Sunu Nair

Sunu Nair

Marketing, growth and commercial leader. Eighteen years, from selling newspaper ads to building and exiting my own company.

Open to conversations on growth leadership and advisory · India and the Gulf

5 monthsfrom first invoice to USD 1M ARR at Propkee, 2026
20xYaari orders quarter on quarter, to 1.1M+ a month, 2021
ExitedHealthTestToday, founded 2022, exited 2024
LinkedIn

Fintech · ecommerce · diagnostics · real estate

The arc ↓ scroll from 2008 to now

2008 – 2014
The foundations
Media sales, then digital agencies, then my first company.
Open the six roles
  • 2008
    The Times of India, Chennai
    Part of the Tamil Nadu launch team. Times Property grew from a one-page section to a four-page Friday supplement with 65% ad coverage. Then Times Classifieds operations.
  • 2009
    TV9 Kannada and News9, Bengaluru
    Sold News9 airtime at rates close to NDTV's, while News9 was available only in Bengaluru.
  • 2010
    Convonix, Mumbai
    Investor-education content and a press-covered book campaign that brought new users into investing for Kotak Securities. Reputation management for Tata Capital. Set up the first social media work for Pride Hotels and Reliance Digital.
  • 2011
    Netscribes, Mumbai
    Built four digital service lines: SEO, SEM, social and reputation. Reputation management for 16 Future Group brands, including Pantaloons and E-Zone; launches for Intex phones; work for HDFC Bank and Groupon. Won the 2012 award for highest business-unit profitability.
  • 2013
    Avantas Global, founder
    My first company. Advised startups on positioning and growth, mostly in football, including Brasil Sports Academia and JRB10.
2014 – 2016
Havas, then Grey
Head of Digital, Havas · Director, Client Services Digital, Grey · Bengaluru
How do you make marketing accountable for sales, not clicks?

At Havas I led the paid, organic, social, technical and client-service teams. We rebuilt Bharti AXA General Insurance's pan-India sales pipeline around lead quality and field-team conversion. Because India sales moved, AXA General Insurance then hired the team for its Southeast Asia campaigns. We also ran SEO for Expedia India, Wego and Shaadi.com, and marketed IBM Bluemix to developers through content and a hackathon.

At Grey I ran digital for Adobe across the US, UK, Australia, New Zealand and Europe, and for Dell, Saint-Gobain and Quikr, where we launched Quikr Cars and Quikr Homes.

Adobe · IBM · Dell · Expedia · Wego · Bharti AXA
2016 – 2018
JioMoney
Head – Social Media & Digital Marketing · Navi Mumbai
50M+
users on JioMoney while I led its digital marketing
How do you get 50 million people to try a new payments wallet?

We ran 250 ad creatives, each built for one cohort, and read how people behaved on partner apps (Ola, Uber, IRCTC, BookMyShow, Goibibo, BigBasket) to trigger a one-time first offer at the right moment.

Around that: PR, closely targeted influencers and meme marketers, bill-payment campaigns with individual billers to lift daily use, and on-ground activations in offices and tech parks that brought in 30,000 users directly. Social engagement grew 15x on modest budgets, and we made 200+ videos before short video was everywhere.

250 cohort-specific creatives · 15x engagement
2018 – 2022
Piramal Capital, then Yaari
AVP – Marketing · VP, then SVP – Marketing & Business · Mumbai
20x
Yaari's orders quarter on quarter (Oct–Dec 2021 against Jul–Sep), reaching 1.1M+ a month
How do you grow a marketplace 20x in one quarter?

From a Jul–Sep 2021 base, Yaari's social-commerce marketplace reached 1.1 million+ orders a month through Oct–Dec 2021, with 30,000+ sellers. I owned the category and promotion calendar, pricing, bundles and sale events across fashion, beauty, home and electronics, and led the commercial decisions behind fulfilment: RTO, pin-code coverage, routing, exchanges and cashbacks.

We also launched two private-label brands: Earthy Essentials in personal care, built around red aloe vera, and Ultra Mate in men's athleisure.

1.1M+ monthly orders · 30,000+ sellers
When does growth stop paying for itself?

At Yaari I built attribution, an event taxonomy and a first-party data lake, then a contribution model that showed the Group CEO when acquisition had stopped supporting scale, and we reset the spend.

At Piramal, marketing for a new housing-finance business was judged on completed loan disbursal, not leads. At Yaari Fintech, lead-to-disbursal ran across 17+ lenders, with lending decisions in under four minutes and money disbursed in under an hour.

Measured on the final conversion, in three businesses
How do you hire 500 people in six months?

Take the layers out. Every role had one hiring manager. Shortlisted candidates met me on day two, and good ones got an offer the same day.

Interviews ran from 7 to 11 in the morning and 5 to 10 in the evening, so people could take them around their current jobs, over Google Meet or a plain audio call.

8 to 500+ people · time-to-offer from 21 days to 3
2022 – 2024
HealthTestToday
Founder · Navi Mumbai, Pune, Bengaluru
Exited
Founded in 2022 and exited in 2024, after 500,000+ tests processed
How do you build a business someone wants to buy?

I built a consumer diagnostics business from zero: the brand, the test portfolio, pricing and the customer journey. It ran across three centres in Navi Mumbai, customers in Pune and Bengaluru, online booking and medical camps.

Growth came from search, educational content, referrals, WhatsApp and repeat customers. From 2022 we used AI to explain diagnostic reports in plain language, and automated booking and sample collection with our provider partners.

500,000+ tests · founded and exited
2025 – 2026
Propkee
Business Head – Marketing & Growth (Co-founder) · India, UAE and UK
5 months
from first invoice (Nov 2025) to USD 1M ARR (Mar 2026), on subscriptions from developers and channel partners
How do you take a B2B product to $1M ARR in five months?

Propkee is a video-led real-estate platform sold on subscription to developers and channel partners. We launched in August 2025, ran a free trial to October and started collecting in November. By March 2026 it was at USD 1M ARR.

Buyers browsed and shortlisted on the app, which reached 100,000+ verified users across 50+ countries, with Dubai property as the draw. Deals closed at closed-door events in Mumbai, Ahmedabad and London with developers, agencies and agents.

50+ developers · 500+ channel partners · 50+ countries
Can a founder ship AI products without coding?

Yes. At Propkee I built lead scoring, buyer-property matching and a recommendation engine that read property videos frame by frame on Gemini. For paying partners, the portal told them in real time what to shoot and how to order the video.

I built these with Claude, Lovable and Databutton, working with six product managers. I am not a coder.

Four AI products, built without coding
In their words
What it's like to work with Sunu
LinkedIn recommendations from people who worked with him.
He is highly goal oriented and encourages the team to work collectively for a common goal. Very understanding and supportive.
Mannu Shetty · reported to Sunu directly · LinkedIn, July 2020
Now
The next chapter
Open to conversations on growth leadership and advisory, anywhere in India or the Gulf.
LinkedIn