Sriparna Barua
I'm a Product
A Little About Me
Source: LinkedIn
Tarun Ayitham
CEO & Founder, DeepThought
Sriparna has the deadly combination of Psychology and Literature. She has amazing articulation of what our
products intend to achieve, has handled most of the SRS documentation. She is a patient teacher who can work
with kids who lose interest in studies. She is a dependable content writer and copy writer. She is the go to
person for parent communication too. Her understanding of the mind and language is highly desirable and she
finds herself worked out too often, because too many people want her in too many places.
Source: LinkedIn
Tarun Ayitham
CEO & Founder, DeepThought
My Strengths
I thrive in ambiguity, and love to design structures and processes, due to which I'm mostly placed in projects where there's no course already laid, where there's only an intuitive vision, where the roads are blocked, where new initiatives are being braved.
Reasoning from first principles, asking fundamental questions out of curiosity and forming mental models empower me to learn anything quickly and rigorously.
Empowered by learnability, I have tried several roles - Product, Sales, Marketing, Operations - and I enjoy contributing across diverse functions.
Identifying the core of an intuitive vision and empathizing with the stakeholders enable me to patiently find the right words for efficient communication.
Defining problem statements out of problem scenarios excites me, however I tend to delay providing solutions until the scope of the problem is clear.
I energise myself with long hours of brainstorming with diverse people bringing in diverse perspectives, and love to learn and share my learning with them.
Sense of purpose, vision and ownership of projects refuel my commitment even when the going gets tough.
Connecting dots and identifying patterns help me to ideate and engage in zero-to-one innovation, while not reinventing the wheel; productizing a solution or a process is my strong suit.
My Journey, so far...
Internship
Growth Product Manager
Nov'21 - Oct'22
The transferrable skills gained from my previous roles at DeepThought greatly helped me in the Growth Product Management role. In this role, I learned agile methodologies, and different principles of product management, UX, and lean startup.
Nov'21 - Oct'22
- Prioritized and defined user stories and scheduled bug fixes for UX and UI improvements
- Conducted simulations to discover insights on user needs, pain-points and possibilities for improving product functionalities
- Communicated the vision of the DT product suite and gave product demo to diverse external as well as internal stakeholders
- Represented and pitched DeepThought to investors and other start-ups in an event organized by FreeFlo at Kolkata
- Conducted sprints with software engineering and product teams for efficient product development, starting from product ideation to MVP launch
- Guided the team to successfully complete SRS (Software Requirements Specification) Document for DT products
- Recruited and trained interns by conducting workshops on Product Management principles and methodologies, product thinking and design thinking
- Enabled cross-functional communication between Product, Marketing, Sales and software engineering teams
Marketing Communications Lead
Aug'21 - Nov'21
When DeepThought's vision was to nurture thought leaders out of school kids, the value proposition was indeed unique! Although DeepThought had a validated way to get results, communicating the same to our target audience (parents, schools) was a challenge! This role ... helped me to understand DeepThought's products and offerings in-depth and taught me the art of articulation. I failed on numerous occasions to finally be able to deal with project management, principles of operations, and switching between abstract and concrete ideas and strategy simultaneously.
Aug'21 - Nov'21
- Collaborated with the CEO to define Go-to-Market strategy, Product Roadmap as well as B2B and B2C outreach strategies
- Strategized visual communication, visual hierarchy, content and design style for brochures, posters and pitch decks for diverse stakeholders, for different campaigns, initiatives and fundraising
- Led community engagement via Facebook, LinkedIn and WhatsApp and created content for different stages of the AIDCA Sales funnel
- Coordinated operations between the Content Lab and the Design Lab, and designed processes and SOPs to improve the efficiency of both Labs
- Analyzed cold-call data to iterate pitches to drive in conversion, and guided the Sales Team by driving into them the vision, values and product offerings of DeepThought
Curriculum Developer
and Product Researcher
Feb'21 - Aug'21
This role helped me to explore and gain conviction in the foundation of the DT product suite, which I would later go on to help build as a Growth Product Manager. In this role, I learned alongside school students while conducting sessions for them in a Socratic method. I also ... learned HR management while handling recruitment and team building for the first time.
Feb'21 - Aug'21
- Strategized and created different frameworks for internal company processes like recruitment, networking, content development, operations, and community and event management
- Designed questionnaires and conducted interviews to gather data for improving DeepThought's product as well as internal operations
- Led the HR team to help them recruit, train/align interns for different roles like Marketing, Innovation, HR, Sales, while simultaneously testing/tweaking the process frameworks and training modules that were being used
- Moderated sessions for school students to develop in them language, strategic thinking, leadership and research-based learning
- Invited thought leaders from across the world as jury for DeepThought's online Socratic Dialogue events, and managed their relationship with DeepThought
Education
Post Graduate Diploma
2018 - 2020
2018 - 2020
Research Project:
- Conducted a comparative study on perceived stress among social media addicts and non-addicts, across different age groups
- Worked in a team of 3, to design semi-structured questionnaire, collect and analyze data, for both qualitative analysis and hypotheses-testing using quantitative statistical methods
- Interpreted the results and prepared the final report for submission to the course coordinator
Bachelor of Arts
2013 - 2016
2013 - 2016
Honors: English Literature
Additional Subjects: Philosophy, Education
High School
2011 - 2013
2011 - 2013
Stream: Science
My Reflections
Getting out of Low Productivity
Low productivity can drive us into a vicious cycle. Low productivity > Feeling low, stuck > Nothing getting done > Low productivity. It's a no-brainer that every single day can't be a productive day...
Product that Serves vs. Product that Enables
Is the product making a user dependent on it? Or is the product teaching a user a new process, a new skill? Does the product require some already existing...
Reflections as a Team Leader
While ensuring that the team members reach their goals, do I also keep in account how they are doing it? Are they burnt out? Are they delivering just by following instructions? Are they...
Numbers and Processes - the Power Duo
On Friday (Dec 3, 2021), for the first time I realized the power numbers hold. I had been developing the process to track the deliverables of Theory Lab since a few...
Reflecting on Systems Thinking
I picked up the following threads while reading the book 'Systems Thinking for Social Change'. 1. Organizations and systems have a life of their own - we might want to improve them, but they...
Systems Thinking in Psychotherapy
While reading the book 'Systems Thinking for Social Change', I got reminded of an example I encountered in Salvador Minuchin's book 'Family and Family...