Hiren Umradia
Product Manager
Location
London, United Kingdom
Toptal Member Since
November 20, 2019
Hiren is a customer-centric product manager with a track record of innovating for both early-stage startup environments and large multinationals. He blends his computer science, human-centered design, and analytical skills to ensure teams are focused on the right goals and delivering value. Hiren achieves company strategic objectives through teamwork, collaboration, and servant leadership.
Hiren is available for hire
Hire HirenProject Highlights
Enterprise Search
Launched Tesco's first open-source search engine from an internal R&D project leading to a £20.4 million revenue increase.
NewPath
Developed a smartphone leasing product from idea to product-market fit with large emerging market telecom operators.
Data Warehouse and Analytics
Led the development of a data capture and warehousing pipeline using Segment and Redshift to drive business insights.
Expertise
Business StrategyDesign SprintsMinimum Viable Product (MVP)MobileProduct DevelopmentRapid PrototypingUX DesignUser ResearchEducation
Bachelor's Degree
Aston University
Select Certifications
Work Experience
2022 - PRESENT
Senior Product Owner
Hexagon
- Led product discovery workshops with senior Hexagon stakeholders and users to shape the prototype and, subsequently, the MVP.
- Delivered the next-generation UX for Hexagon's upcoming hardware, collaborating with hardware engineers.
- Collaborated with engineers to design a real-time UI/UX that integrates hardware and software with event-driven updates.
2020 - PRESENT
Founder | CEO
Zess
- Won the Innovate UK Smart Grant in collaboration with the University of Manchester worth £167,000 and delivered a state-of-the-art AI recommendations model.
- Validated product-market fit with app pre-registrations from people with special dietary needs.
- Launched a plant-based deli-filler at London's ExCel and achieved first sales.
2019 - PRESENT
Product Consultant
Freelance
- Advised startups on business and product strategy using customer research, market analysis, and industry foresight driving impact.
- Analyzed and critiqued new and existing products to find user experience improvement opportunities.
- Managed software projects in both Kanban and Scrum workflows to ensure timely delivery of software.
2017 - 2019
Senior Product Manager
NewPath
- Developed NewPath from an idea to product-market fit with large emerging market telecom operators.
- Managed the backlog and product strategy for NewPath, focusing on making smartphones more affordable for everyone.
- Secured a partnership with a primary smartphone operating system by creating an MVP that passed a formal review to a fixed deadline. This included leading the development team and designing the product.
- Worked in both Kanban and Scrum workflows and led a new development team.
- Carried out customer interviews, UX research, design sprints, and experiments to learn more about our early customers to reach product-market fit.
- Worked on shaping the future vision with the CEO and CTO, including technical innovations with real-time syncing of offline devices and working with NFC tags and sensors.
2016 - 2017
Product Manager
Quidco
- Reinvented the business model and user experience of Quidco.com with a new Quidco Marketplace proposition.
- Built and improved a search microservice using Elasticsearch, which increased the number of search sessions with a conversion from 50,000 to 350,000 per day.
- Responsible for the smooth running of the Quidco's 'business as usual' team working with a Kanban workflow. This included the continuous prioritization of issues and the management of tickets.
- Implemented a new analytics platform from the group up using Segment with a Redshift Data Warehouse and advanced data visualization tools.
- Improved working processes by introducing the idea of working in cross-functional teams to deliver Agile software projects.
- Introduced a human-centered design process, customer interviews, and deep integration of UX design into the product development process to help the organization be more customer-centric.
2013 - 2016
Product Manager
Tesco PLC
- Owned the search and browse backlog using Jira for Tesco Direct and F&F.
- Collaborated on the strategy for a new Enterprise Search Service.
- Introduced a new "search-as-you-type" feature that increased revenue by £20.4 million annually and was built from scratch using Elasticsearch, which was the first building block of Enterprise Search.
- Improved search relevance using an existing legacy technology to improve search as an interim step towards adopting the Enterprise Search Service. Increased search conversion from 6.2% to 8%, which translates to an additional £9.5 million revenue a year.
- Worked with an integrated analytics manager who helped the team learn continuously.
- Led a Sapient UX, design, and development team to deliver an improved product filtering experience.
- Worked with both offshore and onshore Scrum teams acting as the product owner in an Agile Scrum environment.
- Broke down barriers between the design, technology, and UX teams by implementing design sprints to ensure user-centricity in the development process.
2013 - 2013
Web Development Executive
Tesco PLC
- Owned the UAT testing for the redesign of the Tesco Direct website to responsive design and performed the final sign-off for the business. This included launching a responsive in-store kiosk.
2012 - 2013
Web Developer
Freelance
- Worked for a few small digital agencies introducing responsive design and providing full-stack web development. This included working with PHP, SQL, JavaScript, HTML, and CSS.
Project History
Enterprise Search
Launched Tesco's first open-source search engine from an internal R&D project leading to a £20.4 million revenue increase.
Tesco was using Oracle Endeca as a search engine where proprietary technology was seen as the right choice for a large enterprise. A small group of us bet against this idea. We decided to launch an open-source search engine using Elasticsearch. The search engine provided a "search-as-you-type" feature using Tesco's commercial data. The project was a great success where the importance of building our search engine was shown. Later I was invited to join an enterprise search team to help develop a scalable multi-purpose search engine for Tesco.
NewPath
https://www.newpath.com/Developed a smartphone leasing product from idea to product-market fit with large emerging market telecom operators.
Led the development team of a VC-backed startup from idea to delivery. The product was created through a partnership with a global Smartphone operating system where the technology was sold and launched in emerging markets. Telecom operators in emerging markets were our primary customers, where our product was distributed to end-users through existing infrastructure.
Data Warehouse and Analytics
https://www.quidco.comLed the development of a data capture and warehousing pipeline using Segment and Redshift to drive business insights.
There was limited infrastructure in place in relation to analytics where data was captured and kept in silos. I worked with the development team and a data scientist to build a data capturing tool using Segment. This tool was used to collect user insights for the 7 million members that used the website and mobile app. Data collected was transformed and collected in a data warehouse for analysis and visualization. Previously it was not possible to link transactions easily to downstream affiliate marketing events. This implementation allowed us to get a more vibrant picture of the customer journey. I also put a Kanban workflow in place to capture and prioritize new analytics tracking requirements. This allowed the business to move quickly when wanting to learn more about the users.
Education
2008 - 2012
Bachelor's Degree in Business and Computer Science
Aston University - Birmingham, UK
Certifications
MARCH 2018 - PRESENT
Improving Deep Neural Networks: Hyperparameter Tuning, Regularization, and Optimization
Coursera
FEBRUARY 2018 - PRESENT
Neural Networks and Deep Learning
Coursera