Recommendations

Gaurav was our product quarterback at Brilliant, where his talents for design and engineering were awe-inspiring. He re-architected our software, and acted as a change agent in a high-stakes, launch environment. His superpower was his high emotional intelligence. It enabled him to collaborate with a diversity of personalities, giving our team direction and focus. Our team learned so much from Gaurav, and I was especially impressed by his communication skills, ranging from product documentation to media relations. His results were extraordinary, and I’d jump on any opportunity to work with him again.

Gaurav is an incredible product talent – great strategic intuition, natural leadership, a willingness to get close to customers and partners, and the ability to roll up his sleeves and contribute directly to product roadmap, UX design, QA, pilot programs, and business initiatives. Within weeks of joining Brilliant, he had the product/design/engineering processes running like a machine, simplifying our tools and processes, and increasing collaboration. From that foundation, he jumped right into the product experience itself, with particular attention to onboarding and installation, as well as championing the analytics effort. His curiosity and passion are contagious, and he quickly became a favorite among engineers and execs alike. If you get a chance to work with him, I highly recommend it, and hope to do so again soon.

For anyone who want to see what a model Product Manager looks like, get to know Gaurav. At Shopkick, I had the pleasure of watching Gaurav mature in his role from a Senior PM to that of playing the role of a GM for all of Shopkick’s revenue products, within the span of a year. During our time together, I worked closely with Gaurav in various capacities and found him to be a consistently thoughtful, strategic, and widely effective professional, who excels in driving user and business results by collaborating with his design, engineering, sales, and marketing counterparts. Gaurav has the unique ability to consistently ship great work, while also cultivating strong teams, who want to work with him. He is positive, thorough and completely even-keeled.

Gaurav joined shopkick as a Product Lead, but quickly showed that he was capable and interested in doing more. He hit the ground running, launching holiday campaigns in collaboration with the rest of the company to energize user growth and engagement within holiday season. As the lead for the ‘Purchases’ programs, with the team he significantly reduced the receipt submission error rate within the first few months of joining through a series of experiments and systematic analyses. Regardless of what he is working on, Gaurav is always thinking about Users and ROI. He understands that solving for all stakeholders is how the product will succeed long term. His impact by working closely with Sales teams and improving ROI methodology was well received and is an example. I look forward to working with Gaurav again.

Gaurav is just awesome at what he does. He’s competent is every area of product management. From digging into the data to figure out why the metrics don’t line up to expectations or are blowing out earlier expectations, to coming up with novel ways to attack a KPI, I can’t say enough positive things about the time I worked with him.

Gaurav believes that teammates, who are mutually invested and empowered, create products that solve real user needs. I had the pleasure of seeing him put these values in action while collaborating together at Trulia. Over the course of a year, we collaborated on several features including the successful Rental Resume. Gaurav was always willing to discuss design decisions; sharing his insights into the business requirements without dictating design direction. When we wanted to test a couple of directions, he would setup an A/B test and help interpret the results. After observing user research sessions, we’d adjust design direction and make trade-offs together. Sitting with the engineers, we’d all balance the time, cost, and details of bringing a product to market. I appreciate how he makes decisions quickly and with transparency. I hope to have the chance to work with Gaurav again. Any company would benefit from Gaurav’s talent for translating customer and user needs into features, while empowering his teammates to define the exact shape those features will take.

Gaurav is an A+ product manager who has a rare combination of business acumen, analytical and technical prowess, and leadership. I worked on the same team as Gaurav for over a year as his product marketing counterpart. He guided Trulia Rentals through a series of complex projects, some of which went through major roadblocks that we would never have overcome without his vision and execution. He is a wizard with A/B testing and always puts the consumer experience first. Gaurav also goes far beyond his immediate scope of responsibilities as a product lead, able to run advanced data analysis and technical scoping without ever defaulting to a response of “that’s not my job”. Engineers and designers love working with him as he challenges their thinking without micromanaging or limiting their creative capabilities. I highly recommend Gaurav as an expert product lead.

From the last two years that I’ve worked with Gaurav, he’s impressed me from Day One. Not only has he been a pleasure to work with, but he’s smart, analytical, determined, disciplined, and a leader. We worked together on many projects including Hyperlocal where we collaborated on product strategy before it entered the development cycle. He’s also great to laugh with and keeps it engaging and entertaining.