AKANSHA TIWARI
Product Manager
Berlin
Summary
Product leader with 8+ years' experience driving enterprise-scale technology adoption, platform integration, and governance tooling across global markets. Skilled in aligning cloud-based solutions with regulatory, security, and compliance requirements, while leading cross-functional programs that deliver measurable business impact. Proven track record at Zalando Lounge and Delivery Hero in scaling complex platforms, managing stakeholders, and enabling secure, scalable technology adoption.
Overview
12
12
years of professional experience
3
3
Languages
Work History
Founder in Residence
Antler
09.2024 - Current
- Company Overview: Globally recognized early-stage VC firm, leading in 'Day Zero' investing (B2B Start-Up)
- Selected among 2% of applicants for Fall 2024 cohort
- Founded MixnMatch, an AI-native conversational discovery engine that leveraged vector search, RAG pipelines, and user intent modeling to let users generate personalized fashion looks
- Focused on sustainable fashion through personalization models, integrating LLM-driven context with user behavioral vectors
- Drove zero-to-one product execution with rapid prototyping, lean validation, and go-to-market alignment
- Drove B2B trial partnerships with Peek & Cloppenberg, Galleria Kaufhoff and Tiger of Sweden
Principal Product Manager - Search & Personalisation
Zalando Lounge
02.2024 - 09.2024
- Company Overview: Zalando Group's off-price arm, with 7.1M+ active users across 11 EU markets (B2C)
- Led strategy and execution of AI-powered discovery and personalization platforms within a highly regulated European e-commerce environment, ensuring compliance with data protection and security requirements.
- Directed cross-regional adoption programs, enabling localized rollout of new search and personalization capabilities while maintaining governance, contractual, and customer protection standards.
- Introduced scalable ML-driven personalization models to improve conversion and engagement, while embedding transparent governance mechanisms for explainability and auditability.
- Designed and shipped a zero-search environment optimized for cold-start scenarios, using curated campaign models and A/B-driven behavioral insights.
- Launched several initiatives like campaign visualization revamp, increasing visibility of upcoming campaigns to increase repeat visit rates (+1.4%).
- Influenced senior stakeholders (C-level) across product, engineering, and compliance to secure alignment on platform investments and adoption roadmap.
Senior Product Manager - Search
Delivery Hero
03.2021 - 02.2024
- Company Overview: Online food ordering & delivery, presence in 4 continents, covering 2.2B+ people globally (B2B2C)
- Built and scaled a hyperlocal, multi-lingual grocery search engine from the ground up across brands: Foodpanda, Talabat, Pedidos Ya, and Hungerstation.
- Led enterprise-level integrations of Delivery Hero's portfolio companies into the core search platform, ensuring scalable architecture and a consistent search experience across brands.
- Created an internal search tool for country managers to regulate search results in real time based on product availability and market trends.
- Developed custom relevance ranking with ML re-ranking models using behavioral (CTR, ATC) and user-level signals (intent, history).
- Optimized search UX through language-specific lemmatization, typo correction, and intent-driven auto-suggest across 20+ languages.
- Introduced nested products and continuous search flow, leading to a +2% search conversion uplift.
- Monetized search by launching a CPC-based ad model, increasing revenue by 5.2% with no negative conversion impact.
- Reduced zero-result queries by 22% using an ML-based query expansion model.
- Unofficial team lead and mentoring responsibility of 2 PMs.
Product Manager - Search
Omio
05.2019 - 02.2021
- Company Overview: Leading multi-modal travel platform with 27M MAUs across 35 countries
- Co-led the Search & Discovery pod (8 engineers, 2 designers, 1 analyst) focused on EU and US market segmentation
- Improved booking conversion for EU locals by:
- Redesigning UX for passenger age/discount card inputs: +17% conversion lift
- Simplifying class/fare upsell logic to communicate pricing benefits clearly: +22% upsell, +5% page transition rate
- Contributed to US market launch:
- Customized suggester models to remove EU-centric bias
- Localized search display (e.g., 12-hour clock format, location priority)
Product Manager
Farfetch
04.2018 - 04.2019
- Company Overview: British e-commerce company focused on luxury clothing and beauty products (B2C)
- Owned the end-to-end post-purchase experience: Order Confirmation to Returns
- Led integration of external data and courier APIs to enhance Estimated Delivery Date (EDD) accuracy and reliability
- Re-architected return flow to support complex geo-conditional logic; reduced customer contacts by 1.5%
- Solved delay issues in the Chinese delivery network by enabling manual customer confirmation of receipt
User Growth Product Manager
Yatra
04.2016 - 03.2018
Associate Product Manager
Snapdeal
02.2014 - 04.2016
Education
MBA - Finance & Marketing
Birla Institute of Management Technology
Greater Noida, India01.2013
B.Sc. - Biotechnology
Birla Institute of Medical Science
01.2011
Skills
Python
Interests
Racquet Sports, Swimming, Books, Change Activism, Start-ups, Contemporary dancing
Accomplishments
- Built an AI-native Fashion Discovery Startup - Founded MixnMatch at Antler Pitchfest and validated with Antler and Project A Ventures
- Engineered a Global Hyperlocal Search Platform at Delivery Hero - Launched ML-powered query expansion and CPC ad monetization
- Supercharged Booking Conversions and US Launch at Omio - Led product innovations that delivered +17% EU booking conversion and +22% upsell rates through UX redesigns
TOOLS/SKILLS
- AI Tools Regularly Used
- 1. Lovable - Go to 'vibe-coding' tool for creating prototypes. Created the first MixnMatch prototype with it
- 2. Bolt.new - Better for slightly detailed and large MVPs
- 3. Notik AI - Record, Transcribe, Summarize & Organize Notes, Video and any other artifacts
- 4. Claude - For research and deep-dives
Timeline
Founder in Residence
Antler
09.2024 - Current
Principal Product Manager - Search & Personalisation
Zalando Lounge
02.2024 - 09.2024
Senior Product Manager - Search
Delivery Hero
03.2021 - 02.2024
Product Manager - Search
Omio
05.2019 - 02.2021
Product Manager
Farfetch
04.2018 - 04.2019
User Growth Product Manager
Yatra
04.2016 - 03.2018
Associate Product Manager
Snapdeal
02.2014 - 04.2016
B.Sc. - Biotechnology
Birla Institute of Medical Science
MBA - Finance & Marketing
Birla Institute of Management Technology