Honorary Research Collaborator at BIRMINGHAM BUSINESS SCHOOL (2026-01 – Present)
- AI Strategy & Stakeholder Engagement: Co-authored research on AI governance and organisational adoption, translating findings for academic and institutional stakeholders; accepted at Springer and University of Oxford (EMAN 2026).
- AI Adoption & Influence: Piloted an AI-powered assessment system, achieving 90%+ engagement, and presented the approach and findings at BAM 2026.
- Policy Engagement: Contributed research and analysis to 3 UK Parliament submissions across AI, healthcare, business & trade, and higher education.
Operations Transformation - Reporting to Director at UNIVERSITY OF BIRMINGHAM (2025-03 – 2025-06)
- Executive Delivery: Took ownership of a Director-led mandate to address a four-year 11,000-ticket operational backlog, helping reduce it by 68% to 3,500 in 90 days through data-led diagnosis and cross-functional execution.
- Cross-Functional Coordination: Consolidated 8 fragmented data streams and coordinated across departmental teams to identify duplicate/unclosed records and reassign work orders, contributing to resolution of 53% of the backlog.
- Stakeholder Influence: Identified routing and ownership gaps, developed the business case for automated ticket routing and resource reallocation.
Senior Strategic Alliance Manager (Tamil Nadu State Lead) at KUHOO FINTECH (2023-02 – 2024-09)
Regulated education-financing FinTech (USD 20M funded, WestBridge Capital) - Reporting to CEO
- Ecosystem Alliances: Pioneered a regional B2B channel strategy across Tamil Nadu, scaling a partner network to 60+ accounts and 200+ stakeholders, generating ₹15Cr in territory volume and a GTM playbook later adopted PAN-India.
- Stakeholder Diplomacy: Managed territory-level commercial escalations to resolve turnaround delays, collaborating with Legal and Finance heads to negotiate client interest models within approved pricing structures.
- Cross-Functional Optimization: Translated ground workflow friction into structured requirements for tech teams, influencing Product and IT divisions without authority to prioritize UAT pilots for 5 enterprise applications including the CRM, LOS, partner portals, and mobile applications.
- Regulatory Governance: Contributed territory data to CEO-led lender negotiations to renegotiate TAT commitments across 15+ institutions, supporting the firm's successful RBI NBFC license application.
- Risk Operations: Intervened during a critical institutional partner default, coordinating directly with Finance and Legal teams to freeze subsequent loan disbursements and protect outstanding credit exposure.
- Process Engineering: Diagnosed 4 operational pipeline bottlenecks to author the company-wide Partner Onboarding Playbook, reducing partner onboarding cycle times by 25% while mentoring a 20-person regional team.
Senior Business Development Associate at BYJU'S EDTECH (2020-12 – 2023-02)
Global digital education platform (Peak valuation ~$22B)
- Commercial & GTM Execution: Generated ₹2Cr+ revenue, managed a 1,000+ account pipeline and executed 35 PAN-India outreach programmes, while supporting the regional rollout of physical hybrid tuition centres.
- Stakeholder: Owned high-friction contract and cancellation escalations referred by junior teams and protecting commercial relationships.
- Business Problem Solving: Analysed CRM pipeline velocity and customer drop-offs to identify conversion and delivery bottlenecks; designed onboarding interventions that improved post-sale retention by 15–20%.
- Team Enablement: Developed consultative communication and objection-handling frameworks to upskill junior cohorts during regional training sessions.
Founder & Operations Lead at AKASH BHAIRAV EMPORIUM (2018-06 – 2020-12)
- Business Building: Bootstrapped and scaled a cross-border B2B venture to ₹7Cr+ annual revenue, managing 300+ B2B/B2C accounts and a 500+ SKU portfolio.
- Commercial & Stakeholder Management: Managed 15+ suppliers across India and China, owning commercial negotiations, supplier relationships, demand planning and logistics fulfilment.
- Working Capital Management: Protected working capital through weekly receivables reviews, inventory recovery and margin-focused cross-selling.