Varika Pinnam
Product Podcast Host
Mountain View, California
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Education
Lists including Varika
Work Experience
Product Marketing Manager | Product Manager | Growth Marketer
2024
* Proficient at creating product strategy, training materials, and collateral to educate customers and internal teams to handle inbound and outbound marketing and enable sales teams * Adept at design, implement and launch of end-to-end integrated marketing campaigns across channels for brand awareness and conversion for customer acquisition * Able to ensure accurate reporting of key marketing metrics and make data-driven decisions to optimize performance and identify areas for improvement * Experience with spearheading comprehensive go-to-market strategies, including product positioning, messaging, and launch plans that align with business objectives and customer needs * Capable of orchestrating cross-functional collaboration between sales, product, and marketing teams to ensure cohesive product narratives and effective sales enablement * Expertise in market research to identify customer personas, journey maps, and competitive landscapes, informing strategic product decisions * Experience developing and executing content marketing initiatives and thought leadership programs to drive product awareness, adoption, and industry recognition * Experience with driving product vision and strategy, creating and maintaining roadmaps that balance short-term wins with long-term goals while adapting to market dynamics * Highly capable of leading end-to-end product lifecycle management, from ideation and requirements gathering to development, launch, and continuous improvement * Can facilitate agile development processes, collaborating closely with engineering teams to ensure successful product delivery and iteration * Skilled at synthesizing customer feedback, market trends, and data analytics to inform feature prioritization and product enhancements that solve real user problems * Proven ability to champion product innovation through discovery sessions, competitive analysis, and evaluation of potential partnerships or integrations to enhance product offerings
2023 - 2024
Strategy Consulting Associate
2023 - 2024
Selected from 12,500 applicants globally (0.2% admission rate) **Emirates Group - Emirates Leisure Retail & MMI** - Developed a comprehensive expansion strategy for Le Clos to drive growth and strengthen its position as a leading premium wines and spirits retailer - Conducted in-depth market research to identify target markets, analyze customer demographics, and evaluate the feasibility of expansion options, including new stores and enhanced digital offerings - Collaborated with key stakeholders from Le Clos and MMI to align the expansion strategy with the company's vision, mission, and long-term goals - Identified and conceptualized innovative digital transformation initiatives and immersive branding experiences to elevate customer engagement and drive brand loyalty in the evolving retail landscape **Dubai Future Foundation** - Built data model for the head of government based on 2500+ data points to assess Dubai’s risk factors by aggregating city statistics and plotting against regional and global benchmarks - Developed project requirements for upcoming initiatives in Dubai with ~$8 million budget by researching market trends, resource and physical constraints, and other cities’ policies - Created strategic vision and execution plan for a 50,000 member youth leadership institute in the Middle East by identifying gaps in competition and user pain points and needs The duration of the program is Sept’23-June’24 and includes strategy consulting placements with Dubai corporations and government entities along with enrollment in PwC Academy. The program is run under the patronage of HH Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum.
2021 - 2024
Volunteer
2021 - 2024
- Supporting student entrepreneurs with managing their projects, conducting demos, writing user stories, facilitating agile development -Collaborating with industry veterans, leveraging their extensive experienced in agile transformation to enhance product management skills - Spearheading the creation of a comprehensive product vision for a platform built on the SOLO network, enabling students and professionals to track internships, courses, certificates, and more - Foster a collaborative environment by working closely with a group of talented students, harnessing their creativity and insights to bring the platform to life - Utilizing agile methodologies and best practices to ensure efficient product development and seamless execution - Translating user requirements into actionable product roadmaps and features
2021 - 2023
Product Marketing Manager
2022 - 2023
• Piloted initiative to launch product offers within the Surface App • Created reporting dashboard to analyze Surface sales and market share across 6 countries • Introduced new SKU at 3 retail partners • Optimized the Windows product experience on Amazon.com to improve conversion • Led collaboration and streamlined processes between 25+ people across 2 cross-functional teams • Served as liason between category, account management, and channel marketing and worked in North America and UK markets, managing several key stakeholders
Product Marketing Manager
2021 - 2022
• Lifted product revenue by 332% by A/B testing campaign optimizations • Exceeded partner revenue projections by 14% by implementing improved on-site experiences • Led initiative to increase software attach by 6 percentage points • Worked on full-funnel marketing campaigns, quarterly marketing plans, marketing budget management, partner strategy and negotiations, and product positioning
2019 - 2023
Co-Founder
2019 - 2023
Co-Founder & Product Manager: Starfish is a customer research and prioritization engine for product managers to find out audience insights and sentiment from what consumers are saying and use this information to prioritize backlogs. (Pivoted from previous entity - IDA which was a platform for women entrepreneurs to connect with mentors and investors) • Created a no-code MVP, website, project scope, architecture, and mockups • Conducted customer discovery and market research with 100s of interviews, surveys, and product demos • Built and managed a team of 20+ engineers using agile methodologies • Won more than $11,000 in grant funding • Created marketing and product collaterial including landing pages, blogs, newsletter, podcast, websites,webinars, product specification documents,sales pages, copy, social media posts, social media graphics,pitch decks, presentations, and product roadmaps
2020 - 2021
Co-Founder
2020 - 2021
Co-Founder & Product Manager: • Owned product vision and executed on roadmap planning, engineering development, usability research, market research, and customer discovery and interviews for health-tech startup • Wrote API specification document detailing use cases and system architecture that led to securing pilot with one of country's leading electronic health record (EHR) systems • Managed startup's development as agile scrum master by creating user stories and sprints, identifying road blocks, and helping team conduct demos
2021 - 2021
Venture Capital Fellow
2021 - 2021
Reviewed inbound startup deals and created project briefs on potential investments
2020 - 2021
Venture Capital Fellow
2020 - 2021
Conducted market research of startups in real estate, fintech, environmental, and fashion industries to inform investment decisions
2020 - 2020
Product Marketing Manager Intern
2020 - 2020
Created administration and tracking plan for $83M of marketing funds by analyzing 3 years of budget and sales data with PowerBI and Excel
2018 - 2019
Marketing Research Intern
2018 - 2019
Data analysis of 6500+ customer survey responses and comparison of museum KPIs across 2 years to provide recommendations to marketing and branding directors. I won an award as Collegiate Marketer of the Year in the entire Dallas Fort-Worth region for my project at the museum.