Gaurav Goyal

GAURAV GOYAL

CTO, Zo World

Seasoned Technology Leader with 10+ years of experience architecting and scaling high-traffic web and mobile platforms.

About Me

Proven track record from startup to building mission-critical systems at market-leading travel and hospitality brands. Passionate about creating scalable solutions and leading engineering teams to deliver exceptional products.

+91 882 695 6569
me@gauravgoyal.in
G1-214, Pacific Golf Estate, Dehradun, Uttarakhand, 248009, India

Experience

CTO

Zo World (Zostel) Jul 2019 - Present
  • Built and led a lean engineering team, overseeing technical mentorship and recruitment processes. Handling 7 tech products and 5 business verticals with just 9 Engineers.
  • Scaled and enhanced core systems while leading development of a versatile booking engine supporting diverse inventory types and event bookings. Leading to Gross Booking Value(GBV) growth from $2.5M to $31M, post Covid growth of 100% YoY.
  • Launched Common Rooms - an audio-chat platform with games and pseudo-anonymous profiles for drop-in conversations, achieving 1k+ DAU within 2 months.
  • Developed the Zobu Chat app, integrating WhatsApp to streamline agent/local-friend to guest communication.
  • Led the launch of the Zostel mobile apps, and $Zo, a smart-contract based loyalty system, web check-in. In turn growing MAU 10x (30k to 300k+), and achieving 250k+ app installs.
  • Architected the Zo World app to enable member-only chat rooms, NFT based token-gated events, and HouseOps, a Hospitality Operations Management system, helping bringing down launch time of pop-up houses to 1 day.
  • Spearheaded Zo Trips, achieving $12M GBV run-rate within 6 months.

Founder

Bir Nest Oct 2017 - Jul 2019
  • Launched and managed a boutique hostel and co-working space in Bir, Himachal Pradesh, overseeing P&L and ops. Achieving profitability within the second month of operations and >4.5 star rating on OTAs.
  • Developed a SaaS booking engine and property-management system to automate reservations, invoicing, and guest communications.

CTO

PlanetSpark Jan 2016 - Apr 2017
  • Built & scaled learning platform from MVP to support 100+ teachers and 1,000+ students by building parent and teacher onboarding funnels.
  • Led development of framework using Phasor for animated instructional videos and assessments with gamified progress tracking.

SDE-1

OYO Rooms Jan 2016 - Apr 2017
  • Instrumental in building Offline Demand platform; platform drove INR >160Cr (~$25M) GBV (~ 1/3 of OYO's 2017 volume).

SDE-1

Zo Rooms Jul 2015 - Dec 2015
  • Developed offers/coupon system to boost customer acquisition; initiated monolith decomposition.

Skills

System Design

Expertise in designing scalable, resilient systems architecture for high-traffic applications.

Product Strategy

Developing product roadmaps and strategies aligned with business objectives.

People Management

Leading engineering teams with mentorship and career development focus.

Cloud Management

Expertise in cloud infrastructure and services optimization.

Scaling Strategy

Implementing strategies for scaling systems and operations efficiently.

Hiring Strategy

Developing effective recruitment processes for technical talent.

Blockchain

Experience with blockchain technologies and smart contract implementation.

Education

NSIT, Delhi

Bachelor of Engineering

NSIT, Delhi

Bachelor of Engineering

Instrumentation and Control Engineering

Batch of 2015