Resume - Ankit Kush

SUMMARY

An Ivy-League graduate with 18+ years in Fintech, SaaS, Financial Services & Enterprise Cloud AI solutions. Aiming for leadership roles in P&L management, Strategy, Business Development, Client & Account Management and Strategic Partnerships with top MNCs and corporates

“Ankit has been instrumental at Drip Capital, navigating through challenging times to maintain portfolio size and increase profitability. His leadership has been pivotal in launching innovative products and maintaining high team morale." ~ Pushkar Mukewar, Founder & CEO, Drip Capital 

“Ankit is a smart, driven & hard-working profession who embodies the twin traits of rigor in analytical thinking and tenacity in implementation. He has lived up to every expectations that I could have had as senior management.” ~ Arvind Subramanian, CEO, Lodha Group

SKILLS

• Revenue Generation: P&L Management, Customer & Account Management, Sales & Business Development, Partnership Management, Enterprise Delivery
• Leadership: Leading Business & Delivery Teams, Strategic Planning, Financial Analysis, Budgeting & Forecasting, Setting & Exceeding Targets
• Industries: SaaS, Fintech, Financial Services, Cloud AI (GCP, AWS), EdTech, Infrastructure, International Trade

ACHIEVEMENTS

• Achieved record profitability & 176% annual revenue surge at Drip Capital; promoted to Director, Growth
• Deployed growth hacking at Zaggle to blitz-scale SaaS YoY revenues by twenty-fold, achieved GTV of $1.45 billion
• Searce awarded 2020 Google Cloud Partner of the Year during my tenure as Practice Head; highest Sales in Asia
• Led launch of Lodha group’s in-house e-procurement portal, facilitating 3000+ vendors to process $700M/year
• Featured in Inventiva Magazine as the entrepreneur behind Skill Academy's network of 15,000 trainers
• Resolved major bottlenecks in power-plant leading to $70Mn tax exemption from Indian government

EXPERTISE

• Always focused on high level of sales volume, increase in market share, customer satisfaction & profitability
• Strong bent towards goal-oriented strategies, process-driven scaling, and people-centric leadership
• Unmatched track record in conceptualizing & implementing effective ideas, strategies & initiatives
• Excellent in managing & growing business unit while driving initiatives to meet changing customer needs/ expectations while keeping tab on customer and market behaviour
• Versed in Planning monthly primary & secondary numbers, & coordinating with stakeholders for exceeding goals
• Exceptional leadership skills, and a proven track record of delivering impactful results
• Skilled in monitoring actual financial performance against budgeted figures, identifying deviations and working with relevant teams to address discrepancies
• Proficient in conducting market research to identify emerging trends, potential growth opportunities & disruptions
• Expert in overseeing and managing the financial performance of a business unit while ensuring all KPIs of the captive cost centres are met and exceeded
• Proficient at providing directions to operational, product and cross-functional teams while keeping the customer’s perspective at the forefront

WORK EXPERIENCE

NPCI | Head of Fintech Solutions (Apr’24 to Present) | Mumbai, India

Working with Fintechs to build new use cases for UPI, RuPay, IMPS, FastTag, AePS & NACH.

Going beyond our Payment services and helping startups grow their business using our new to market services on Authentication, Analytics, Rewards & AI

DRIP CAPITAL | Director, Growth (Apr’22 to Present) | Mumbai, India

P&L head of Drip Capital’s $1.2Bn annual lending portfolio facilitating global trade for clients across 100+ countries

• Directed operations across India, GCC and Africa via 41-member team to generate 70% of organizational revenues
• Grew global lending portfolio to $1.2 billion with annual revenue amplification by $30M ; Featured Article
• Intensified customer portfolio focus; elevated customer satisfaction (CSAT) to 4.6, share of wallet by 30% and 50% increase in customer engagement
• Streamlined credit policies, achieved NPAs (Non-Performing Assets) reduction by 40% without hindering growth
• Facilitated a $1.1 billion fundraise from partner US banks within a year collaborating with the capital markets team
• Increased business margins by 40% by spearheading pricing increase across the customer portfolio
• Rolled-out Import Finance as part of seamless factoring for Indian markets; grew book to $10M within 2 months
• Introduced a Forex hedging product for exporters, hitting a $1.7M transaction volume and reducing currency risk
• Pioneered the Instant Cash offering, resulting in a fourfold increase in new buyer onboarding into the sales funnel

ZAGGLE | VP & Business Head, EMS (May’21 to Jun’22) | Mumbai, India

Business Head of Zaggle's flagship SaaS product- Expense Management System (EMS)

• Scaled SaaS revenues by 20x within six months through innovative digital marketing and sales strategies
• Achieved $1.45 billion (Rs 12,000 Cr.) Gross Transaction Value (annualized GTV)
• Onboarded 12,500+ users for new accounts with targeted penetration in BFSI, ITES & logistics industries
• Slashed customer acquisition costs by 15% and nurtured a 20% increase in platform usage while managing hyper-growth operations across verticals
• Averted major crisis with crucial enterprise account and reduced user tickets by one-fifth within 45 days
• Spearheaded an expedient hiring drive, rolling out 45+ offers within 3 months across leadership positions
• Formulated company strategy for global expansion & IPO roll-out as part of the CXO board group
• Spearheaded strategic partnerships with VISA, Yatra, EarlySalary and NPCI (Rupay)

SEARCE | Practice Head, Mrktng Analytics(May’20-Apr’21) | Remote

Headed the sales, product and delivery of the Marketing Analytics Practice for India, Gulf & South-East Asia markets

• Played pivotal role in establishing Searce as Google's largest channel partner in Asia for Cloud AI & data solutions
• Established a $1.5M Marketing Analytics Practice in APAC, improving digital footfall and traction for clients by 30%
• Helped customers increase sales conversions & decrease digital lead drop-outs by 25% & 45% respectively
• Spearheaded development of enterprise cloud migration & analytics pipeline of custom AI/ML projects; Article
• Setup & managed Data Lakes & warehouses for 11 global MNCs; handled on avg. 1.2 Bn daily web traffic/account
• Increased cross-sell revenues by 30% by deploying machine learning & AI solutions on GCP & AWS architectures

SKILL ACADEMY | Founder & CEO (Jul’17 to Apr'20) |   Mumbai, India

Built, scaled & strategically sold EdTech SaaS platform aimed at capturing the $20bn corporate training market

• Accelerated platform growth by onboarding & transacting with 15000+ trainers within 15 months
• Recognized by Government of India under the Startup India Scheme for Innovation in Service Delivery
• Monthly platform traffic of 10M+ owing to robust digital marketing & sales campaigns
• Successfully secured paid subscriptions from Marquee clients like Eureka Forbes, UniPhos, NPCIL, GAIL, HPCL, LIC, IOCL, Adlabs Imagica and NTPC; achieved operational profitability
• Created trademarked gamification modules; established market edge & expansion into Gulf & Dubai markets

LODHA GROUP | DGM, Corp. Strategy (Apr’14 to Jul'17) | Mumbai, India

• Spearheaded organization-wise SAP implementation enabling annual order transactions of over $1.5 Bn
• Drove the unification of in-house data into a Hadoop data warehouse; led a Salesforce data architecture overhaul
• Instituted Artificial Intelligence based AI lead ranking model increasing call conversion ratio from 0.8% to 2.1%
• Executed P&L management & land acquisition for portfolio diversification as Executive Assistant to CEO
• Led key vendor alliances for commercial retail site affecting liveability bottleneck for ~1,100 clients
• Revitalised call centre operations, boosting attributed revenue by 18% for a 140-member team in 9 months through KPI and incentive restructuring, IT logic configuration, and project script customization.
• Setup a Luxury Sales team focused on HNI clients Meetings; expanded channel partner distribution outreach by 30%

I have also worked at Engineers India Limited (EIL) and Accenture between 2007 and 2013

EDUCATION & INTERNSHIPS

• MBA – Marketing & Strategy (Apr’13 to Apr’14)      
  • Indian School of Business (ISB), Hyderabad, India                              
• B-Tech – Mechanical Engineering (May’03 to Jun’07)
  • Sardar Vallabhbhai National Institute of Technology (SVNIT), Surat, India
• Internship – Corporate Law & Arbitration (Jun’05 to Jul’05)
  • Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIM-A), Ahmedabad, India                      

CERTIFICATIONS

• LANGUAGES: English (fluent; IELTS Band 8.1), Hindi (native), Gujarati (intermediate), German (Max Mueller certified)
• PRISM Brain Mapping Certified practitioner; Founding Charter member at Toastmaster’s International, BKC chapter
• DATA ANALYTICS: Google Analytics 360 (GAIQ, GTM, Data Studio); SQL & Google Big Query                                                                                         

AWARDS & RECOGNITION

• Visiting faculty at All India Management Association (AIMA) & InsideIIM on AI technology applications in industry
• Awarded by SVNIT as alumni achiever in Tech ecosystem- included as mentor for startups in incubation centre
• Recognized startup mentor at 91 Springboard (co-working space) to guide early-stage seed funded startups
• Founding Charter member of BKC, Mumbai chapter of Toastmaster’s International
• Recognised as 'Disruptive Entrepreneur' by Inventiva Startup Magazine for scaling up Bodhable Thought Leadership Platform with calling cards module

Relevant Links : LinkedIn | X | ankitkush.com