Nikhil Rajput Email & Phone Number

Strategic Performance Leadership:Led a team to enhance app stability, achieving notable improvements in Android ANR rates and maintaining high crash-free rates across platforms, setting new standards in app reliability.Advanced Playback and UI Performance Initiatives:Orchestrated key initiatives to elevate streaming quality and significantly reduce playback errors, enhancing overall service reliability.Fostered collaborations to improve playback functionality, contributing to industry-wide enhancements in service reliability.Directed the implementation of comprehensive analytics across all platforms, enhancing our understanding of user interactions and tailoring experiences more effectively.Leadership in Web Vitals and User Experience:Achieved improvements in Home Page Core Web Vitals, significantly enhancing user experience and outperforming industry competitors.Managed efforts to optimize web interactions, improving stability and user satisfaction.Dynamic Experience Enhancements and Feature Upgrades:Streamlined data consumption during ad delivery, significantly reducing data usage and emphasizing efficiency.Enhanced playback startup times, improving user engagement and responsiveness.Technical and Architectural Advances:Unified the codebase across multiple platforms, streamlining development and boosting efficiency.Modernized our web technologies, decreasing load times and enhancing interaction smoothness.Subscription Management and Monetization Strategy:Led features that resulted in significant increases in subscriber engagement and contributed to substantial growth in overall financial performance.Recognition and Future Outlook:Contributed to improved app ratings on major platforms, reflecting user acclaim for platform improvements. Successfully launched applications on new platforms like WebOS and Apple TV, expanding our service coverage and receiving positive user feedback.

Strategic Platform Launch and Partnership Integration:Led the successful launch of the Discover platform, integrating diverse and high-profile content partners including Wynk Music, Xstream, Ekank, the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Met Museum), NASA, Editorji, Qshala, Twitter, and in-house content. This initiative significantly broadened the platform’s appeal and user engagement.Cost Management and Financial Optimization:Strategically reduced the operational costs of the Discover infrastructure by approximately 66%. This financial stewardship was instrumental in maximizing the platform and operational efficiency.User Engagement and Revenue Growth:Managed and enhanced user engagement metrics, achieving an average engagement ratio of 0.68% and a click-through rate (CTR) of 0.98% to 1.09%. These metrics demonstrate the platform's effectiveness in capturing and retaining user interest.Drove the platform to generate significant revenue, which underscored the commercial viability of Discover.Strategic Annual Planning:Actively involved in the Annual Operating Plan (AOP), contributing to strategic decision-making and financial planning to align with the company's long-term business objectives.Data-Driven Decision Making:Utilized detailed analytics to continuously monitor and improve user interaction metrics, ensuring that the platform not only attracts users but also engages them meaningfully for extended periods, with average engagement times ranging between 35s to 40s for activated users.

Innovative Product Development:Spearheaded the development of Multi-tenant Whitelabeled OTT Apps, creating a flexible and scalable framework that allows rapid customization and deployment for various partners. This initiative significantly streamlined operations and enhanced the service offerings.Automation and Efficiency Enhancement:Led the automation of the Video IQ App generation based on configuration settings, which dramatically increased the partner delivery velocity to four apps per month. This automation was pivotal in reducing time-to-market and scaling production capabilities, supporting a marked increase in revenue generation.Strategic Product Launches:Successfully launched RajTV and Dangal Play Apps, overseeing the complete lifecycle from concept to market introduction. These launches demonstrated Airtel Xstream’s capability in delivering tailored entertainment solutions and expanded the brand’s reach in the competitive OTT market.

Leadership and Team Management: * Led a diverse team of iOS engineers, across multiple projects including Airtel Xstream, DTH, AdTech, and Wynk Stage, enhancing the team’s effectiveness and cohesiveness. * Developed and implemented engineering practices tailored for the teams, significantly enhancing team performance and project delivery.Strategic Technical Initiatives: * Spearheaded the RFC process to streamline communication and collaboration across departments, resulting in improved project alignment and execution. * Managed the entire hiring strategy, strengthening the team with top-tier talent and setting technical trajectories that align with organizational goals.Innovative Project Execution: * Built and delivered the Wynk Stage for Creator Side, executing over 40 concerts in one week. * Designed and developed comprehensive Downloads and Analytics SDK Architecture.Collaborative Efforts and Advanced Technologies: * Engaged with cross-functional teams to explore cutting-edge technologies such as HEVC for reduced CDN costs and GraphQL to minimize backend workload. Initiated the integration of HTTP 2.0 to enhance page load times across platforms.Quality Assurance and Team Dynamics: * Directed quality assurance process alignments across all platforms, addressing key issues like caching and establishing a structured RFC template to enhance development processes. * Fostered a culture of trust and open communication within the team, leading to more effective conflict resolution and collaboration. Implemented a GitHub PR checklist to ensure high-quality development and engaged actively in peer coding to address and understand team challenges.Organizational Impact: * Implemented Performance Improvement Programs (PIP) and defined Key Result Areas (KRAs) for the team, which led to an increase in the Crash-Free user percentage from 89% to 99.85%, significantly boosting system reliability and user satisfaction.

Gurgaon, India

• Worked as an acting Lead and owned the product to deliver improvements enhancing the overall experience of the app.• Contributed towards the architecture of Airtel TV app which helped in decoupling the code and making it better for new feature addition.• Implemented prefetching algorithm using functionally asynchronous concepts of NSOperation classes.• Improved and maintained the core of the app namely HTTP Live Streaming(HLS)• Implemented Custom LRU and cookie authentication to improve the startup time of streams• Improved the crash free sessions from 98.6 to 99.98 solving critical threading issues.

Gurgaon, India

• Developed reusable UI components in the app, which helped the team reduce the code for componentcreation on multiple screens• Implemented the timely activation of sale event offers in the app, which was one of its core features.• Optimized Juice feature which helped in increasing FPS, thereby improving user experience.• Ran Jabong Accelerator program to get the team familiarised with new iOS features and best practices.• Ramped up new engineers for iOS development.

Gurgaon, India

• Redesigned the architecture of ZDRemote application which helped in decoupling the code and making itbetter for reusability and scalable for new feature addition• Developed the Core Module Wlan of the ZDRemote project.• Optimized the Core Data code for pagination in SWIPE.• Wrote stubs for unit testing the network calls• Built static library for common components, helped in segregating the common components• Rebuilt the text editor with the new TextKit in Notes.• Enhanced the performance of the TWA by changing the concurrency model used.