Ashwinikumar Patil

A 19-year arc, told as how the thinking changed.

From engineering at TCS to running a quick-commerce ad business at Zepto — the throughline isn't a ladder, it's a way of thinking that kept getting sharper. This is the narrative, not the resume.

The professional arc
2004TCS

Started in engineering — learned how large systems actually get built and shipped.

2008TAS (Tata Administrative Service)

Cross-business leadership track — exposure to how very different businesses are run.

2009Tata DOCOMO

Telecom product — the Walky line hit 165% of target profitability. First taste of owning a P&L. Turned around Postpaid Mobile line. Ran strategic rationalization initiatives.

2014mjunction

Built teaJunction, India’s first wholesale tea marketplace — 10M+ kg in year one. Learned that mechanisms compound.

2015Myntra

Fashion e-commerce at scale — consumer product instincts sharpened in a fast, design-led org.

2016listkoi

Founded an internet scale social product to structure information on the internet.

2017IceCream Labs

CategoryIQ won the Shop.org Innovation Award. First deep work in applied ML for retail.

2019Walmart (Search, Catalog, Sponsored Search, and Display Ads)

Search relevance and the retail knowledge graph. Two USPTO patents. Learned to love basis points.

2024Zepto

Head of Ads & Monetization — grew ad ARR 5x in 10 months while holding the line on shopper experience.

2025Walmart (Marketplace)

Seller experience - the 4.8-rated Seller Mobile app and the Action Feed. Took the team’s AI WAU from to 90%+.

The person behind the work

Outside the roles: I'm usually answering the relentless questions of my two toddlers, drawing in Procreate, soldering an ESP32, or keeping a bullet journal. I still solve maths problems for fun — the habit of sitting with a hard problem until it gives is the same one that shows up at work. Before any of the tech, I ran a brick-and-mortar retail shop with over a thousand SKUs for two years, doing the buying and merchandising myself. That's where I learned that a catalog is a set of bets, and margins are where judgment lives — the instinct under everything I've built since.

What I'm looking for

Platform-scale, AI-native problems that move both the customer and the commercial metric at once — ideally in marketplaces, retail media, or anywhere judgment matters more than the playbook. I'm drawn to the messy middle where data runs out and a decision still has to be made.

Speaking & consulting

Available for consulting and speaking. Topics: AI product strategy, marketplace platforms, retail media, and judgment & decision-making.