Shanthala Balagopal Email & Phone Number

San Francisco, Ca, Us

Oakland, Ca, Us

Nomadic, Us

San Francisco, California, Us

Pathlight (now Echo AI) is a Conversation and Performance Intelligence platform revolutionizing contact center management and insights through Generative AI.I led product marketing and demand generation, overseeing our go-to-market strategy for new products and features, messaging and positioning, customer marketing, pricing and packaging, sales enablement, and demand generation operations, focusing on competition and growth. Spearheaded the company's pivot to Conversation Intelligence in response to market signals and customer feedback, executing a comprehensive go-to-market plan that included a messaging and positioning overhaul, integrated marketing campaigns, consumption-based pricing, and sales enablement tools, generating $0.5M in pipeline within months. Revamped our demand generation program to ensure ROI-positive contributions, resulting in 2x growth in MQLs, and a 30% reduction in marketing spend. Reporting directly to the CEO, I collaborated closely with executive leadership from product, engineering, sales, and success to drive the company's key strategic priorities.

Short Hills, New Jersey, Us

Led product marketing at Kustomer, a rapidly growing SaaS platform that disrupted the customer support CRM space, competing directly with Salesforce and Zendesk. I built the product marketing team from the ground up, overseeing product marketing, customer marketing, channel marketing, and sales enablement. Under my leadership, we revamped corporate messaging and positioning which resulted in a tenfold increase in the marketing pipeline. I oversaw pricing and packaging, introducing usage-based pricing for Kustomer’s new chatbot offering, which drove over $2M in new ARR within three months of launch. My team overhauled customer marketing and communication, and launched the Kustomer Community—key to growth in expansion revenue and achieving 150% Net Retention Revenue. We spearheaded channel and partner marketing initiatives, including the Kustomer App Marketplace, generating over $4M in new ARR.I was a key member of the acquisition team, playing a pivotal role in discussion with Meta and SEC lawyers, leading to Kustomer's $1.2B all-cash acquisition in February 2022.

As the first Product Marketing hire at Helpshift, an AI-powered customer service platform for B2C companies, I reported directly to the CEO and played a pivotal role in redefining the platform's market position. I transitioned Helpshift from an in-app support solution for game developers to a comprehensive AI-driven digital customer service platform for B2C brands, leading to a 20x increase in pipeline generation.I established a robust go-to-market framework and process for product and feature launches, revamped pricing and packaging to align with customer value and market needs, and orchestrated the company’s first Sales Kickoff. Developed the company’s first set of sales and marketing collateral, including elevator pitches, first call decks, sales scripts, marketing sheets, and competitive battle cards.In collaboration with industry analysts, I positioned Helpshift as a leader in AI-powered customer service, earning recognition in various reports. Worked closely with customers to understand market trends and continuously monitored competitors to ensure Helpshift stayed ahead by building features that proactively met customer needs.

San Antonio, Texas, Us

Auntie Shantie’s delivers freshly made, healthy and nutritious home-cooked Indian meals for lunch and dinner.

Us

Owned the positioning, messaging, and collateral development for Responsys' new mobile offering, equipping the enterprise sales team with the knowledge and tools to identify mobile marketing needs and effectively sell the platform using Challenger Sales techniques. Led a comprehensive market research study to understand the usage, behavior, and preferences of mobile consumers, guiding the product team to develop solutions to help brands capture mobile consumers and increase their market share.

Athens, Gr

Led product marketing efforts for the messaging platform line of business, owning cross-platform positioning and messaging. I revitalized a fragmented brand, transforming it into a unified, powerful platform with a new brand identity and market message that established Velti as a leader in the mobile marketing space. Collaborating closely with sales and account management teams, I identified and prioritized key cross-platform integrations, leading to the development of innovative solutions that drove a 10x year-over-year growth in contract value.

San Francisco, Ca, Us

Led product management at a 5-person start-up that empowered users to easily create embeddable interactive timelines using digital content. I spearheaded the launch of a completely redesigned website with an all-new backend, enabling the timeline widget to function seamlessly on smartphones and allowing developers to customize timelines using their own data via a JavaScript API. Owned the strategic product roadmap, managing feature prioritization and release schedules, and defining requirements through stories, process flows, mockups, and A/B tests. Additionally, I oversaw partner development, increasing premium revenue by 40% through strategic customer acquisition and forming successful partnerships with prominent organizations like the GRAMMYS, Sony Music, Washington Post, MIT, GSA, and McCann Erickson.

Acquired by MyLifeLed product management for Wink, a people search engine, where I developed a compelling product that significantly grew the user base, ultimately leading to a successful acquisition by MyLife.com. Managed the product roadmap and delivered impactful features, including email search, automatic aggregation of 6 million profiles, and a "people you may know" functionality. Through strategic customer acquisition efforts, I doubled site traffic and increased ad revenue by 50%. Additionally, I executed numerous build vs. buy decisions, carefully evaluating technology, costs, ROI, and benefits, which resulted in an 80% reduction in time to market.

Seattle, Wa, Us

Launched the ‘News and Reviews’ widget for a few product categories on Amazon, enabling buyers to view relevant news and reviews from external sites within the Amazon product page. Primarily developed to reduce bounce rate and increase conversion, the widget increased revenue for the cameras and electronics category by 2%.

Sunnyvale, Ca, Us

Delivered the first product out of Yahoo! Bangalore — a document classification engine that automatically classifies documents into a predefined set of categories using Naïve Bayes classifiers. Used by various teams within the company including Yahoo! Shopping, Yahoo! Travel and Yahoo! Hot Jobs to process large sets of data, this patented classification engine reduced time to market by 80% and costs by 60%. The team was nominated for a Yahoo! Super Stars award and led to further investment into Yahoo! Bangalore, making it the first offshore development center for the company.

Masters, With Honors, Business & Technology Management

M.S., Marketing

Bcom, Marketing And Advertising