Headline

Head of Product & Growth | AI, Fintech, Consumer & B2B | Scaled BlinkX (JM Financial) from 0 to 100K users | Ex-founder in AI SaaS, Edtech and dev tools | IIT Roorkee, IIM Shillong | Next: an AI-first team in Bengaluru

About

I am an entrepreneur obsessed with product and growth. I have been a founder thrice and I was on the founding team of BlinkX, JM Financial's broking app, which went from 0 to 100K users, and rose to Deputy VP leading brand growth, product innovation and partnerships. At BlinkX (2022 to 2024): • Joined as a founding team member, rose to Deputy VP • Wrote the business plan for the digital lending vertical, launched it, and ran product for digital loan against shares • Built the JM Financial x Google Cloud co-development partnership, plus partnerships with Google, Adobe and 2 large banks. • Ran the innovation program, including GenAI projects like a hyper-personalised nudge engine • Led brand, growth and digital marketing • In early days, led recruitment and hired 100+ full-time staff and interns As a founder: • CUNE AI: AI workspace for US commercial P&C underwriters. Recruited an ex-Swiss Re SVP as co-founder, closed our first paying US customer, ran an institutional seed raise. We wound it down in 2026. • Reticle: co-founded an open-source verification layer for AI coding agents. • Electura (2020-22): B2C edtech SaaS for private tutors; 3,000+ users in 2 months. In short: I've built product, sold it to a US buyer, pitched institutional investors and recruited senior talent. I think about distribution and revenue from the first spec, not after launch. Earlier: • Indian Oil (2018 to 2022): strategy and planning in the Director (Marketing) office; managed ~50% of country's Oil & Gas demand. Worked closely with the Ministry, economic advisors and chairman's office. Managed executive board operations of a Fortune200 company at the age of 25. Always interested in connecting with people. One can always reach me at hardikagarwal94@gmail.com or DM me.

Location

Bengaluru

AI stack

claude code

hugging face

langgraph

notion

openai

HeyGen

Work experience

Co-Founder & CEO at Reticle, Jul 2026 - Oct 2026 · 4 mos, Bengaluru, Karnataka, India, Reticle is an open-source verification layer for AI coding agents. Agents say "done" while things are still broken underneath; Reticle makes them prove the work runs. • Grew the project to 1.3K+ GitHub stars and 600K+ npm downloads in 4 months • Led go-to-market and growth: launches, founder-to-founder engagement on LinkedIn and X, community events, and an offline campaign in Bengaluru office lifts • Published reproducible benchmarks: caught 86 of 88 seeded bugs vs 60 for Playwright MCP • Built as part of Entrepreneur First (EF)

Co-Founder & CEO at Cune, Jan 2025 - Jun 2026 · 1 yr 6 mos, Boston, Massachusetts, United States, • Built an AI-native agentic underwriting workspace for US commercial P&C insurance, replacing work done by BPOs and GCCs; cut the time to prepare an underwriting-ready packet from 48 hours to under 20 minutes per complex submission. • Shipped agentic workflows for SOV extraction, financial statement analysis, risk assessment, policy comparison and natural-language chat over any submission document; automated triage of the ~25% of submissions that should never reach an underwriter, with auto-emails to brokers for missing documents. • Owned product from discovery to delivery: user research with active underwriters, feature specs and screen-level UX for the CTO, synthetic test datasets, and all user acceptance testing before each release. • Closed the first enterprise customer, signed two more pilots, and built a pipeline of 15+ conversations with Chief Underwriting Officers at US specialty carriers; signed two BPOs as channel partners.

Deputy Vice President and Head - Brand Growth, Product Innovation and Strategic Partnerships at blinkX, May 2024 - Dec 2024 · 8 mos, Mumbai, Maharashtra, India, The go-to guy at BlinkX (by JM Financial). Joined very early as one of their first few team members. Operated with a founder's mindset and built the company from the ground up, overlooking and leading multi-functional responsibilities such as Product management, Innovations, Strategic Partnerships & Projects, Brand, Growth, Hiring, Campus Relations, and establishing various verticals and processes that were necessary to grow fast. Started from 0 and worked with every function to reach 100K users. Some of the key projects I led at BlinkX since 2022: 1. Product Development & Innovation • Defined the digital lending business plan and started a new vertical • Product Head - Digital loan against shares product • Established the Innovation Program, with workshops and experimental projects to drive innovation as a culture in the organization • Initiated AI and innovation projects such as the Hyper-personalized Nudge Engine and other services built using GenAI. 2. Strategic Partnerships • Built a strategic partnership Between JM Financial and Google Cloud to co-develop new products. Cultivated partnerships with Google Play, Google Marketing, Moengage, VWO, Niveus etc. to drive growth and innovation. • Launched a new business division, leveraging BlinkX’s digital and brick-and-mortar FS broking capabilities to create a new service and revenue stream in partnership with other large financial institutions in India. 3. Brand, Marketing & Growth • Led the Brand and Growth vertical, focusing on brand creation, social media, influencer, and guerrilla marketing campaigns. • Estd. the digital marketing division and integrated automation tools to optimize campaign management and lead generation. • Implemented product analytics & CRO strategies to enhance user experience and business growth. 4. Talent Acquisition • Headed campus hiring drives, hired 100+ full-time employees & interns in 2 years. • Directed lateral hiring initiatives, strengthening a diverse & capable workforce.

Founding Team Member and Head - Product, Innovation and Partnerships at blinkX, Oct 2022 - May 2024 · 1 yr 8 mos, Mumbai, Maharashtra, India

Founder and CEO at Electura, May 2020 - Feb 2022 · 1 yr 10 mos, Mumbai, Maharashtra, India, Founded a start-up focused on digitizing the unorganized private tutoring segment by providing all-in-one agnostic Android & Web solution (B2C SaaS) to create a digital classroom and enable growing need of beyond classroom connect

Education

Bachelor of Technology (BTech), Electronics and Communications Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee

Master of Business Administration (MBA), Marketing and Strategy, Indian Institute of Management, Shillong