing data; developed growth levers demonstrating 3+ integration usage and churn correlation, while owning the overall retention-based roadmap to drive adoption, engagement, and depth of integrations aimed at reducing churn, including launching ‘Partner Analytics Dashboards’ company-wide.

• Piloted Pendo.io for PLG; designed in-app onboarding experiments targeting IT admins; improved trial-to-paid conversion by 15% during onboarding /trial experiences, also managed ongoing roadmap to drive activation /and release of the new features.

• Defined and developed a new HOME page experience (UX) on the platform with the Peer team, showcasing recommended apps for new employees, and current co-authoring sessions on the web, leading to higher usage and meeting OKRs (3 integrations growth lever and 44% weekly co-authoring sessions with M365 and Google Workspace integrated platform productivity apps). Head of Product & Strategy, Lead-gen Messaging ApexChat, Inc (B2B2C Contact-Center) San Ramon Mar 19 – Sep 19 Led product strategy and business model transformation as a first product-hire freelancer. Built lead-gen platform and field agent mobile apps for SMBs; identified 10x TAM opportunity; redesigned business model from transactional to recurring revenue, leading 52% Customer growth.

• Built and managed a cross-functional product organization (2 PMs, UX, analytics), and 100+ offshore R&D and agent team in the full- fledged contact center space, as the first product hire to digitize the platform. Owned customer development, strategy, and positioning. Identified 10x TAM opportunity in SMB segment through market and consumer research, identifying key themes and reasons for churn; designed business model transition (cost-per-lead SaaS subscription) with new pricing and packaging and feature-set.

• Built lead-gen platform and field agent mobile apps: designed lead qualification flows and rep workflows for nurturing. spearheaded the launch of NLP-based agent-assist (knowledge integration, quick replies), improving lead quality by 40%, and developed an AI-powered lead widget and text chat with Twilio SMS automation for no-show reduction in healthcare; scaled to 10+ channel partners in 4 months. Sr. Technical Program Manager, AI/ML Solutions, Wells Fargo Innovation Lab San Francisco, CA Nov 17 – Oct 18 Led Data Platform and Product offering for the internal enterprise AI/ML Data platform within Wells Fargo Innovation Lab as a consultant. Managed scope, implementation, schedules, budget, and established risk and governance frameworks across 40+ teams.

• EVA (Enterprise Virtual Agent): Designed product specifications and UX for a chatbot on a hybrid NLP platform with its own Ontology and knowledge base, and Conversational Studio with IBM Watson. Delivered pilot on scope for the 1st platform commercialization, within time and budget for HR use-case to LOB team with 35% first-time resolution rate, and validating product-market fit for data platform.

• Fraud Agent Prioritization Model: Defined and scoped data and ML (machine learning) model requirements with the LOB, architects, R&D, and Data teams. Managed 50 teams to lead scope, budget, and delivery, and managed risks and delivered MaaS (Model as a Service) with batch and real-time inference to deliver to the Fraud Ops team within 9 months, outperforming the baseline model by 20%.

• Designed and managed the intake process for NLP and ML services and the AI center of excellence in the bank. Established an MLOps governance framework for the data platform, covering data and development standards, validation processes, and production deployment. Platform Program Manager, Skype Conversational Platform (AI), and Mobile Microsoft, Inc Palo Alto, CA Sep 13 – Sep 16 Multiple teams; Led Conversational AI BOT Framework Platform for Skype Messaging Platform. Before that, led integrations and OEM and OS Global Ecosystem strategy for Skype Mobile in the International Growth team, and owned key engagement and partner attach OKRs.

• Defined Scope, UX, and Cloud-native Platform Architecture for Skype's 0-1 AI BOT framework built on Azure ML Services. Designed developer-facing APIs, SDKs, and conversational UX primitives (OAuth2, Receipt, Carousel cards), enabling internal teams (BING, OneNote, Cortana) and external developers to build intelligent AI BOT experiences. Architected platform capabilities, including bot discovery, authentication flows in 1:1 and in group channels, sharing, and multi-channel deployment (web, desktop, mobile).

• Built a self-service developer portal with no-code cards API documentation, sandbox environments, and analytics dashboards. Created onboarding workflows, reducing time-to-first bot from weeks to hours. Established developer and User success metrics (API and Cards usage, BOT adoption, and developer funnel) and implemented continuous feedback loops with the developer community.

• Authored Conversational UX principles, and early analytics, as well as owned BOT framework platform documentation, samples, and cookbooks, working with early marquee partners (Pandora bots, eBay, Hipmunk, Skyscanner, 247.ai, to name a few) for next multi-modal and conversational commerce use-cases in various categories like travel, shopping, and customer service cases, and cards roadmap.

• Executed customer zero program (dogfooding) closed beta global consumer/developer launch across web, desktop, mobile on all surfaces, working with the 5 different client teams and POs globally to orchestrate 4-monthly developer and consumer launches. Reached 0.5M bot users in 4 months on a 300M MAU base; 15K developers signed up with a 6.5X BOTs approval rate, doubling the OKRs with the first two platform releases in under 9 months.

• For the mobile team, drove net gain of 15M+ MAUs for Android app on 100M+ MAUs base; achieved 20% higher retention vs. baseline; and improved partner device attach (Amazon Kindle, Samsung Galaxy to name a few) to work on both the breadth (distribution) product strategy and depth (mobile SDK and deeper integration into Mobile Core OS and services) with 4.4+ Appstore ratings.

• Defined, co-developed, and launched mobile SDK and 0-1 Skype Dialer product, with VoIP and FaceTime-like video calls from native dialer with messaging, Cortana, and Skype credit APIs on Cyanogen Android OS, with launch to OnePlus One device in India with the 0-1 launch at MWC 2016, and scaling to eight devices with projected TAM of 3M+ net MAUs business case, for the emerging markets.

• Led user research and differentiated experiences on the consumer devices end-to-end with OEM, OS, and AppStore partners. Authored and implemented HD video calling using HW offloading on Kindles for Pilot and owned calling /meetings metrics, and then scaled to 100M MAUs, also contextual nudge with an ECS (A/B framework) to drive activation on mobile, leading to 30% higher usage. Senior Manager, Product Planning - Mobile Platform & Applications Google, Inc./Motorola Mobility (Consumer Tech) Sunnyvale, CA 2001– 2012 (various roles: Engr -> Project Management -> Product /Release Management -> Product Strategy & Planning) Led portfolio-level product strategy and planning for mobile platforms and consumer applications (annual device sales of $500M+) globally.

• Led platform strategy and product development for low-cost mobile phones internationally, focusing on native applications (Messaging, Mobile Wallet, Games) and third-party apps on the Moto platform. Managed a team of 50+ R&D and ODM across North America, Beijing, and Taipei, resulting in innovation, and $10 million in royalty savings, and an incremental software business case with 3rd party apps.

• Spearheaded entry into the social platform space for Android devices by co-developing Facebook Graph services and integrating core Google Mobile Services, integrated into the Motorola Platform, driving CxD (integrated experiences) for the end-users. Coordinated global launch positioning and co-marketing with regional teams and carriers, achieving 1.5 million additional device sales in key markets. EDUCATION & CERTIFICATIONS

• Certifications: Green Belt Six Sigma, Dale Carnegie, AI /ML NLP advanced coursework, and Agile Scrum Practices

• Retention + Engagement Tracks in Product-led Growth Leadership Reforge, CA, 2021

• Master's, Project /Program Management (PMP equivalent), George Washington University, IL, 2008

• M.B.A., International Management, Lake Forest Graduate School of Management, IL. 2007

• M.S., Computer Information Technology, Florida Institute of Technology, FL, 2000 CORE COMPETENCIES

0-1 Product Development

Product Strategy & Portfolio Leadership NLP, ML, and Gen AI, and Data Platforms for Customer platforms

Productivity & Collaboration Platform and Applications Integrated Platform App Experiences (Web, Desktop, Mobile)

Customer-Platform Product Management and Expansion Cross-Product Program Leadership

Product-Led Growth (Activation, Adoption, Retention, Revenue) Agile, Scrum, and lean Product development

Ecosystem & Integration developer Platforms & Partnerships Product Analytics

GTM strategies and expansion APIs-first Platform Strategy & Innovation

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