Rakesh Reddy Nallagangula
Product Manager @ Tekion Corp | PGDM-IB, Master in Management
Bengaluru
6+ years of work experience
Mar 20251 yr 8 mosPresent
Bengaluru, Karnataka, India
PRICING PLATFORM — US & Canada Market
Owned pricing product strategy for Tekion's ARC (Automotive Retail Cloud) platform serving Cadillac and Honda Acura — focused on quote accuracy, tax compliance, and conversion optimization.
● Delivered accelerated regulatory response when Washington state announced a new luxury tax on vehicles over $100K with a Jan 1st enforcement date — discovered the requirement on Dec 15th with most of the team on holiday leave. Owned end-to-end implementation single-handedly: tax calculation logic, UX updates, downstream changes in e-contracting, recap, accounting, reporting — shipped via production hotfix in 7 days, ensuring 100% compliance across 60+ WA dealerships on day one with zero post-launch defects
● Implemented R2 (Rate & Residual) intelligence at the application layer after production analysis revealed that rate data was being silently dropped on ~8% of live deals — reduced data loss by 90%, preventing an estimated $500K+ in annual pricing errors (calculated from no. of deals × average deal size × error frequency × affected dealership count)
● Integrated vehicle-level attributes (weight, type, new/used status) into the Taxes API to close a critical gap where tax calculations were ignoring vehicle-specific tax rules — states that levy taxes differently based on these attributes were returning incorrect tax amounts, causing dealer-side contract failures & funding issues. Fix reduced tax-related dealer support tickets by 45% across 800+ dealerships in all 50 US states
● Redesigned the quote generation workflow on consumer-facing OEM site (cadillac.com) after analyzing user drop-off data and identifying that 30%+ of quote sessions were abandoned due to high load times and unclear pricing breakdowns — reduced quote latency by 35%, directly improving quote completion rates and with downstream improvements in dealer lead-to-sale conversions across 200+ GM dealers
Apr 20232 yrsMar 2025
India
CALC ENGINE MIGRATION — Platform Infrastructure (Cost Optimization)
Led the product strategy and execution for migrating 500+ ARC dealerships from a third-party calculation engine to Tekion's in-house calc engine — the largest infrastructure migration in Tekion ARC's history.
● Drove the business case for in-house migration by quantifying $1M+ in annual third-party licensing costs (Potential $2.1M from FY 28) — secured executive buy-in over the alternative (renegotiating the vendor contract) by demonstrating long-term platform control and faster iteration capability
● Designed a phased rollout (pilot 10 dealers → regional 150 → national 500+) with built-in rollback triggers — completed migration 3 weeks ahead of schedule with <0.5% dealer escalation rate, despite discovering mid-rollout that 12 state-specific tax rules were incorrectly mapped, requiring a 48-hour tax module re-architecture
● Conducted 20+ dealer discovery sessions that revealed pricing accuracy — not speed — was the #1 pain point; pivoted the FY24 pricing roadmap to prioritize accuracy-first features, deprioritizing 3 planned speed optimizations
Outcome: This migration gave Tekion full ownership of its pricing calculation stack — enabling faster iteration cycles (feature release time reduced from 6 weeks → 2 weeks) and unlocking customize calc logic per OEM & Lender.
Nov 20222 yrsOct 2024
India
Founding & Core Team – Headed Product & Finance (Part-time, alongside MBA & Tekion)
Dual-sided fitness marketplace connecting gyms with fitness enthusiasts Dec 2022 – Dec 2023
● Launched a dual-sided marketplace from 0→1 — tackled the cold-start problem on both sides: onboarded 40+ gym partners through direct outreach and pricing experimentation (tested 3 commission models before finding product-market fit), drove 2,000+ consumer sign-ups in first 3 months
● Achieved 22% Month-1 retention by identifying through cohort analysis that users who booked within 48 hours of sign-up retained at 3x the rate — redesigned onboarding to push first-booking within the activation window using personalized gym recommendations and time-limited offers
● Defined product roadmap using RICE framework, making explicit trade-offs: prioritized gym discovery, booking flow, and payments for v1.0 while descoping social features and review systems — shipped in 8 weeks with 12 core features
Jun 20222 yrs 2 mosJul 2024
India
Founding & Core Team – Headed Product & Finance (Part-time, alongside MBA)
Social platform connecting users through shared activities & interest-based interactions Jul 2022 – Apr 2023
● Led product definition for Secret Chat and Activity Tab features, collaborating with 2 designers and 4 engineers — drove a 28% increase in daily active engagement among 10K+ users within 6 weeks of launch by reducing average taps-to-first-interaction from 5 → 2
● Supported Founder in pre-seed funding pitch by building product demo flows, competitive landscape analysis, and traction dashboards — contributed to securing funding that enabled team expansion from 4 → 12 members within 6 months
Dec 20181 yr 7 mosJun 2020
banglore
Built automated revenue analytics using SQL and SSAS for Infosys Validation Solutions, reducing manual reporting effort by 60% (from 20 hours/week → 8 hours/week) — recognized by VP of IVS, solution adopted across 4 business lines saving ~100 analyst-hours/quarter
Aug 20185 mosDec 2018
India
Rakesh’s AI Stack
Education
PGDM-IB, Business
Management Development Institute, Gurgaon
20212 yrs2023
Master In Management, Entrepreneurship/Entrepreneurial Studies
ESCP
20212 yrs2023
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