nihar sawant - cv
TRANSCRIPT
NIHAR SAWANT
Creative Technologist
+91 9619 503 480
nihar.sawant.me
@nihar_sawant
linkedin.com/in/niharsawant
EXPERIENCE
Product Manager, Tech
Culinary Cart
Aug 2016 - Feb 2017 (1 Year 6 months)
42 Spices (my earlier venture) got merged with Culinary Cart where I started heading the Technoglogy. I was involved in the development of e-commerce site Burgundy Box which was the flagship product of Culinary Cart. My role as a Product Manager was to not only oversee technology but also other components like design and marketing were getting aligned with the overall strategy.
Tech - Before joining Culinary Cart, Burgundy Box written on top of WooCommerce and Wordpress. In the beginning I was responsible for maintaining and upgrading the WooCommerce platform. However, after 6 months as the business requirement increased, we decided to move to our own stack. After development of 6 months, I single handedly developed E-Commerce Portal, CMS and POS which still empowers Burgundy Box
E-Commerce Portal - As the business grew, a lot of requirements started to emerge which were not feasible to be implemented in WooCommerce. From Ready to Eat Meals to Subscriptions, selling these products required a custom interface which was the reason we decided to move away from WooCommerce. In this case, we replicated the exact same stack which was used in 42 Spices i.e. NodeJS, KeystoneJS and MongoDB. Being a solo development team, it decreased the development time significantly as compare to traditional e-commerce framework like Magento, PrestaShop etc.
On a mission to rescue the world in the context of web
Design - Being a premium brand, design was a crucial aspect in Burgundy Box. I made sure that look and feel of all the digital entities was consistent to make it appear as an authentic brand
Visual Identity - One of my job responsibility was to establish and maintain a consistent brand guideline acorss all the platforms. As far as tech is concerned from web to social media to marketing, I made sure that consistent brand guidelines were met.
Print Design - In order to achieve consistent visual identity rehaul of recipe cards, flyers, stickers was carried under my guidance.
Web Design - Redesigned the e-commerce store where design was not only responsibility but also the User Experience. We reduced down the checkout process time to 1/3rd or original. It also included user behaviour analysis and optimizing the experience which would result in faster conversion.
Android App Design - We launched our Native Android app in late 2016. From user onboarding to smoother checkout process, everything was designed by me.
API Development - Development of the NodeJS based stack was done as API first approach. This approach helped us to quickly develop Android app as well.
POS - Although there are many POS solution available but it was a necessity to have our POS because traditional POS didn't have custom interface for Weekly Subscription. On top of KeystoneJS, development of POS was done to help the kitchen as well as service team to ease out their workflow.
CMS - On top of KeystoneJS, CMS was developed which helped the service team to maitain a repository for the menu.
Dev-ops - From writing CRON jobs to send emails to depolyment, dev-ops was managed by me. Our infrastructure was hosted on Digital Ocean.
Android Development - With a team of an intern, we built an e-commerce Android app for Burgundy Box within a span of 4 months.
Marketing - My primary focus on marketing was Digital Marketing which included everything from Ads to Social Media Campaigns to Email Marketing.
Facebook Ads - I was responsible for running Social Media Campaigns on Facebook from the beginning. From running Carousel Ads to Post Boosts, find the right audience and optimizing the ad to reach the maximum reach was my job.
PR - I was responsible for maintaining PR via Social Media Infleuencers. Being a startup we couldn't put a lot of money on PR agencies. Hence, generating PR leads was from grounds up in my case.
Email Marketing - Sending newsletters to existing customers based on various segmentation such as their preferences was my job responsibility. So far Email Marketing channel resulted into highest yeild in terms of conversion.
Co-Founder
42 Spices
Jan 2015 - Jul 2015 (7 months)
My primary responsibilities were to handle the Tech, Design and Marketing. Using past entrepreneurial experience, I made sure that we were lean and disciplined with our approach so that we will be able to achieve maximum results in minimum time using minimum resources.
Design - Design played a crucial role in the Product Development of 42 Spices, let it be Web Design, Packaging, Print Design or even Mobile App.
Branding and Identity - Worked on Brand and Identity of 42 Spices. Unlike our competitors who all have ‘chef’ in their brand, we wanted something which would serve as ’The Ultimate Answer to Home Cooking’ and that is how 42 Spices was born.
Print Design - Recipe Pamphlets played crucial role in the product hence it was necessary that they were properly formatted, clean and readable. Along with the recipes, I also designed many of the marketing posters, flyers which designed in such a way that they could capture viewer’s attention within a blink of eyes.
Web Design - Designed and developed mobile friendly and responsive website which was supposed to render content like Recipes, Ingredients, Video and Product Shots along with the checkout process.
Packaging - The first thing which any user notices about a product is packaging. Even though we were low on budget, it was a challenge for us to keep the packaging clean and elegant.
Tech - Since it is a Food Tech company, major focus was on Operations and Marketing hence Tech part of the product was supposed to functional and lean. Due to which we chose NodeJS which is not only lightweight but also reliable and has a huge community. As a part of CMS we chose KeystoneJS which is built on top of NodeJS.
Responsive Web Design - Developed a Mobile Friendly website which worked smoothly on all possible platforms including mobile and desktop.
Online Ordering System - Implemented ‘Online Ordering System’ by which people could order the recipe kits at home. However we didn’t implement Online Payment.
CMS - On the tech front, core focus was on the content from beginning hence I made sure that we had a proper CMS system which had an easier way to publish the content like recipes, photos, videos but also it had a tight integration with the checkout process.
API Development - We were working hard to come up with Mobile Apps and as a part of that process, I made sure that we had a proper API ready so that all the content using online ordering could be implemented in no time.
Dev-ops - Even though there was no need of multi-server architecture, we had a proper deployment process for AWS which was setup by me. We also used tools like Gulp to implement the source building.
Marketing - My primary focus on marketing was Digital Marketing which included everything from Ads to Social Media Campaigns to Content Marketing.
Google Ads - 42 Spices was started by testing our idea on Google Ads. We created a Google Search Ads to test how many people were interested in the product. When got enough CTR and enquiries that was the time when we decided to move ahead.
Facebook Ads - As a part of our Social Media Campaigns, we ran Facebook Ads especially during Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day which caught attention of many influential folks using many prominent investors.
PR - One of the marketing strategies which worked for has been PR. I was responsible for getting 42 Spices featured in Sunday Midday which drove a highest number of organic direct sales.
YouTube Marketing - Content Marketing was one of our long term marketing strategy. I was heading the YouTube Marketing which involved shooting of 90 seconds ‘how to’ recipe videos which could be shared on WhatsApp too. These videos were shot on iPhone 5s and edited using iMovie, hence videos were also decent and yet within the budget.
Offline Marketing - From following up with HR Departments of Corporate Offices to setting up meetings with Managing Committee’s of Housing Societies, it involved a lot outdoor efforts which did impact our direct sales.
Mobile App Design - Even though we never really developed any mobile app, it was in our funnel. I designed an Android App for 42 Spices which was more like ‘Cookbook’ which people could use on daily basis to get hooked to. However it never really made to the floor.
Leadership - Even though there were 7 members in the team, operations were too complex for a food tech company. Hence being one of the founder, my job was more of a jack of all trades and master of none.
Lean Methodolgoy - Being a bootstrapped startup, it was very important for us to be lean from the beginning. We used to start really small, analyse and used to decide whether to continue or not.
Product Management - Playing 5 different roles every day is never a child’s play and discipline is something which makes it possible. When it came to forecasting, I was responsible for setting up milestones and how to implement them using weekly goals so that deadlines are rarely missed. We tried many tools from Trello to Google Calendar to White Boards to make it possible.
Founder
Expojure
Aug 2013 - Dec 2015 (2 Years 5 months)
As a SaaS product which helps to manage photos on Social Media, Iwas responsible for Front End Development, Design and Marketing. I was the only person who was working on it on a full-time basis, rest of the team members were working either on a part-time basis or as an intern. Primarily appreciated for its design and simplicity, it was also known as “Buffer for Photography”.
Marketing - Marketing efforts were started very late but digital marketing worked very well for us.
Content Marketing - I did a lot guest blogging on sites like SLRLounge on Social Media which still brings significant amount of organic new visitors which has higher conversion rate compare to other mediums.
Crowdfunding Campaign - We ran an unsuccessful crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo. Although we never reached the goal but we raised decent enough money to keep the servers running for a year. More than the goals, it was a valuable experience on how crowdfunding campaign works.
Meetups and Events - Although our target audience was never in India, we started our efforts by conducting Photography Meetups in Mumbai. There was no conversion but the meetup which we started has close to 500+ active members on Facebook and Meetup.com.
PR - Just like content marketing, PR worked very well for us. We got notable mentions in SLRLounge and Digital Photography School which is still driving unique traffic for Expojure.
Product Development - From ideation to product strategy to implementation, whole product development of Expojure was driven by me. Being a tech heavy product, we used diverse range of tools in Expojure. My Primary responsibilities were -
Frontend Development - Front-end was developed using AngularJS (before it was migrated to BackboneJS because of the AngularJS 2.0 Roadmap). LESS was also part of our core development flow.
Backend Development - Our backend server was developed using a Python Framework called Pyramid which primary handling everything from Database Communication to API Calls. While NodeJS server was used to communicate with the third party servers like Facebook, 500px, Yahoo etc. NodeJS was primarily chosen for its asynchronous capabilities. As far as production environment is concerned, we used Apache as a proxy server (while we do have plans to move to NGinx).
Database - We used traditional MySQL database structure followed by SQLAlchemy as an ORM.
Dev-ops - We used tools like Grunt for building the source files. Even though we tinkered around with Puppet for deployment, it was never useful for us considering the scale of operations. As far as email queuing is concerned we used Mandrill.
Design - Expojure is often appreciated for its simplicity and elegant design. From the beginning it was focused on being functional and eye candy (after all that is what people pay for).
Developer and Partner
3DTin
May 2011 - Dec 2013 (1 Year 6 months)
Joined 3DTin as an intern and after a year I became partner. I was also the first employee of 3DTin. During my tenure of 18 months, I worked Tornado, jQuery, NodeJS, WebGL, MySQL, SQLAlchemy, Google App Engine etc.
UI/UX - UI/UX - Played a crucial role in developing and designing bettter UI/UX of the first public version of 3DTin. It included designing an 3D Modelling Tool which will be used to create 3D Models in a browser. This tool was primarily used by 3D Printing Enthusiasts and School Kids.
Optimizations - From optimising the complex queries for Feed Generation to caching the most popular user models, optimisation was headed by me which significantly reflected in our reduced AWS Usage. As the tool was running in a browser, it was also important to have front end optimisations, I was responsible CSS based optimisations which reduced the CPU consumptions.
Community - Community engagement related features such as comments, ratings, feed were developed by me from bottom up. Let it be database schema or front end architecture, I was responsible for the Community Engagement Tools.
Third Party Integrations - I also worked on integrating Facebook Timeline, where user activities were automatically posted on Facebook Timeline with a customised view.
Plugin based Development -3DTin’s front end architecture was based on jQuery. We developed many jQuery plugins such as Ratings, Buttons, Gallery etc. These plugins were developed using jQuery UI’s Coding Standards.
After 3DTn became part of Lagoa, I remotely worked with Lagoa’s Montreal and Boston Team on Community Features and Public Launch respectively. I also had an opportunity to work as a designer where I designed the public pages which were part of the launch strategy.
Worked closely with the marketing team for the public launch where I was responsible for the design and development of Wordpress based CMS.
Developed an elasticsearch based search engine for Assets, Project and Users which is still part of the product.
Implemented community related features such as comments and likes in their existing Technology stack of Ruby of Rails and BackboneJS.
Full Stack Developer
Lagoa
Jan 2013 - Jul 2013 (6 months)
SKILLS
Tech
Javascript CSS HTML BackboneJS LESS
AngularJS UnderscoreJS Python NodeJS
GulpJS GruntJS Tornado Pyramid
MySQL SQLAlchemy PostgreSQL MongoDB
jQuery jQuery UI Nginx Apache AWS
Wordpress Ruby on Rails KeystoneJS Git
Github Sublime Text Vim Puppet GAE
Coffeescript MVC Object Oriented Programming
Design
Sketch Adobe Illustrator Interaction Design User Interface
User Experience Information Architecture Human Computer Interaction
User Onboarding Material Design iOS Design Web Design
Product Management
Lean Methodology
Google Analytics Trello Asana
Pivotal Tracker
Mixpanel
PUBLICATIONS & OTHER ACTIVITIES
Guest Blogger
SLRLounge
As a part of Content Marketing for Expojure, I was doing guest blogging on SLRLounge. My primary focus was on Social Media for Photography. It was an unpaid job where I was putting attribution of the product which still brings organic traffic to the site with high conversion rate.
Author
Smashing Magazine
Smashing Magazine is one of the well knowing blogging sites for design and development. Working with the editorial team of Smashing Magazine, I wrote few techinical tutorials for them. These tutorials were covering aspects like NodeJS development and creating command line applications.
Guest Blogger
The Next Web
I wrote some article on entrepreneurship for The Next Web. Some of these articles were retweeted by influencers like Ryan Hoover, Joel Gascoigne, Eric Ries etc. Prime reason to write these articles were to share the knowledge of startups with other budding entrepreneurs so that they won’t repeat the same mistakes again.
Guest Blogger
YourStory
Just like TNW, I wrote couple of articles on entrepreneurship on YourStory. Some of the problems which I faced as an entrepreneur were limited to Indian Audience only hence I chose YourStory over TNW.
Guest Speaker
CodeStrike, CodeChef Chapter of Atharva College
Conducted workshops on Git in Atharva College’s Code Strike Organization. Code Strike is the first and official chapter of Code Chef Initiative. As a part of workshop, I was supposed to demostrate the use cases of Git in the development workflow.
Mentor
PracticalCoding.in
Being a mentor in PracticalCoding, I deal with Web Development where I teach students the implementation of Web Technologies.
Mentor
Acad Glid
As a mentor in AcadGild, I help students to learn modern web technologies such as NodeJS and AngularJS. These courses happen over video conference.
Name
Date of Birth
Address
Mobile No.
Website
Nihar Kishor Sawant
7th April 1991
603, Godaveri, River Park, Rawalpada, Dahisar (E), Mumbai - 68
+91 9619 503 480
http://nihar.sawant.me
PERSONAL DETAILS