All mentors

Lakshmi Harikumar

Growth Marketing Leader with 18+ years in B2B SaaS | Marketer @ startups to Enterprises

Bengaluru, India (+05:30 UTC) English, Hindi, Tamilfrom Bengaluru, India
Usually responds in 22 hours
Free
Price per hour
30 min
Time Blocks Available
5.00
19 reviews / 31 sessions
Tue
13
Next availability

Lakshmi brought so much clarity and structure to a process that, until now, felt really foggy for us. She patiently walked us through how to validate our market, segment it properly, and actually do buyer research in a way that doesn’t just check a box, but yields deep insight. What stood out most is that even though she’s not in legal tech, she met us right where we were. She didn’t try to overcomplicate things. Instead, she helped us break it all down step-by-step. How to define the right ICP, how to structure interviews, how to know what to look for, and how to move from assumptions into evidence-backed action. And the materials she presented? Pure gold. Lakshmi is a true executional strategist. She doesn’t just give surface-level advice. She brings structure and rigor to early-stage go-to-market planning. If you’re looking to replace guesswork with a proven framework for customer research, segmentation, and early traction, she’s an invaluable guide. She helped us see exactly where to start and how to do it right!

Margarita Varaksa

Just had an incredible session with Lakshmi. In only 30 minutes, she broke down my entire go-to-market strategy, gave me a clear, actionable plan, and explained all the key nuances I hadn’t considered. Felt like weeks of clarity packed into half an hour. Grateful for her insight and precision.

Esteban Arroba Del Castillo

Really high value call! Lakshmi as such a broad level of experience from startups to global corporates and gave me amazing insights across the whole spectrum. Patient and generous with her time - highly recommend!

Luke Latimer

Bio

I'm a B2B SaaS marketing and revenue growth leader who has equal experience scaling companies from 0 -> 1 (i.e.) from pre-product-market fit to over $100M ARR and leading global marketing teams in multi-million/billion revenue companies such as LinkedIn & Freshworks. Over the past 18 years, I've led global product and growth marketing teams at SaaS companies such as LinkedIn, Freshworks, EdgeVerve(Infosys), MoEngage and Uniqode and organizations like The Akshayapatra foundation and the BBC World Service. I'm proficient in helping early stage companies set up and scale their revenue engine from product-market fit to $100M ARR. I'm equipped to give you actionable guidance in the following areas: 1. Crafting your overall go-to market strategy 2. Positioning and messaging your SaaS product 3. Conducting a buyer persona research and identifying your Ideal Buyer & End User 4. Thought-leadership and brand building for early stage companies 5. Setting up the Inbound marketing funnel (through SEO and content marketing, Social media marketing, Referral marketing) 6. Hiring and setting up an inbound marketing team in a startup or a scale-up 7. Setting up your Product marketing function 8. Setting up an outbound marketing engine with recommendations for the right set of tools and processes 9. Driving customer acquisition through a synchronized Product-led Growth (PLG) flywheel and career guidance for young, aspiring marketers willing to get into leadership roles.

Expertise

  • Building a team

    Based on your GTM strategy, I can help you structure your marketing team depending on whether you're looking to build a lean marketing team or you're setting up for scale.

  • Go to market strategy

    Go to market strategy for companies racing to get to their first $1M ARR and for companies scaling from $1M to $100M ARR. I can help you with actionable tips on how I've helped multiple startups scale and overcome GTM bottlenecks.

  • Growth marketing

    Crafting a Growth Marketing strategy for early and mid-stage start ups is something I really enjoy doing. A well-built growth plan has to be tightly aligned with the ICP (Ideal Customer Persona) that any organization targets.

  • Product market fit

    I've worked with multiple early stage start ups that have gone from 0 to $100M ARR where I've led the initial idea validation, customer research to identify the ideal customer (including the economic buyer, influencer and the end user) and drafted the early messaging in line with the market positioning.

  • Product marketing

    Product marketing is my forte! With extensive experience leading global product marketing teams, I can help you with setting up a buyer persona research process, positioning & messaging your organization, structuring your product marketing team, competitive intelligence, pricing strategy and much more.

Toolkit

  • Ahrefs logo

    Ahrefs

    Used Ahrefs to scale the Inbound SEO content engine of the HR management solution within Freshworks. We used Ahrefs to identify keyword volume, trends and competitor positioning

  • HubSpot logo

    HubSpot

    I’ve used Hubspot for marketing automation and lead attribution during my stint at MoEngage. Hubspot was used in tandem with the Salesforce CRM at the organisation

Experience

  • Freshworks

    Director of Global Product Marketing - Freshservice
    •freshworks.com

    In my role as the Global Product Marketing leader for Freshservice, I led the marketing efforts for the flagship Enterprise Service Management (ESM) offering, from its launch in Dec 2022 to $30M net new ARR in two years. By partnering with product and sales leaders, we successfully expanded Freshservice for business teams such as HR, Finance, and other departments, resulting in one of the fastest growing revenue lines within Freshworks. The go-to market involved an enterprise account expansion strategy, where we identified high-growth potential accounts of Freshservice and ran account-based interventions for the entire buying committee : Executive buy-in through thought-leadership sessions, CIO roundtables and participation in global events. User engagement through product walk-through sessions, customer showcase events and digital campaigns (ads, PoV blogs, benchmark reports). Sales enablement through buyer-mapping matrices, maturity models and outreach kits, 1:1 account engagement support with RFI/RFP narratives and pitch clinics. Enabling channel and reseller partners through partner marketing kits and Market Development Fund (MDF) activations.

  • Freshworks

    Head of Marketing - Freshworks HR Management Suite (Freshteam)
    •freshworks.com

    Headed the PLG motion to grow the Freshworks HRMS business (Freshteam) from $1 Million ARR to $3M ARR in a little over a year. Led a team of 14 marketers driving the Brand to Demand Inbound marketing engine driven by both organic and paid acquisition channels. Built the Freshteam brand through active community-building initiatives with the Harvard Business Review, SHRM, People Matters and more. Freshteam was featured as a Top HRMS player by Forbes, Trustradius, G2 Crowd and more. Solidified the inbound lead-gen channel through search engine-led content marketing and Website Conversion optimization. Improved Customer retention through advocacy initiatives and virtual customer showcase events.

  • MoEngage Inc.

    Marketing Head - Southeast Asia & A/NZ

    As the head of marketing for South-east Asia, Australia and New Zealand at MoEngage Inc., I lead the demand-generation engine for these countries through integrated field programs and digital marketing activities.

  • LinkedIn

    Product Marketing Manager

    I lead the go-to market efforts of LinkedIn Talent Insights across APAC . Highlights over the past 2 years include: - Leading the successful product launch of 'LinkedIn Talent Insights' in APAC and managing all stages of the product life cycle from pilot-testing with a few APAC customers to gathering Voice of Customers, analyzing competitive landscape, recommending pricing and MVP requirements - Scaling the product to different customer segments based on market analysis and traction data - Tracking the overall demand pipeline for LinkedIn Talent Insights across APAC to ensure the right marketing intervention campaigns - Defining the RoI narrative of LinkedIn Talent Insights to showcase customer success - Identifying growth levers to accelerate the LinkedIn India hiring marketplace. This project involved enabling features for both job-seekers and recruiters to ensure a seamless hiring experience on LinkedIn. - Bringing features around Gender diversity, Salary within LinkedIn Talent Solutions to the APAC market I've been an active evangelist of LinkedIn in APAC managing product demonstrations and immersive experiences at large customer events (including on-stage demos of products) and round-table discussions in Australia, Singapore and India. I partner with the product teams in the US and work with stakeholders in APAC to ensure a flawless product adoption experience. I partner with the global product and marketing teams and the APAC Sales, marketing and customer success teams to ensure LinkedIn is able to positively impact the way organizations hire.

  • EdgeVerve

    Senior Product Marketing Manager

    At EdgeVerve, I managed global marketing for a portfolio of products in the Enterprise Automation domain especially for Customer Support and Procurement. I: - Plan and execute the lead generation activities for the EdgeVerve Automation Suite across global markets – I come up with new marketing constructs along with the product development team and validate new use cases with reputed analysts and prospects through focused round table events and one-on-one meetings. - Ensure consistent messaging across all channels and create thought leadership content on Robotic Process Automation and next-gen AI-driven Cognitive Automation published as blog posts, eBooks, infographics, videos and other formats - Anchor the monthly interaction with analysts and ensure the latest product updates are shared with them for the Forrester Wave and Gartner Magic Quadrant reports - Control an annual marketing budget of USD 1 million used across branding and lead generation campaigns across the 2 product portfolios

  • UNIQODE

    Senior Marketing Manager

    I joined as a Content marketing associate in 2012. In 3.5 years, I rose up to be a Senior Marketing Manager who built the entire function from the ground up and: - Experimented with product packaging and pricing and came up with the winning combination of hardware, software and SDK for developers – the Beaconstac starter kit. - Created a fully automated system for ‘no-touch customer acquisition’ using HubSpot, Shopify, WordPress and Mixpanel. - Positioned the flagship Martech product, Beaconstac in the market primarily through digital channels – website, inbound content marketing, Organic SEO acquisition and inorganic channels (PPC and social media advertising). - Evangelized the product through Hack days, Product Hunt launches and conducted regular developer meet ups. - Acquired Beta users, on boarded new users and was incharge of the weekly cohort analysis – AARRR (Acquisition, activation, retention, referral and revenue) metrics funnel. - Owned the MobStac.com website property and optimised website conversion through A/B testing using tools such as Optimizely, Crazyegg.

  • The Akshaya Patra Foundation

    Senior Internet Marketer

    To put my content creation chops to good use and familiarize myself with Internet marketing, I joined The Akshayapatra Foundation as a Senior Web Marketer. I initiated a holistic online presence for the non-profit by: - Creating the website, a very active blog, initiated the social media presence and ensured that we had continuous new content flowing in from volunteers through campaigns with Indiblogger, Blogadda, etc. - Liaised with corporate donors to provide seamless online donation initiatives for their employees. - Engaged in volunteer building activities with 100 different corporate donors of AkshayaPatra

  • BBC News

    Producer - Multimedia content

    The BBC News, the world’s largest news broadcast organization, was trying to strengthen its Indian presence by partnering with Indian media houses. As one of the first 3 Multimedia Content Producers hired for the South India expansion project, I was: - Involved in producing and presenting news capsules for the BBC News radio and website in English, Tamil and Hindi - Actively involved in outreach and liaising with partner content channels in India and producing content for radio channels such as Radio one FM, RED FM, Hello FM, BIG FM and mobile networks such as Airtel.

Made within Glyfada