Headline

Senior Manager, Marketplace New Business Development at Target | Marketplace Strategy · Category Management · P&L | $350M GMV signed · 0→1 marketplace to $20M | Engineer who builds the tools his team runs on

About

I lead partner acquisition for Target Plus, Target's invite-only marketplace, across three business units with ten Business Development Managers. I also write the software my team runs on. That combination was not planned. I trained as an engineer at IIEST Shibpur and started at PwC, leading eight analysts building the audit platform used across the firm's network firms. Then IIM Ranchi, and four industries on the commercial side: → Target Plus. Partners my team has signed now contribute $350M in annualised incremental GMV. We cut partner lead time from 45 days to 20 by moving to division-level ownership, stage-gating the funnel with named owners and SLAs, and automating the research and enrichment work. → Magicbricks. Launched India's first Home Interiors marketplace from zero to $20M annual GMV with a 100+ brand network, under full P&L ownership and a 15-person org. Designed the structure, hired the first Bangalore team, expanded into two more cities. → Flipkart. A $40M Sports Footwear portfolio across Skechers, ASICS and Converse. → Capital Foods (Ching's Secret). Owned the Ching's Soup P&L, $12M annual revenue at 42% gross margin, holding margin through the FY22 input-cost cycle. Before that, a year in the CEO's office through the company's growth from $40M to $120M. The prospecting engine and the pipeline intelligence layer my team runs on were both written personally, on OpenAI Codex. Outside work I ship products end to end: a word game, an offline-first cricket scoring app, a league platform with a live auction room, and a Shopify storefront built to learn how commerce operations actually work. I write about using AI to get more done at How to AI? What I am actually good at: taking a marketplace from zero, or from messy to compounding. The brand network, the unit economics, the operating rhythm, and increasingly the tooling underneath it. Based in Bengaluru. Always happy to talk marketplaces.

Location

Bengaluru

AI stack

antigravity

claude code

claude

grok

Work experience

Senior Manager, Marketplace New Business Development at Target, May 2025 - Present · 1 yr 6 mos, Bengaluru, Karnataka, India, Lead partner acquisition for Target Plus, Target Corporation's invite-only marketplace, across Home, Apparel & Accessories and Hardlines, with 10 Business Development Managers carrying partner-count and GMV targets. Own sourcing strategy, contracting and the leadership operating review. • Signed partners now contributing $350M in annualised incremental GMV, at a sustained 3 signings per Business Development Manager per month • Run the India half of a geographically split New Business Development org, co-developing the sourcing process, partner-facing product enhancements and pitch collateral with the US team, and contracting US-headquartered brands from India • Cut partner lead time from 45 to 20 days by moving the team to division-level ownership, stage-gating the funnel with named owners and SLAs, and automating research and contact enrichment • Rebuilt the team's go-to-market playbook rather than waiting on an engineering queue: sourced target lists from SmartScout, ran enrichment and outreach automation through Apollo, and wired the two together with OpenAI Codex • Closed the majority of priority assortment gaps across three business units and more than doubled qualified-lead-to-signed conversion by tightening the qualification bar against merchant-defined gaps • Built a CRM intelligence layer, also on Codex, that flags which partners need attention before they stall

Senior Category Manager at Flipkart, Dec 2024 - May 2025 · 6 mos, Bengaluru, Karnataka, India, Managed a $40M annual Sports Footwear portfolio in the Fashion vertical, across three key brand accounts: Skechers, ASICS and Converse.

Senior Manager, Strategy & Special Initiatives at Magicbricks, Jul 2022 - Dec 2024 · 2 yrs 6 mos, Bengaluru, Karnataka, India, Launched and ran India's first Home Interiors marketplace as a 0→1 business with end-to-end P&L ownership, across three cities with 15 direct reports. • Built a network of 100+ interior brands driving $20M annual GMV • Designed the org structure, hired and led the first Bangalore sales team, scaling from zero to 100 orders and installing the review mechanisms and SOPs to sustain it • Expanded into two new cities, owning GTM end to end: city-wide brand network, resource planning and launch sequencing • Built the largest expo in the Home Interiors industry, marketed across print, radio and social; four expos a year contributed 30% of revenue • Owned the product roadmap for the online customer journey from registration through to scheduling brand visits, including landing pages, SEO and lead generation

Brand Manager, Ching's Soup at Capital Foods Private Limited, Dec 2020 - Jun 2022 · 1 yr 7 mos, Mumbai, Maharashtra, India, Owned the Ching's Soup brand P&L across 18 SKUs, general and modern trade. • $12M annual revenue at 42% gross margin and 13% EBITDA, holding margin through the FY22 input-cost cycle by launching premium variants off consumer research and growing them to 20% of the mix • Took store coverage for the brand from under 40K to 80K+ outlets, across general and modern trade • Owned the demand signal for a seasonal category, forecasting at 77% accuracy to hold 95%+ OTIF and sub-2% zero-stock incidence • Owned the brand calendar across consumer activation, product rollouts, in-store promotion and digital; moved spend from advertising into trade and visibility, and declined a channel whose economics did not work • Ran the Ching's Chatora Challenge with 10 macro and 350 micro influencers: 50M+ views, 135M+ impressions, 10M+ engagements and 2,000+ entries

Program Manager, CEO's Office at Capital Foods Private Limited, Nov 2019 - Dec 2020 · 1 yr 2 mos, On-site, Central execution point from the CEO's office across technology, product, distribution and people, through the company's growth from $40M to $120M. • Drove 2.5x growth in monthly sales by scaling the company's retail network from 70K to 0.3M outlets • Built a tele-sales channel from scratch to $3M annual revenue • Lifted divisional forecast accuracy to 75% with a new forecasting tool, and monthly productivity 75% across 25K+ supermarkets with a Range Selling programme • Implemented Sales Force Automation for 800+ users, giving the business its first visibility into on-ground activity • Launched Sprinklers, Noodles and Soup with full GTM plans, reaching 50K+ retail outlets

Senior Strategy Manager, Term Insurance at ICICI Prudential Life Insurance Company Limited, May 2019 - Nov 2019 · 7 mos, Mumbai Metropolitan Region, Designed the flow to sell term insurance over the counter through bank tellers, issuing a policy in three clicks. Conceptualised the supporting mobile application, which cut quote turnaround time by 30% and let the sales team respond to customer enquiries on the spot.

Education

PGDM, Indian Institute of Management, Ranchi

Bachelor of Engineering (B.E.), Information Technology, Indian Institute of Engineering Science and Technology (IIEST), Shibpur