open to product & strategy roles

Gurgaon

0→1 operator · strategy · GTM · AI

Build it, then prove it.

I take products from zero to paying users — and then show you the funnel, the cohort and the unit economics that got them there. Most recently: an EdTech SaaS from an empty Notion doc to a 12,000-member community and 600+ paying users.

Work with meSee the ventures

Gurgaon, Indiakiran.kumar2028@mastersunion.org

Kiran Kumar G
still shipping
hi — I build things and then count them

receipts

  • Silver Medal · BRICS Future Skills, international final2024
  • Masters' Union — Young Leaders Cohort, merit scholarship2026
  • Patent filed — AI product size recognition2023
  • Best Paper · ICA6NT, LLM resource allocation for Beyond 5G2025
  • Top 160 of 3.42M+ on Unstop2024
  • McKinsey Forward Program2025

Numbers I *actually moved*

member community
12Kmember communitybuilt from zero at rdfctest.in
paying users
600+paying usersat a 5% free-to-paid conversion
monthly active
1,100+monthly activeheld by activation & retention loops
AI datasets shipped
150+AI datasets shippedconcurrent client projects, Alignerr
event participants
700+event participantsfrom 2,700+ registrations, Insight’X
people reached
650+people reachedRobin Hood Army, Bangalore

who this is for

Four kinds of people email me.

The work looks different for each of them, so here is the honest version of what you get.

  • Founders at 0→1

    you bring
    An idea with some pull, and no system underneath it yet.

    you leave with

    • A GTM motion you can actually run next Monday
    • Pricing and packaging tested against real users, not a spreadsheet
    • Unit economics you can defend in a room
    Tell me what you are building

  • Product & growth teams

    you bring
    Traffic, signups, and a roadmap nobody can rank.

    you leave with

    • A funnel instrumented end to end, with the leak named
    • Activation and retention loops, shipped and measured
    • An operating cadence that survives after I leave
    See how I work

  • AI & data teams

    you bring
    Models that work in a notebook and nowhere else.

    you leave with

    • A product wrapper around the model, scoped to one job
    • Evaluation and QA standards that hold at volume
    • The 150-dataset version of "we should get some data"
    Look at the projects

  • Student builders

    you bring
    Ambition, a laptop, and no idea where to start.

    you leave with

    • A first hundred users instead of a first hundred slides
    • Blunt feedback on the idea, free
    • The playbook I wish someone had handed me in 2021
    Ask me anything

ways to work with me

Three shapes. Pick the one that fits.

  1. 01Build

    I join as an operator and own an outcome end to end — usually 0→1 GTM, pricing, or the activation and retention loop. Founder-adjacent, hands in the product.

    • Full-time or embedded
    • Own a metric, not a task list
    • Weekly operating cadence

  2. 02Advise

    A short, sharp engagement: teardown of the funnel, the pricing, and the unit economics, ending in a written plan with a ranked list and the numbers behind the ranking.

    • 2–6 week scope
    • Written deliverable, not a deck
    • One follow-up cycle included

  3. 03Teach

    Workshops and sessions for student builders and early teams on going from an idea to first paying users — the unglamorous parts that nobody puts in a case study.

    • Campuses and cohorts
    • Live teardowns
    • Free for student groups

Worked with

  • rdfctest.inCo-founder
  • The Bowl and BeyondCo-founder
  • Alignerr (USA)AI data
  • Sledding TechnologiesGrowth
  • Robin Hood ArmyVolunteer
  • We The LeadersVolunteer

ventures

Two companies I helped start.

Both from zero. One scaled and closed, one is being built right now.

rdfctest.in

wound down

Co-Founder · Strategy & Growth

Jul '24 — Dec '25 · Remote

  • EdTech
  • SaaS
  • GTM
  • Pricing
  • Retention

An exam-prep EdTech SaaS. I owned strategy end to end: the community that became the top of the funnel, the pricing that converted it, and the loops that kept people coming back.

  • Built a 12,000-member community from zero and turned it into the acquisition channel
  • Ran GTM and pricing experiments that converted 12K members into 600+ paid users at 5%
  • Shipped activation and retention loops that held 1,100+ monthly actives and lifted 30-day retention
  • Drove cross-functional execution across engineering, content and marketing on a weekly cadence
  • Owned unit economics and budgets — every experiment had a cost and a payback number
community
12Kcommunity
paid users
600+paid users
conversion
5%conversion
MAU
1,100+MAU

The Bowl and Beyond

building now

Co-Founder

Aug '26 — Present · Gurgaon

  • Consumer
  • Brand
  • Operations
  • Impact

A purpose-led food brand built on a 1:5 community meal model — every bowl sold funds five meals. Currently in early operations.

  • Took the brand 0→1: positioning, naming, and the 1:5 community meal model
  • Validated demand through customer discovery before spending on inventory
  • Structured early operations and supplier partnerships from scratch
meal model
1:5meal model
stage
0→1stage

projects & research

Things I built to find out if they would work.

  • AI · Computer vision · Jun '24 — Mar '25

    Customizable Security Automation System

    An AI surveillance system that recognises 20+ object classes at 95%+ accuracy, with configurable automation and alert logic for residential, industrial and wildlife deployments.

    • 95%+ accuracy
    • 20+ object classes
    • Configurable alert logic

  • Research · 2025

    LLM-based resource allocation for Beyond 5G

    Research on using large language models to allocate network resources in Beyond-5G systems. Presented at ICA6NT 2025.

    • Best Paper Award
    • ICA6NT 2025

    ★ Best Paper · ICA6NT 2025

  • Patent · 2023

    AI product size recognition

    A computer-vision system that infers product dimensions from imagery. Filed as a patent in India.

    • Filed
    • Computer vision

    ★ Patent E-2/583/2023-CHE

  • Internal tool · 2024

    360° Feedback Automation Software

    A feedback tool that automates multi-rater aggregation, cutting the manual tracking that made 360° reviews too expensive to run often.

    • Multi-rater aggregation
    • Manual tracking removed

how i work

The deck is the smallest part.

Six things I do on every engagement, in this order. None of them are impressive on their own. Together they are the difference between a product that grows and a product that has a good story.

“Most teams do not have a strategy problem. They have a "nobody wrote down which number matters" problem.”

  1. 01

    Write the contract first

    Before anything ships, one page: what we are trying to make true, which number says it worked, and by when. If we cannot write it, we do not understand the problem yet.

  2. 02

    Set a cadence, not a deadline

    A weekly loop — decide, ship, look at the number, decide again — beats a heroic quarter every time. The cadence is the thing that keeps working after I leave.

  3. 03

    Know the unit economics on day one

    What one customer costs, what one customer returns, and how long the gap lasts. Every growth idea gets priced against that before it gets built.

  4. 04

    Instrument the whole funnel

    Signups are a vanity number until you can see where the drop is. I instrument end to end so the argument about what to fix becomes a five-minute look at a chart.

  5. 05

    Build the retention loop early

    Acquisition without retention is a bucket with a hole and a bigger tap. The loop — the reason someone comes back in week three — is a product decision, not a campaign.

  6. 06

    Own distribution yourself

    The 12K community at rdfctest.in was not a marketing channel we rented. We built it, so the funnel started where we controlled it. That is the whole reason 5% conversion was possible.

what changes

Before I show up → after.

  • Vanity signupsPaid conversion, tracked weekly
  • Gut-feel roadmapFunnel and cohort data, ranked
  • Hero effortAn operating cadence anyone can run
  • Feature listUnit economics you can defend
  • Rented distributionA channel you own

writing

Notes from building.

Short pieces on going 0→1 — funnels, pricing, retention, and the parts of operating nobody writes case studies about.

Follow along on LinkedIn

Why me, on one card

  • 01

    I have done the 0→1 twice, with the numbers to show for it — 12K community, 600+ paying users, 5% conversion.

  • 02

    I am equally comfortable in a pricing model and in a Python notebook, so I do not need a translator between strategy and engineering.

  • 03

    I default to written clarity: one page, one metric, one date. Everything else is negotiable.

  • 04

    I take ownership of the outcome, not the task list. If the number does not move, that is mine.

Kiran

get in touch

Let's build

If you are taking something from zero to one — or trying to work out why it stalled at one — I would like to hear about it. Short email, no deck required.

kiran.kumar2028@mastersunion.org+91 9092112941

I reply to everything within two days.

Prefer LinkedIn? I’m there too.