STRATEGY CONSULTING London, UK
Start-Up Consultant Oct 2023 – Present
Management consultant helping startups and mid size companies with product positioning, launch strategy and regulatory compliance
- Helped launch 3 early stage Gen AI based startups with seed-funding raising £230k from grants and angel investors; supported with financial modeling, product strategy and user experience
- Built and created content for my commercial website www.askvenkats.com (not live yet); built 2 layer data model with latest access control systems
- Working with Incubators from University of Chicago, University of Southampton to mentor start-ups and entrepreneurs
- Helped launch products like Happify, Miist and PropInspector.AI
AMAZON UK London, UK
Senior Manager, Product Oct 2021 – Sep 2023
Lead multiple projects to increase customer retention and selection for Amazon Retail and Amazon Healthcare using Gen AI
- Product owner for a multi-year project to enable third party deliveries (240M USD per year opportunity) to Amazon Pick-up-Points Worldwide (WW) with Pilots launched in EU5 (UK, DE, FR, IT and ES)
- Developed new algorithms for optimizing cold storage utilization, route optimization and in-time delivery of pharmaceutical products based on pick-up time data of customers and locker usage; set up dashboard for continuous improvement based on 12 different monitored KPIs
- Led the customer and clinician support, including customer care SOPs, for Amazon DTC COVID-19 test kit (4 star customer rating on amazon.co.uk) that generated $1.4MM in revenue in 3 months
- Ideated and Strategized implementation of 3P Clinician Support in UK for 1P DTC Diagnostic Devices by collaborating with R&D, Quality, Regulatory and Global Tech Teams
- Strategized and communicated decisions on WW launch strategy (& 3-year plans) including Legal, Accounting and Tax strategies. This involved dial down of pilots using defined metrics and negotiating new contracts with external carriers
- Increased availability and selection for Amazon Locker customers by onboarding 3507 new sellers and ~35K products
- Implemented 3 different feature upgrades to existing Dx customer support (CS) tool to help drive better customer experience (reduced customer contacts by 23%) by eliminating pain points for both customers and CS agents
- Conducted 3 ideation sessions and competitive audits of Wellness Tests and STI Tests in UK to finalize UI/UX requirements, CX Journey, Health Agency Reporting (HAR) and Clinician workflows for DTC Dx Products
- Onboarded new diagnostic test supplier using new data on demand forecasting, manufacturing capability and testing efficiency
- Onboarded 170+ sellers and delivered 25K+ orders in 4 months including a peak volume of 350 orders per day; customer satisfaction >95%
COMPLIANCE GROUP INC ($200M Niche solution provider for Pharma/Med Device Industries) New York, USA / London, UK
Senior Director and Head of Product – AI May 2021 – April 2022
Converted product development process from legacy to cloud based digital system; started a new 10% CAGR YoY business
- Incorporated modern SDLC (SAFe Agile) methodologies in client’s product development process with minimal impact to daily activities; Ideated extensively using Miro and Figma; ran sprints using Asana and JIRA
- Managed career development and team goals including promotions to Engineer Managers and Associate Directors
- Developed training material and trained ~500 employees including certifying future trainers
- Recruited and built a team of 5 analysts and managed Sub-C level client relationships to deliver Quality Management Systems for SaMD, SiMD development including strategy to incorporate AI/ML technologies
MU SIGMA INC (Largest pure play analytics management consulting firm, Unicorn evaluation) New York, NY
Head of Product and Director - Healthcare Oct 2019 – May 2021
Lead India and US based teams of 50 analysts and managed C-level client relationships to deliver descriptive, inquisitive, prescriptive, and predictive insights for a 1.2 B portfolio of products. P&L responsibility for accounts totaling 5M+ revenue
- Led the team creating Angular™ based Market Tracking, Patient Journey and Payor Metrics platform saving the client $6M dollars annually. Managed the complete project lifecycle, including UI/UX, and delivered with 99% client satisfaction; merged data from 6 different databases
- Helped launch subscription video training products for surgeons and ophthalmologists including internal data platforms for customer analysis
- Implemented multiple scalable, re-deployable, distributed modeling solutions on quarterly refreshing real-world data (RWD) using Tableau, Alteryx, PowerBI, MySQL, Python and Excel Macros. Deployed on AWS Redshift & Azure platforms
- Strategized and solved for a requirement to utilize claims data for patient/HCP segmentation by interpolating biomarkers. It involved clearing regulatory and legal hurdles. Utilized algorithms like super learner, neural networks & random forest.
- Spearheaded Reproducible Research initiative for R&D analytics; 26 Jupyter notebooks created for ADS creation, Analyses like Propensity score matching, Cardinality matching and visualization of KM curve and Sankey
- Collaborated in two different initiatives including predicting demand for elective surgeries post COVID-19 and white field optimization using multiple data sources
- Project manager for strategic regulatory assessment of SKUs in the allergy category for global consumer care (OTC) company, resulting in label and ingredient change recommendation of 5 different products
- Crafted and executed strategy to grow engagement by 20% in 1 year, involved interfacing with multiple C-Level and Sub C-level leaders across medical device/Pharma R&D value chain
BAYER CONSUMER CARE Memphis, TN / Toronto, ON / Morristown, NJ
Senior Associate Director – Engineering and Product Mar 2017 – Jun 2019
Built a cross functional team of 8 colleagues for a year and built Class II and Class III Medical Devices with Bluetooth functionality; responsible for go-to-market strategy for multiple B2B and B2C products, received clearance for Medical Devices through 510K and de-novo pathways
- Developed multiple electro mechanical devices with mobile application and created data platforms (UI/UX) for SaaS and subscription services
- Authored technical file and design history file for 3 different medical devices (US and EU), and successfully e-filed
- Researched and analyzed existing patents and technologies; presented new innovative idea for migraine treatment to Local Innovation Steering Committee (LISC); finished prototype and created business plan for a potential market of 3 million customers with $45M revenue potential
- Collaborated on a capability building initiative focused on optimizing/stream-lining assessment, development, launch and maintenance of next-gen digital products. Recommendations approved by sr. management and implemented for allergy, pain and contraceptive franchises
- Advised Canadian business on strategies to improve infrastructure and processes for launching SaMD and Medical Devices compliant with Health Canada standards including CE certification
- Managed multiple external partners and vendors in multiple countries and sites for development activities including Software, Agency (UI/UX, VoC), Mobile App and Firmware Development
PERKIN ELMER, INC. ($2.8B firm focused on innovations/market insights within key health-related industries) Memphis TN
Engineering Manager – Assignment: Merck Consumer Care Jun 2014 – Mar 2017
Performed Failure, Gap-fit, Risk Analyses and ran Design Thinking workshops across multiple teams and projects; resulted in efficient resource allocation for the division; developed and managed Performance Goals, KPIs and reporting
- Led design, method and process validation for a one-of-a-kind automated Allergy Chamber (Class II) to study Human Immunological response to air dispersed pollen; perform comprehensive financial analysis illustrating the ROI
- Appointed to 8 member highly selective, confidential project for new marketing claims; implemented and executed unique methods and proprietary technology to conduct human trials in a controlled exposure chamber
- Project increased division profitability by ~$2M per year
- Hired analysts and established new lab processes and standard operating procedures for 2 key labs; provided training to 100 employees
- Worked on OTC monographs, Rx-OTC switches and 3 new-drug applications in allergy, pain, and skin health categories. Authored technical and regulatory documents to be submitted to FDA, Health Canada and EMA