Put the craft to work — Charan Tadepally

2018–2022

Put the craft to work.

I stopped thinking only about doing good research. I began using the craft to grow researchers, build a business, earn trust — and eventually drive action from inside the organisation I had spent years studying.

Nielsen · 2018–2020 · Qualitative Research Head

People

Built the qualitative research team from 3 to 10, combining junior and senior talent and creating hands-on ways to strengthen judgement: recruitment puzzles to sharpen screener logic, movie-analysis workshops to practise concise storytelling, and group critiques of past work.

How I ledI joined the exercises rather than standing outside them, made it safe for researchers to challenge my thinking, and used quarterly Start / Stop / Continue feedback in both directions — for the individual and for me as their manager. Many researchers I mentored went on to roles at Meta, Amazon, IBM, PhonePe, Practo and Hindustan Unilever.

The craft scales when you stop being the only person practising it well.

Awards & recognitionCI Star Performer for Exceptional Performance
Simply Excellent — Gold & Silver Awards

Nielsen × Flipkart

Partnership

Flipkart became much more than an account. I worked across most of its major categories — mobiles, furniture, baby care and toys, grocery, large and small appliances — and grew from research supplier to trusted partner.

That work included category Usage & Attitude studies, research into the influencer economy in 2019–20, mobile gaming and gamification, and a major brand equity and positioning programme that helped shape Flipkart's focus on “Bharat.”

The clearest proof of the partnership? Flipkart eventually hired me to join the organisation.

Flipkart · 2020–2022 · Senior Manager → Associate Director

Action

Once inside, the research study stopped being the centre of the universe. I could combine primary research with internal analytics, category data, behavioural signals, stakeholder knowledge and market evidence. There was no hierarchy to where insight came from; the question was what combination of evidence would get us closer to the right action.

Segmentation as infrastructure

Led large-scale segmentation programmes across Mobiles, Large Appliances and Small Appliances. In Mobiles, I challenged a segmentation that was difficult to activate, reframed it around price and Tech Quotient, mapped the external segments to Flipkart's own shopper database, and worked with analytics and product teams to turn those segments into experiments and personalised interventions.

Premium Store for premium shoppers

Research into premium mobile shoppers moved beyond describing the audience to shaping the shopping experience for them. The work informed a dedicated premium-store proposition and the content, information and experience cues needed to make Flipkart more credible for high-value mobile purchases.

FSUP and the offline gap

Studied what physical retail gave shoppers that online commerce did not and translated those gaps into product opportunities. This body of work fed into FSUP and related interventions spanning assisted shopping, vernacular voice, product comparison, AR/Flipkart Camera and richer premium-shopping experiences.

Always-on category intelligence

Launched periodic brand tracks across Mobiles, Large Appliances, Small Appliances, Furniture, Beauty, Grooming and General Merchandise, evaluating the purchase funnel against key competitors and giving teams a recurring view of category health.

Research → database → experiments

Worked with analytics and product teams to cluster the last six months of Flipkart mobile shoppers using variables from the external segmentation, map the two worlds, and validate the mapping through experiments such as personalised communication and feature highlighting.

Cross-functional action

Ran workshops with category, brand and design teams to prioritise what should be actioned, turning a large research programme into usable segment frameworks, ready reckoners, product concepts and business decisions rather than leaving it as a report.

One mobile programme moved from segmentation → concepts → evaluation → launch.

₹150 Crincremental GMV

130Kincremental units sold

+500 bpspurchase conversion

Leading research at FlipkartLed a team of three researchers with clear goals and individual growth paths. Weekly market scans encouraged the team to spot shifts early and form proactive hypotheses; reflective sessions revisited earlier work to ask what we would do differently with new evidence, tools or methods.

Award & recognitionFlipkart Impact Award — Mobile Consumer + Platform Segmentation

Research became less about delivering the answer and more about creating the conditions for something to happen.

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