Sagar Ahuja
Product Leader · 7 years in PM · Available now
sagarahuja.co
sagarahuja@gmail.com
+91 9557 629 225
linkedin.com/in/sagar-ahuja-
Bengaluru, India

Today's Specials

Your daily ritual of product talent
Limited
Edition
1 of 1, hand-crafted
11+ years aged
Member's
Pick
Built for FirstClub
Curated, not listed
Season's
Best
Available now
Zero notice period
Sagar Ahuja
Best of the Batch
Zero added fluff Easy to onboard 72 hrs Trial
Sagar Ahuja

Senior Product Leader

11+ years · 7 in product
0 days 90 days notice

About This Product

Sagar Ahuja is a Senior Product Leader and a high-quality product builder designed to support consumer platform scaling, retention systems, and post-Series B momentum, with a high-level 12-month build thesis already mapped to FirstClub's exact infrastructure gaps.

Why You'll Love Him:
  • 11 years of experience, 7 in product management
  • Built consumer mobile platforms at Skillz
  • Designed ML-driven engagement and retention systems
  • Shipped subscription and monetisation programs
  • All-rounder - has owned marketing, sales, analytics, coaching, and product depending on what the moment needed
  • Available immediately - no notice period
How to Use:
  • Onboard in week one - no 90-day hiring cycle
  • Assign to whatever FirstClub has prioritised next - personalisation, membership, multi-city, anything else. Truly mouldable
  • Pair with engineering, category, and marketing teams
  • Best deployed at scale
  • Compounds when given ownership
Banned Ingredients:
  • Vanity metrics
  • Confusing motion with momentum
  • Features shipped without defined success criteria
  • Surface-level user research
*Regarding the Trial: 72 hours after the first conversation, if not the right fit - no further commitment. Just a coffee in the books and a sharper view of the four problems below.
Lab Report
Sagar Ahuja
Verified
Total experience 11 years Pass
In product management 7 years Pass
Consumer mobile platforms Skillz, G24x7 Pass
Personalisation systems shipped Yes Pass
Subscription / monetisation Built and revamped Pass
Education ISB · Stanford Pass
Notice period 0 days Pass
Tested at: Skillz, Games24x7, Teach For India, Tech Mahindra Last verified: June 2026
Download Full Report · Resume
Add to FirstClub
The 12-month thesis · An outsider's view

How do we go from 170K to 1M households?

Many things that work at 170K households break at 1M.

These are the four that matter most in the next 12 months.

Problem 01

Discovery + trust

Customers do not buy what they cannot recognise
The Gap

60% of catalogue is unfamiliar. A real user said opening the app feels like "walking into Nature's Basket - a subtle fear of overspending", triggered before a single price is seen. Word-of-mouth covers this in Bengaluru. It does not travel.

The Fix
  • "Why this brand" · one factual line on every card
  • Brand story · 3-screen tap-through per brand
  • Pre-delivery cues · green bag, founder note, surfaced digitally
  • Trust bridges · "people who buy X also trust Y"
Why it pays

10% add-to-cart lift on 60% of the catalogue compounds every order. The prize is wallet share - every rupee spent on Blinkit because a brand felt unfamiliar.

Problem 02

Multi-city scale

Founder-led curation does not run five cities
The Gap

Bengaluru curation is founder-led, manual, central. Right for 0 to 1. Hyderabad has launched - biryani masala, Irani chai, local dairy are not solved by a Bengaluru-mirrored catalogue, and there is no system to run both in parallel.

The Fix
  • Curation OS · supplier onboarding + blind-test scoring
  • Community sourcing · "nominate a brand" per city
  • Local calendar · Bathukamma in Hyderabad, Pongal in Chennai
  • Micro-assortment · core fixed, flex by neighbourhood
Why it pays

Localised launches retain 20-30% more at D90. ~₹2.9 cr GMV per city. Infrastructure pays back at city one; every city after compounds.

Problem 03

Personalisation

One feed for 170K households
The Gap

"Today" is identical for everyone. "Your Usuals" is a reorder list, not a prediction engine. The richest community-level data in Indian commerce, almost none of it surfaced.

The Fix
  • Personalised home · per-user category weights
  • ML "Your Usuals" · curd every 5-7 days, surfaced on day 5
  • Society proof · most ordered in your building this week
Why it pays

15% basket lift × 4+ orders × 170K households. A feed that learns you is structurally hard to replace.

Problem 04

The membership product

Costco end-state, no paid tier today
The Gap

Ayyappan has said the end-state is Costco. Today there is no paid tier - "Subscribe" is auto-delivery scheduling. Every month of free habit makes paid conversion harder.

The Fix
  • Founding Member · 5K slots, ₹1,199/year, live in 3 months. Access not discounts.
  • Full launch at 400-500K households · 25% conv × ₹1,200 = ₹12-15 cr ARR
  • Same architecture scales · 5K → 100K members without rebuild
Why it pays

Revenue today is not the point. Proof that Costco-in-India works is worth more in a Series C conversation than a plan to launch one.

Why I am the right person

The four problems are systems problems.

Not feature problems. Systems problems. All four require a PM who thinks in platforms and operates at pace. My last three years across Skillz and Games24x7 were spent building exactly that on consumer mobile.

Maps to Problem 02

Multi-city + platform scaling

Scaling 1 → many is a platform-thinking problem. Systematise so quality does not depend on who is in the room.

At Games24x7

Built the centralised experimentation platform from scratch - flags, A/B tests, real-time rollouts. Lifted manual release work into shared infrastructure. Same pattern FirstClub curation needs from one city to five.

Maps to Problem 03

Personalisation + retention

ML nudges, personalised feeds, cohort-configurable surfaces. Shipped on consumer mobile.

At Games24x7

Led an app redesign from one-size-fits-all to a cohort-configurable architecture serving different experiences per segment in real time.

+12%new user retention
+6%ARPU on existing
+9%average user retention
Maps to Problem 04

Membership + monetisation

Revamped subscription monetisation - lifecycle moments, benefit architecture, pricing experiments, churn.

At Skillz

Loyalty revamp from upfront entitlements to engagement-driven rewards. Access as the benefit, not discounts - exactly what a Founding Member programme needs.

-30%incentive cost (vs 20% target)
+9%ARPU lift
Across all four

All-rounder by default

Best in product, not stuck on designations. Owned marketing, sales, analytics, coaching, product - whatever the moment needed.

In practice

If personalisation is not the priority for two quarters, I can pick up category, GTM, lifecycle marketing, or the membership build instead. Mouldable to what FirstClub prioritises.

Available immediately - I can start in week one. A company with a $55M Series B, four active infrastructure gaps, and a 12-month expansion plan cannot afford a 90-day hiring cycle.

I would welcome 20 minutes.

Happy to go deeper on any of the problems above - or simply talk through where the most urgent need is post-Series B. No agenda beyond the conversation.

Reach me at sagarahuja@gmail.com +91 9557 629 225 sagarahuja.co linkedin.com/in/sagar-ahuja-