Puneeth Purushothama
Product Manager · AI & Marketplace · Founder · Zürich, Switzerland. 
- -6+ years in tech, three in product - engineering at TCS, my own job marketplace startup, now product at The Trip Boutique in Zürich.
- -Product at The Trip Boutique - took the Supplier Portal from discovery to launch: 156 of 221 suppliers logged in within the first month.
- -Co-owned the AI marketing module with the CPO - 4× revenue per campaign YoY, 48% fewer unsubscribes, and support on three enterprise onboardings.
- -Founded Gowrk in Bangalore, a job marketplace that grew to 6,000+ seekers and 240+ employers in 6 months.
- -MSc in General Management, University of Neuchâtel (5.53/6 - Très bien, magna cum laude) · Bachelor of Engineering in Computer Science, VTU.
Founder story
How I built Gowrk from the ground up - 6,000 users in six months.
I founded Gowrk, a two-sided job marketplace where blue- and grey-collar workers could find and apply for jobs, and employers could post roles and manage candidates in one place.
The existing platforms were job boards. Gowrk was built to be jobs, networking, and upskilling in one place - the LinkedIn these workers never had. I started with jobs, because that's what got someone to open the app.
Problem
India has over 300 million blue- and grey-collar workers, and Covid hit them hardest. My cousin is one of them. When he lost his job in 2021, LinkedIn was built for white-collar workers, and what existed for everyone else stopped at listing jobs.
Research
Before I built anything, I spent two months working construction - painting, carpentry, general labour - to understand the job from the inside. For quantitative validation, I surveyed 2,100 trade-school students on paper, in person; for qualitative insight, I had general conversations with blue- and grey-collar workers directly, and visited 18 companies to hear the hiring problem from the employer's side.
Users
I targeted trade-school graduates and daily-wage workers, 18–50 age range, in Tier-2 cities where hiring is least organised. I launched as a website for both job seekers and employers, then moved the worker side to an app once it was clear they were searching on a phone - 750 million smartphone users in India by 2021.
Business
Blue-collar hiring was recovering as India came out of lockdown - construction and manufacturing employment both grew through 2021-22. Those employers hire at volume and lose people constantly, so the same role gets re-posted every few months. That's the recurring revenue: a subscription the employer keeps paying because the vacancy keeps coming back.
Ship
I launched after six months of research and development. The companies I had interviewed became the first customers, with 20 jobs posted in week one, and the workers I had surveyed became the first job seekers. Both sides of the marketplace were people I had already met.
Results
Gowrk grew to 6,000 job seekers and 240 employers across 2 cities, with 8,200+ job applications between them. Four months after launch I shipped an Android app for the job seeker side, which reached 2,000+ active devices and a 4.9 rating.
Why it ended
I bootstrapped Gowrk with my own money, and it never scaled the way I wanted it to. I underestimated how hard it is to match supply and demand, and scaling with a small team was harder still. The post-Covid funding slump had closed the market by 2023, I couldn't raise the investment I needed to keep going, and I stopped the company in September 2023.
References
The clearest endorsement I can give is simple: after his internship, we brought him back as a Product Management Associate on a working-student basis. If you are considering Puneeth, hire him.
I would confidently rank him among the top 5% of students I have encountered in terms of both intelligence and dedication.
Puneeth stood out for his strong engagement, leadership, and analytical rigor. He combines leadership skills with a collaborative and supportive attitude, which made him well appreciated by his peers.
He has consistently demonstrated his ability to thoroughly analyse data to support his strategic recommendations and to evaluate options rigorously before reaching conclusions.
To view the full letters of recommendation, please fill the form.
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