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A brief history of Me

· 7 min read
Aditya Kumar
Aditya Kumar
Aditya Kumar

This post will give you a brief introduction to my journey so far. If you are reading this, I have probably forwarded it to you to save some time before we have a face-to-face conversation or a video call. I have intentionally kept it in bullet points to keep it crisp and no-nonsense. I would rather tell the anecdotes, experiences, and stories to you in person than have you read a bad attempt at an autobiography (Which I maintain is borderline narcissism unless you are a celebrity).

But let me give you the TLDR version first. In the last 14 years, I have-

  1. Worked on some of the most complex technology systems you can build - Media streaming, real-time communication, code compilation engines, high-frequency trading, virtual currencies and social networks.

  2. Co-founded a company and scaled it up to $2 Million in ARR without any venture capital.

  3. Served over 20 Million unique users through various systems I architected from scratch.

My work has always been at the intersection of Product, Technology, and Growth so that I will categorize each journey similarly.

Jan 2023 to March 2024​

Worked with Arré as the Head of Engineering, leading their product, design, and engineering teams. Arré is one of India's leading digital content and media-tech brands that is home to Arré Studio, which produces and publishes original content with professional creators across genres, languages, formats, & platforms, reaching more than 300Mn people and Arré Voice, a women-first short audio app aimed at building a new generation of creators. 

Technology​

Built a short-audio women-first social network that served 250k+ users with a team of seven developers, three designers, and one product manager. The main product is a mobile app that is like an audio Twitter. People can educate or entertain their audience using 30-second audio recordings called voicepods that reached 250k+ users. 70k+ MAU.

  • Created an algorithmic feed (collaborative filtering-based recommendation engine) using Vector embeddings and Vector databases(AstraDB) that directly led to a 30% increase in stream time. Created a social graph to supplement the algorithm (Neptune DB).
  • Created a macroservices architecture that consistently served 2000+ RPS across 12 services with a p99 latency less than 100ms.
  • Created a flutter app with 250K+ downloads with a 100% crash-free rate with a team of only two mobile developers
  • Tech stack - Typescript (NodeJs, ReactJS & NextJs), Golang, DynamoDB, Redis, Apache Cassandra, AWS Neptune(Graph database), Open Search, Google Bigquery, Flutter, AWS Fargate, AWS API gateway, Google Pub/Sub, and Vector database (AstraDB).

Product and Growth​

Devised various product-led growth strategies such as -

  • Arré Match - A platform that combines the idea of influencer marketing and performance marketing. Micro-influencers could come to the platform and earn money for promoting small brands and, in return, earn money for each click/impression. So, instead of a traditional influencer marketing model where the influencer gets paid upfront, in this model, brands are supposed to pay the influencers only when they deliver some measurable value. We piloted this for six months and realized that irrespective of product intervention; it would fundamentally be an operations-heavy business. We neither had the bandwidth nor the correct resources to execute this, so we shut it down.
  • Voice Clubs - Since the core platform was interest and vernacular language first, I strategized and executed a community feature to increase cohort retention. The feature is still active on the app. It's the company's current GTM strategy, and the jury is still out on this.

Oct 2018 - Sep 2022​

My official position was Principal engineer, but I worked as a virtual co-founder, contributing ideas and execution for the tech, product, and growth.

Technology​

  • Mobile application that was a clubhouse like Audio-Video-first social network (with all features of a social network) handled a peak DAU of 100K+ users with excellent speed and performance. Peak DAU of 250K+ handled across various products.
  • Created various web-based growth hacking tools that reached 10Mn+ users in just four months of launch
  • Created push notifications sending architecture capable of sending 10Mn+ notifications daily.
  • Created a flutter app with ~2Mn downloads with a 99.7% crash-free rate with a team of only two mobile developers
  • Architected payment systems for virtual currency and loyalty coins that processed one crore+ rupee's worth of transactions within eight months of launch.
  • Ran production environment on AWS, GCP, and Azure.
  • Tech stack - Javascript (NodeJs, ReactJS & NextJs), Golang, Mongodb, Redis, Apache Cassandra, Elastic Search, Google Bigquery, Flutter, Kubernetes, Serverless, Google Pub/Sub, and WebRTC.

Product and growth​

Co-devised various product-led growth strategies such as -

  • Create a monetization tool called Leher Lifafa that drove ~ INR 3 Crores of GMV. It was a phenomenal growth hack for acquiring communities running on Telegram in large numbers. We acquired millions of users with zero spending on performance marketing.
  • Leher coins - Created a gamification strategy that led to 200% organic growth in Daily Active users, W1 and W4 retention.
  • Leher clubs—Leher became big around the launch of Clubhouse in the US. Leher clubs were quite similar to the clubs in the Clubhouse, with additional functionalities like video rooms, text chats, direct messaging, and video recording. This feature helped us increase our retention by 100%.

Aug 2015 - Oct 2018​

Co-founded and scaled up an Edutech+HRtech startup called edwisor.com from 2 people team to 100+ people and made ~$2Mn Annual revenue without any Venture Capital.

Technology​

  • Built complex technology products such as live video streaming, code compilation engines(like hackerrank), gamified learning modules, private StackOverflow, etc.
  • Architected systems that served 10k+ daily active users with a small team of 6 people and a significantly low cost.
  • Built customized learning management systems and hiring solutions for the customers on the platform.
  • Tech stack - Javascript (NodeJs, Angular), Mongodb, Redis, Kubernetes, Serverless, RabbitMQ, and WebRTC

Product and growth​

As a co-founder, I was also directly responsible for product and growth. Devised and executed various strategies such as -

  • Inbound lead growth using Quora - We understood that one of the core behaviors of our target audience was posting questions and reading answers on Quora. We created a strategy and team to tap into this behavior that led to a 5X growth in the number of inbound leads and a 3X increase in revenues every quarter.
  • Growth of mentor pool using a tech tool - Mentors were the trainers on the EduTech Side of the platform. They were responsible for teaching, reviewing assignments, answering support queries on our custom-built community platform, etc. I was able to scale this operations-heavy business to a pool of 80+ mentors with a small team of 4 people and a little bit of gamification magic.
  • Led the content strategy for both web and data science career paths and strategy for partnering with companies that hired our graduates.

March 2010 - 2015​

I sold my first application when I was 17. It was an ASP.NET(C#) application created for a local coaching centre. After that, I worked on twelve freelancing projects and four internships in various domains: Health Tech, Legal Tech, FinTech, Edu tech, HR tech, and Travel Tech. Not all the products became big businesses, but this phase of life turned me from a simple techie to an entrepreneur by heart, so it was worth mentioning in this post. After all, it's supposed to be a brief history of me.

Less than 10 minutes of reading time, Mission accomplished!​

I hope this post serves its purpose. I have been asked, "What are you?" instead of "Who are you?" more times than I admit. I hope this post answers that question as well. I am looking forward to our meeting. If you haven't booked the call and came across this post directly, you can use this link to schedule a call with me.

Prefer async communication? - drop a Hi on Twitter or LinkedIn.