Karan Taneja

Product leader with 10+ years driving growth across fintech, payments, crypto, ad-tech, and consumer platforms. Experienced across the full product lifecycle — from customer discovery and strategy to launch and scale. Deep expertise in merchant crypto products, stablecoin payment infrastructure, API-based integrations, and product analytics — delivering $100M+ in payment volume, $30M/month in lending disbursements, and 1B+ monthly ad impressions across multi-partner ecosystems.

Head of Product, Founding Team - Payram - Austin, US (Remote)

(2024-01)

B2B SaaS payment gateway unifying stablecoins, blockchain, and fiat rails with embedded accounting.

• Built Payram from the ground up — a payment gateway purpose-built for digital businesses and agentic commerce — enabling crypto and fiat acceptance with full custody and control, scaling to $100M+ in transaction volume.
• Launched an embedded wallet with a simplified checkout flow — delivering a seamless first-payment experience that improved activation and conversion across user cohorts.
• Shipped a configurable refer-and-earn module — enabling merchants to recruit affiliates, run event-based campaigns, automate payouts, and track performance in real time.
• Built a scalable onboarding platform using MCP integrations and data contracts — enabling partners to activate and receive their first payment in under 10 minutes.
• Hands-on across the full product build — from UX prototyping and user flows to shipping code using Claude Code, MCP integrations, and LLM-powered workflows.

VP Product, Founding Team - AppyHigh Technology - India

(2019-01 - 2023-12)

Consumer app studio — utilities, lifestyle, and productivity apps monetized through advertising and in-app purchases.

• Built and scaled 20+ consumer apps to 50M+ MAU — shipping fast across iOS and Android by spotting emerging use cases and rapidly validating product-market fit.
• Identified daily engagement as a core retention lever and built an in-house gamification SDK — coin economies, streaks, and leaderboards — scaling flagship apps to 1M+ DAU.
• Built a cross-platform data foundation integrating Play Store, CleverTap, and AdMob — enabling cohort analysis, behavioral targeting, and lifecycle campaigns that optimized retention and monetization across 1B+ monthly ad impressions.
• Ranked top 6 publisher by AppAnnie — 2 apps in the Play Store top 5 during COVID, driven by fast trend identification.
• Capitalized on the emerging AI image generation wave — consolidating a portfolio of photo editing and creator apps into PHOT.AI, an AI-powered creative studio — leading product vision from zero to one through a $2.5M seed round.

Senior Product Manager - Fullerton India (FICCL) - India

(2017-01 - 2019-12)

Leading Indian NBFC (SMBC Group) — digital lending and fintech product innovation.

• Launched Instaloan and FlexiCredit — consumer lending apps scaling to $30M/month in loan disbursements.
• Expanded consumer reach through fintech wallet partnerships — embedding credit products inside partner apps to drive distribution and loan growth.

Business Consultant - EXL Services (Citi Bank Risk Division) - India

(2014-01 - 2017-12)

• Optimized payment authorization analytics, releasing $50M/month in held payments and reducing customer friction.
• Built a FICO-based credit abuse strategy at acquisition level, reducing annual fraud losses by $5M.

Bachelor of Engineering - PEC University of Technology (2010-01 - 2014-12)