Consulting trusted by portfolio companies of the world’s best VCs and accelerators.
About Afraaz Masters
I'm a startup advisor, entrepreneur and Product Lead.
I characterize myself as an Empathetic Problem Solver and found my calling in the startup ecosystem. I’ve experienced the highs and lows of being a founder and the ZERO to SCALED journey is second nature to me.
Among my noteworthy milestones, I established the product functions and spearheading the growth of BookMyShow.com into an $800M business. I successfully navigated a turnaround and product pivot of Lovelocal.in into a B2B SaaS and B2C hyperlocal marketplace business for local retail. Additionally, I was part of the acquisition journey at two business entities.
I’m a Startup Mentor & Consultant with Antler, Techstars’ Boston and Slidebean's expert network.
Work Highlights
EDUCATION TECHNOLOGY
Rudderly - Founder
Objective:
A platform to help early-career professionals navigate career transitions, by designing and leveraging assessments based on behavioral science, proven frameworks & Ai-based recommendations for career matching & facilitating connections with suitable mentors.
Key results:
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The bootstrapped the first version of the platform in 2 designs and 2 development sprints.
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Grew the mentor community organically to over 200 mentors within the first 3months.
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Grew over 20,000 active users and 780 individuals navigate key career decisions with an 84% success rate within 3-6 months.
RETAIL TECHNOLOGY
Lovelocal (prev. m.Paani) - Head of Product
Objective:
To Conceptualize and drive company pivot from a loyalty program to a hyperlocal e-commerce marketplace. I was tased to rehaul the business and the product from the ground-up by applying with the core principles of empowering the local retailer. I navigated the company through this pivot with a turnaround time of 3 months.
Key results:
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Successfully pivoted the company with the launch of 2 new apps & a hyperlocal marketplace product.
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Raised ~$10M as fresh investment for the new product.
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Increased the retail product usage by 373%, from 118% early in the year, effectively resulting in an increase of 329% in revenue.
RETAIL TECHNOLOGY
LoveLocal (prev. m.Paani) - Head of Product
Objective:
The company's B2B Retailer App relies on the store staff proactively checking ordering via the Lovelocal & processing the order. The SLAs we had set for identifying an order and starting to process it had been set at 15min. Anything above 15min, our customer service team would call the retailer and relay the same order & request them to process it.
During the first month of launching the product we immediately noticed a problem, 84% of orders needed our customer service teams to intervene & for the 37% of all orders processed by the retailer, the incorrect products were being delivered.
Key results:
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Implemented NPL-based order processing, which increased order accuracy by 28%.
TRAVEL TECHNOLOGY
BeatRoute.com - Founding Team Member - Leading Product
Objective:
Beatroute's mission was to create the world's largest Travel Experience Aggregator & Vacation Planner platform meant as a bootstrapping startup we needed to:
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Structure technical & commercial associations with some of the largest event, sightseeing, and experience platforms around the world.
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Unify and create a consistent and easy-to-navigate user experience for our customers. An enormously challenging task given each type of event & provider has a different variable, booking flow.
Key results:
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The largest travel experience aggregator with over 200k experiences in 45 countries.
ENTERTAINMENT TECHNOLOGY
BookMyShow - Business Project Manager
Objective:
BookMyShow - Today, India Entertainment Tech Unicorn. When I took over this role, I had to set key metrics tracking, understand why service levels were suffering and launch new verticles. This evolved into the first-ever ground-up platform revamp.
Key results:
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Improved conversion rates by 12%
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Launching of new business verticals - events & music festivals.
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15% Reduced-drop off on certain key pages, eg. Seat Selection
