About

Right now I’m building Snezzi. The path here was not a straight line, and that is most of what I’ve learned from it.

Starting with code

I studied at DA-IICT (now Dhirubhai Ambani University). During my Master’s in IT, I became the first person from my stream to get into Google Summer of Code. I spent the summer of 2013 building an Apache Cassandra storage layer for a building-monitoring toolkit at Vienna University of Technology.

It mattered more than the project itself. It showed me I could work with people around the world on real software. The $5,000 stipend also covered college fees I would otherwise have borrowed for.

In 2026, for its 25th anniversary, the university published Where Ideas Take Off, a collection of alumni stories. Mine is one of them. One line from that chapter probably sums up the last decade better than anything else:

Don’t chase short-term gains. Open the door, even if it looks difficult. Stay curious, because curiosity compounds faster than capital.

After college I worked as a Big Data engineer at Ishi Systems. I built Hadoop-based storage and data retention systems used by telecom operators, working with a remote team in Switzerland and the US. Those years of pipelines, ETL, and large systems are why I’m comfortable in a room with engineers today.

Building a company

In 2016 I co-founded DataOne Innovation Labs. We started as a data and analytics services business and gradually moved toward our own product: Shoppr.ai, a marketing analytics platform for D2C and ecommerce brands. It pulled data from Shopify, WooCommerce, Magento, BigCommerce, Facebook Ads, Google Ads, and others into one place so businesses could see what their marketing was doing.

We bootstrapped for about five years. As co-founder and CEO, I did a bit of everything: product, engineering decisions, customers, sales, hiring, and keeping the lights on.

Surviving a crisis

By early 2020 we had momentum. New users were coming in, customers were giving us useful feedback, and we were preparing for a trip to the US and Canada to raise money.

Then COVID hit. A fundraise for growth became a fundraise for survival. We had limited money in the bank, a team to look after, and a lot of rejections. Eventually acquisition interest turned into an acquihire, and the Shoppr team joined Whatfix.

At the time it felt like an ending. It turned out to be the start of the next chapter. I wrote about what I learned in Navigating Startup Exits.

Building inside SaaS

At Whatfix I moved fully into product management, first as Product Manager and then Senior Product Manager on the analytics team. I owned the roadmap for the analytics pod and led the migration of 600+ enterprise customers from the legacy analytics system to a new in-house platform.

The work I’m proudest of there was leading a new no-code product analytics product line from idea to launch. It reached about $250K ARR within two quarters. That meant a lot of time with sales and marketing: defining use cases, writing case studies, running demos, and helping customers see the value.

Learning another category

Next I joined Plivo as Associate Director of Product Management, working on Contacto, an omnichannel contact center product (now part of Plivo CX). I worked on the roadmap and on the agent desktop migration, knowledge base, conversational AI, and research into AI in contact centers. I also interviewed and hired product managers and analysts for the team.

Starting again

After a year of consulting with SaaS and fintech companies on product and GTM, I started UpSurge Ventures in January 2025 with two co-founders. It is a product studio that helps founders build and launch MVPs: build quickly, validate early, and skip the features nobody asked for.

Today my focus is Snezzi, which I’m building with my co-founders. It’s an AI visibility platform: it shows brands how they appear when buyers ask ChatGPT or Perplexity what to buy, and helps them show up in the answer. For teams that want it handled end to end, we also offer it as a done-for-you service.

Outside of work

I care a lot about founder communities. I’ve led Headstart Gujarat, founded GDG Cloud Ahmedabad, and host Startup OG, where I talk with founders about what building is really like. More on the community page.

Along the way I received the Gujarat Entrepreneurship Award at the Sayaji Startup Summit for my work in the state’s startup ecosystem.

Say hello

I’m always happy to talk with founders, product people, and anyone working on AI search. Email me at me@nikunjthakkar.com or find me on LinkedIn and X.