Richa Gupta

🚀 ixigo rewards its team! The travel booking platform has granted 2.12 lakh ESOPs worth ₹3.79 crore under four different schemes, empowering employees with ownership and aligning them with long-term success. 💼📈 This comes right after a strong Q4 where ixigo saw a 72% revenue jump and 2.2x profit growth! 🔥 ✨ A big move towards building a growth-driven, people-first culture. 🔗 Read more:https://lnkd.in/gvrfGG29 #ixigo #ESOP #StartupNews #EmployeeBenefits #TravelTech #BusinessNews #ESOPIndia #StockOptions #TechStartups #IndianStartups

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It’s unfortunate that stories like this drown out the genuine efforts of founders building honest AI solutions that solve real-world problems. The noise can be overwhelming, but the antidote is simple: Build quietly, deliver consistently, and let real results speak louder than press releases. Hype is temporary. Integrity isn't. Shortcuts always catch up—and the cost is real. It’s time tech chose ethics over ambition.

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SALES NAVIGATOR ISN’T AMAZON PRIME You don’t click ‘add to cart’ and check out. So manu people see Sales Navigator as a shortcut to sales. It’s not about pushing transactions, you can got the ATM for that. Sales Navigator isabout building relationships at scale. I once met a CEO who thought 5 leads = 5 deals. Wrong mindset. The real power of Sales Navigator is in building trust, credibility, and long-term opportunity. Relationships > transactions. Always. What about you? Do you see Sales Navigator as a transaction tool? Or, do you see it as a relationship tool? Drop your thoughts in the comments. #DigitalSwagger #SalesNavigator #SocialSelling Shayna Rattler Davis Janell Cannedy, MBA, BRMP Quyen Nguyen Tim Wood Joel Fleet

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125+ API integrations. 1600+ white-label partners. 40,000+ active agents across India. Most OTAs are still integrating flights, hotels, and buses through fragmented suppliers, multiple credentials, and disconnected booking flows. Fragmented tech stack means lower cross-sell conversion, higher operational friction, and margin leakage. The next growth lever for any serious OTA is not just more inventory. It is smarter aggregation. A unified Flight + Hotel + Bus Combo API changes the economics of distribution. Single integration. Real-time availability. Centralized markup control. One wallet logic. One CRM sync layer. Instead of pushing standalone flight bookings, you create natural cross-sell pathways. A flight search converts into a bundled journey. A bus route triggers hotel discovery. Average order value increases without increasing acquisition cost. For B2B OTAs and travel portals, this directly improves: • Revenue per user • Repeat booking frequency • Agent stickiness • Operational control The real advantage is not just product depth. It is infrastructure simplicity. Fewer integrations mean faster deployment cycles and lower tech maintenance overhead. At Flyshop, we provide a scalable Combo API designed for OTAs looking to expand multi-product distribution without overcomplicating their architecture. If you are planning to upgrade your travel API stack or launch a multi-product OTA model, let’s evaluate the commercial fit. Connect with me directly at +917861972008. #TravelAPI #OTA #TravelTechnology

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Your opener is leverage. Get it wrong, and the room tunes out. For founders, here are 7 ways to open so people 𝘭𝘪𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘯 𝘧𝘪𝘳𝘴𝘵, 𝘣𝘶𝘺 𝘭𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘳: 1. 𝗜𝗻𝘃𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗿𝘀 → 𝗟𝗲𝗮𝗱 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝘀𝗰𝗮𝗹𝗲    ➝ “Here’s how we turn $1 into $10.”     2. 𝗖𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗺𝗲𝗿𝘀 → 𝗣𝗮𝗶𝗻𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘀𝘁𝗿𝘂𝗴𝗴𝗹𝗲    ➝ “Remember losing half a day chasing this problem?”     3. 𝗧𝗲𝗮𝗺 → 𝗧𝗲𝗹𝗹 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗼𝗿𝗶𝗴𝗶𝗻    ➝ “This company started because I was sick of X…”     4. 𝗣𝗮𝗿𝘁𝗻𝗲𝗿𝘀 → 𝗦𝗵𝗼𝘄 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘂𝗽𝘀𝗶𝗱𝗲    ➝ “If this works, you capture the market before anyone else.”     5. 𝗠𝗲𝗱𝗶𝗮 → 𝗠𝗮𝗸𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗰𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗴𝗼𝗿𝘆 𝗰𝗹𝗮𝗶𝗺    ➝ “This isn’t another tool. It’s the death of [old way].”     6. 𝗧𝗮𝗹𝗲𝗻𝘁 → 𝗦𝗽𝗲𝗮𝗸 𝘁𝗼 𝗶𝗱𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝘁𝘆    ➝ “We’re building what we wish existed when we started.”     7. 𝗣𝗲𝗲𝗿𝘀/𝗙𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀 → 𝗦𝗵𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘀𝗰𝗮𝗿    ➝ “Last year I nearly lost it all. Here’s why that mattered.”     The way you begin sets the weight of the whole conversation. Which one do you need next? 📌 Save this if you pitch, hire, or sell 👤 Follow Jay Mount for frameworks that scale with founders

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"The driver asked me to cancel and take the ride offline." > We're all building "user-first" products. But building for India, a nuance that rarely gets attention: > What users do != what users say, or in the fancy PM language, the noise associated with implicit v/s explicit user signals. I've seen this 9/10 times around me: 1. Cancelling a cab? Pick: "The driver asked me to cancel and go offline" - whether or not it happened. 2. Didn't like the food - want a refund from Swiggy? Select: "The food was raw/uncooked" - fastest route to full refund. 3. Didn't like the crochet top you just ordered? Choose: "Product doesn't fit" - less explanation, faster approval. > In India, the intent behind the input is often to minimise perceived friction, not to share actual feedback. They fill them strategically, or the easiest way out, or to avoid penalties. > And unfortunately, these are loss-making use-cases for startups, and everyone is behind optimising these, whereas the core problem might be different. We gospel this truth in dashboards, end up misreading our users, and shipping the wrong fixes. TLDR; if you're someone or know someone close to a better solve on these noisy signals, feel free to comment or DM! 😃 Listen to the noise - sometimes it's just around you. Amazon Flipkart Myntra Meesho Swiggy Zomato Zepto Ola Uber Rapido Shashwat Singh

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We've spent 18 Months building what every travel agency can't afford. Travel companies have teams of engineers dedicated to one thing: knowing which airline, hotel, and route is best for each customer. Meanwhile, 3,00,000 independent travel agencies across India are making the same decisions blind. 🎯 That changes now. What's the ONE thing you wish you knew before booking a flight for a customer?

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The cab ride that got me thinking about data-driven decisions…🤔 Yesterday, I got into a cab. The ride was supposed to take about an hour. As we moved, I caught myself thinking: “What if someone could learn a skill, like data analytics, for just one hour a day, consistently, for 30 days?” 🧐 Not binge-learning. Not burning out. Just one honest hour. Most people don’t fail at learning or consistency because they’re incapable. They fail because they overestimate intensity and underestimate direction. In that cab, the driver didn’t rush. He didn’t take all routes at once. He followed one road, steadily, until we arrived. And that’s how mastery works. But then I remembered how people approach learning. They open YouTube, see 200 videos titled “Learn data analytics in 10 hours”, panic… 😨 and close the app without watching anything. Not because they’re lazy. Because clarity disappeared the moment options multiplied. So, as a data analytics consultant, here’s a simple way I’ve seen work (and now recommend): 1. Pick one skill. Not everything. Just one. 2. Let AI create the map. Ask ChatGPT to design a 30-day plan with 30–60 minutes daily, broken into small, doable tasks. 3. Simplify it. Tell it to remove fluff and keep it beginner friendly. 4. Put it on your calendar. If it’s not scheduled, it’s just an intention. And that’s it. AI helps reduce chaos. But structure, mentorship, and community help you stay. That’s why platforms like Beez Academy exist, not just to teach tools, but to guide, clarify, and hold learners through the process and after it. Because learning shouldn’t feel like wandering. It should feel like a journey with a map. Just like that cab ride 😌 #LinkedIn #Learning #AI #Progress

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The "Service Revenue" Trap AI founders bootstrapping with service projects. I see this pattern in 1 out of 3 Indian AI pitch decks right now. You claim $500k ARR (Annual Recurring Revenue). The investors get excited. Then they open the Data Room. What do we find? $100k is true software subscription. $400k is "implementation fees," "custom model training," and "consulting." Founders: Stop disguising service revenue as product revenue. Service revenue is linear (humans selling time). Product revenue is exponential (code selling itself). Investors value service revenue at 1x-2x, We value product revenue at 10x-20x. If you are funding your product build with service work, that’s smart bootstrapping. I respect that. But be honest about it in the Seed pitch. "We are a product company fuelled by service cash flow" is a strong narrative. "We are a high-growth SaaS company" (with 80% service revenue) is a lie that kills the deal in week 2 of diligence.

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🚀 Chiratae Ventures 📍 Offices: Bengaluru (India) 📈 Investment Stages: Seed, Series A, Series B 🧠 Focus: Mobility, SaaS, EdTech, Commerce 2.0, Healthtech, Climate tech, Fintech, Agri tech, B2B, Deep tech 📖 India's premier technology venture capital firm managing over $1.3 billion in assets. Chiratae Ventures focuses on growth-stage startups and has a portfolio including several unicorns. The firm employs a thesis-driven approach, targeting untapped market opportunities. 🗓️ Founded: 2006 💼 Portfolio: Flipkart, Myntra, FirstCry 🌐 Website: https://www.chiratae.com 🔎 More at projectstartups.com #venturecapital #Mobility #SaaS #vcfunding #startup #vc

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Growth rarely arrives with a clear roadmap. It shows up as more meetings, new tasks, and tighter timelines. Your move? ☑️ Consolidate ☑️ Streamline ☑️ Automate The best opportunities aren’t handed to you. They’re built by people who optimize. If a process feels cumbersome, iterate until it’s easy. I look for ways to move faster. Not just for speed, but to make space for more meaningful work. #OperationalExcellence #ProcessImprovement #OptimizeEverything

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For Shilpa Ranganathan, Chief Product Officer of Expedia Group, product leadership isn’t about shiny tech – it’s about trust, empathy, and making travel feel effortless. https://bit.ly/3GbGNK1

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Product Managers are you scared of engineering focused rounds in PM hiring? With the advent of AI and the need to become a full stack PM, appreciation of engg systems and design will become even more important. However, most PMs don't get it. Even today in engineering focused rounds for PMs or when asked to solve a tech first product design problem/assignment, most PMs struggle - Eg. You have been asked to pick an API that you love and find ways to improve it? or you have been asked to improve a cloud based Integrated development environment (IDE) for developers? What do most of the PMs do? They immediately start throwing jargons - security, scalability, CRUD operations etc. or in the case of IDE for cloud developers will jump randomly to better code completion, debugging capabilities etc.? You are doing it all wrong. Here is the problem with most product managers - a. they get misled by the question just because it seems like a tech first product question b. most of them are not confident on tech parts in any case. Here is where you got tricked. Just because the product is tech first doesn't mean that your problem solving strategy changes. Ultimately, the product exists to solve a consumer problem and solve business goals for the organization. Let's say you have to improve an API for video conferencing The way you should go about solving this problem is looking from the lens of the consumer which just happens to be a developer in this case and visualize the process flow - refer my post in the featured section on how to visualize the process flow. So what are the steps - 1.Discovery - How does a developer discover the right API for his use case? Does he need a simple rest API or does he need more integrated support as a React SDK or an Android SDK and how easy it is for the user to find it. 2. Evaluation - What tooling has been provided to the developer to quickly evaluate the API for his use cases? Does the API come with preset defaults eg. I want to build an online classroom with the video API can I just use some presets which helps me quickly evaluate. 3. Onboarding - How do I quickly start? Are there quick start guides? Sample apps to play with. Documentation segmented by popular use cases 4. Implementation - How easy it is to get test access keys or test out a sample implementation. 5.Support - Integration support, test sandboxes, variety of presets to simulate high bandwidth, low bandwidth environments. So you see you should still follow the traditional structure of users, user journey, pain points & you will be able to come up with good solutions that 99% of PMs cannot. Stick to the process and you will be able to come up with good answers. Follow me for high quality content https://lnkd.in/gHweK_q7 AND also here https://lnkd.in/ggUKftFq Also grab my product assignments playbook, 19 real product cases, all successful submissions, real offers, ~258 pages of content. ***Grab it now**** - https://lnkd.in/gHzyN-Xc

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****With the advent of AI tech challenged PMs will soon become history. However, most intro to tech for product managers ends at a narrow definition of APIs which is - API allows a website or an app to request information from the server.**** So, a typical example given is a website let's say Airbnb or Booking retrieving the information it shows from a server using APIs. Now let's follow the simple Socratic way of reasoning to understand what truly is a client. :) Rather than rote memorizing neatly defined boxes without giving a second thought let's apply simple logic based reasoning. For this let's take a simple example - 1. Imagine you are on a travel booking website and trying to book flights. So the website is the client and the travel booking platform (TBF for future reference) has a server from where it is fetching flight information to show to the user. 2. But hang on the TBF itself can't show flight information and generate flight tickets(PNRs) and must connect with an airline system to actually be able to block seats and generate tickets/PNRs. 3. This means the TBF has to request information from the airline reservation system server to be able to see the status of blocked seat and whether payment was received successfully by the airline reservation system and PNR was generated. 4. This then means that TBF is actually a client for the airline reservation system. 5. So, while TBF is a server for the website it is actually a client for the airline reservation system. To help you visualize this more clearly please refer the attached diagram. What this tells you is that a client is not necessarily a website or a mobile app, it is any software system that is requesting information from another software system. A software system could be acting as a server for a website/mobile app but could be requesting information from another system as a client. There are no neat little boxes here as peddled by misinformed PMs/PM influencers. In fact, the situation described above is a very common situation in building products and is called a server to server integration (S2S). One backend system acting as a client and requesting information over APIs from another system. It is not necessarily a website or app requesting information over APIs from a server. APIs are required for any 2 software systems to interact. My Playbook - https://lnkd.in/gHzyN-Xc Follow me https://lnkd.in/gHweK_q7 AND https://lnkd.in/ggUKftFq To learn more about tech holistically go through the detailed playlist - https://lnkd.in/gkrJ8MZu

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***99% of funnel/growth PMs have rote memorised that if you have multiple options/variations to test in parallel, run a Multi Armed Bandit experiment. :) **** This is not how you need to run your experiments. Think about this what is stopping you from running a pure A/B/C/D… test. Why do you have to run an MAB? Have you stepped back and thought ever for a min why MAB? Don’t run MAB just because you have memorised multiple different variants = MAB. So let’s try to understand when to run a pure A/B/C… test 1. An A/B/C test works perfectly well when you have sizeable traffic to play with. There is no rush to move traffic to variants that seem to be doing well in early reads. You can split the traffic to the variants equally, it is always better to do a balanced A/B. 2. You can afford to take the hit on your core metric, imagine you are trying to test variants for ancillary attach and some of the variants will end up having funnel conversion drop, if you can afford a short term drop running an A/B/C is often a better option. 3. You want scientific certainty and you want to learn conclusively before making a decision. Ok so when does an MAB make sense 1. You want to run the experiments in perpetuity and keep moving traffic dynamically to better variants. You want to run experiments in perpetuity because you want a permanent baseline to compare against. Eg. Ranking of cards based on recommendations 2. You want to keep the cost of running the experiment minimal in terms of impact on core metrics such as conversions. 3. You have limited traffic to play with and so you want to accelerate the learning. For major product changes always A/B/C is better it is worth taking the short term hit for conclusive results. The risk with MAB is early noise can push the traffic to a bad variant. Also with biased allocation, supposedly inferior variants get less traffic Implies standard error is higher, confidence intervals are wider. Follow me for high quality content, not product philosophy but practical insights https://lnkd.in/gHweK_q7 or https://lnkd.in/ggUKftFq While you are at it grab my product assignments playbook, 19 real product cases, all successful submissions, real job offers, ~258 pages of content. ***Grab it now**** - https://lnkd.in/gHzyN-Xc #ABtesting #productmanagement #careers

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