John Mathew profile photo 1 on Tal

John Mathew

Product VP @ multiple early ventures, ex-Zynga

Bengaluru

5+ years of work experience

Vahan.ai
Sep 202510 mosJun 2026

Bengaluru

Head of Product at Vahan - a YC and Khosla Ventures backed platform connecting India's blue-collar workforce with gig economy clients (Swiggy, Blinkit, Porter, Pronto and others). My work sits at the intersection of AI and labour market infrastructure. I own product, design and analytics across three areas: an AI recruiter stack (voice bot, WhatsApp bot, HITL and orchestration), a Vendor Leader platform that gives small recruitment businesses real business intelligence, and a Blue collar worker sourcing and engagement layer covering financial products and career lifecycle.
Self-Employed
Jun 20241 yr 6 mosNov 2025

Bengaluru, Karnataka, India

Career Break
Jul 202311 mosMay 2024

Bengaluru, Karnataka

Lokal
Feb 20221 yr 5 mosJun 2023

Bengaluru, Karnataka, India

At Lokal, we worked on building a community product for India that brings together local news, classifieds and engagement. Our attempt was to go beyond the metros and build a product that was both powerful and inclusive. I headed the product, design, analytics and user insights teams at Lokal in this role.
Lummo (formerly BukuKas)
May 20201 yr 7 mosNov 2021

Bangalore, India; Jakarta, Indonesia

Worked with a fabulous team to positively impact small and medium businesses in Indonesia by accelerating their journey to digitization. - Headed product across the org for BukuKas and Tokko - Built a truly global product/design team with members across Indonesia, India, Singapore and Hong Kong - Set up the product/design org along with processes and best practices which helped to successfully scale from 3 to 30+ members in less than a year - Came in with a mandate to build retention for 'BukuKas' (bookkeeping for SMEs) which was our sole product at the time - drove incremental retention over 3 quarters to steadily grow our user base - Built and launched 'Tokko' (the shop product for small and medium social sellers) - 1 million+ installs within 2 months of launch - Took Tokko from POC to initial PMF and monetization within 8 months of launch - Launched BukuKas Pay which is the payments offering in the BukuKas app and drove it to $1 Billion+ annualized TPV (150K+ users) in just 4 months from launch

John’s AI Stack

claude code
claude code
claude
claude
gemini
gemini
DSPy
DSPy
Gamma
Gamma
LiteLLM
LiteLLM

Education

Indian Institute of Management, Kozhikode

MBA (PGDM), Marketing

Indian Institute of Management, Kozhikode

20102 yrs2012
University of Mumbai

Bachelor of Engineering (BE), Electronics and Telecommunication

University of Mumbai

20034 yrs2007

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Headline

Product VP @ multiple early ventures, ex-Zynga

About

Product Leader with more than a decade’s experience across both mass-consumer and B2B SaaS businesses. Extremely passionate about building consumer products. Enjoy working on technology disruptions that change the way people build and consume products. Proponent of inclusive product management which takes both customers and the team together while building a business viable product.

Location

Bengaluru

AI stack

claude code

claude

gemini

DSPy

Gamma

LiteLLM

Work experience

Head of Product at Vahan.ai, Sep 2025 - Jun 2026 · 10 mos, Bengaluru, Head of Product at Vahan - a YC and Khosla Ventures backed platform connecting India's blue-collar workforce with gig economy clients (Swiggy, Blinkit, Porter, Pronto and others). My work sits at the intersection of AI and labour market infrastructure. I own product, design and analytics across three areas: an AI recruiter stack (voice bot, WhatsApp bot, HITL and orchestration), a Vendor Leader platform that gives small recruitment businesses real business intelligence, and a Blue collar worker sourcing and engagement layer covering financial products and career lifecycle.

AI Experiments, Product Consulting at Self-Employed, Jun 2024 - Nov 2025 · 1 yr 6 mos, Bengaluru, Karnataka, India

Caregiving at Career Break, Jul 2023 - May 2024 · 11 mos, Bengaluru, Karnataka

VP of Product at Lokal, Feb 2022 - Jun 2023 · 1 yr 5 mos, Bengaluru, Karnataka, India, At Lokal, we worked on building a community product for India that brings together local news, classifieds and engagement. Our attempt was to go beyond the metros and build a product that was both powerful and inclusive. I headed the product, design, analytics and user insights teams at Lokal in this role.

Sr VP of Product at Lummo (formerly BukuKas), May 2020 - Nov 2021 · 1 yr 7 mos, Bangalore, India; Jakarta, Indonesia, Worked with a fabulous team to positively impact small and medium businesses in Indonesia by accelerating their journey to digitization. - Headed product across the org for BukuKas and Tokko - Built a truly global product/design team with members across Indonesia, India, Singapore and Hong Kong - Set up the product/design org along with processes and best practices which helped to successfully scale from 3 to 30+ members in less than a year - Came in with a mandate to build retention for 'BukuKas' (bookkeeping for SMEs) which was our sole product at the time - drove incremental retention over 3 quarters to steadily grow our user base - Built and launched 'Tokko' (the shop product for small and medium social sellers) - 1 million+ installs within 2 months of launch - Took Tokko from POC to initial PMF and monetization within 8 months of launch - Launched BukuKas Pay which is the payments offering in the BukuKas app and drove it to $1 Billion+ annualized TPV (150K+ users) in just 4 months from launch

Education

MBA (PGDM), Marketing, Indian Institute of Management, Kozhikode

Bachelor of Engineering (BE), Electronics and Telecommunication, University of Mumbai