A conversation with Apoorva, Growth Marketing Leader who has spent seven years building growth engines across fintech, hospitality, e-commerce, entertainment, and mobility, and who will tell you plainly that growth marketing is a boring process, and means it as a compliment 

Apoorva has spent seven years across some of the most complex consumer funnels in India. Fintech. Hospitality. E-commerce. Entertainment. Mobility. On paper, that could look like someone who could not make up their mind. In practice, it is the most valuable thing about her. 

She is sharp, specific, and allergic to the mythology around growth marketing. What she says about her field, about ambition, about processing everything privately while looking sorted externally, is worth reading slowly. 

Exciting and Unsettling at the Same Time 

Who is Apoorva right now, across the different lives you are living? 

Right now, she is juggling a lot: preparing for the future, being at peace with her current space, and trying to accept that everything does not have to make sense all the time. 

Professionally, she is in a transition. Seven years of building things — campaigns, funnels, teams, strategies — across some of India’s most interesting consumer brands. And now looking for the next move, the one she can invest the next seven or ten years in. Equally exciting and unsettling, she says. At the same time. 

Personally, she is a family person with very few close friends. Those people hold priority. They are both her strength and her weakness. She tries to be there for them as and when she can. 

All in all, she tries to keep her life and priorities as simple and clear as possible. 

“I am trying to accept that everything does not have to make sense all the time.” 

That last line is doing more work than it looks like. Someone who is strategic and intentional by nature, and who has spent seven years in a discipline built on measurement and optimisation, choosing to sit with not knowing: that is not a small thing. 

Beneath the Metrics: Belongingness 

After all these years of analysing what makes people click, stay, or come back, what do you think people are actually searching for beneath the metrics? 

Belongingness. The sense of association. 

The question every user is unconsciously asking, she says, is: does buying or using this product or brand make me more associated with the kind of person I am or want to be? 

India is a price-sensitive, deal-seeking market, and that lever gets exploited constantly. But across every category she has worked in, the brands that actually made users stay were the ones that made users feel something about themselves. A playlist that understood their mood. A booking experience that did not make them feel stupid. A brand that reflected their identity back at them. 

“The brands that made users stay were the ones that made users feel something about themselves.” 

This is the answer that sits underneath all the retention playbooks and lifecycle models. Price gets people in the door. Identity keeps them. She has watched this play out across five industries and it is still the same answer every time. 

Pick the Right Room. Build the Right Support. 

Was there ever a phase where you felt pressure to become a more acceptable or conventional version of yourself professionally? 

A lot of times, yes. 

What she has learned over time is that you need to pick the right room to present your opinions, and make sure you have the right support behind you. There is only one place at the top, she says, but it is never one person’s effort alone that gets you there. 

She has been lucky to have had superiors who motivated her and taught her how to make her voice count correctly. She tries to be that person for her team now. 

“There is only one place at the top, but it is never one person’s effort alone that gets you there.” 

The phrase ‘make your voice count correctly’ is worth pausing on. Not louder. Not differently. Correctly. It implies precision, timing, and context, which is a much more sophisticated thing to have figured out than simply learning to speak up. 

Sorted on the Outside. Constantly Processing on the Inside. 

What is something you are still figuring out privately, even though externally your career may look very sorted? 

From the outside, she probably looks like someone with a plan. And she does have one. She is strategic, intentional. But privately, she is someone who is constantly processing. She notices a lot: what is shifting around her, what external factors could affect outcomes, where the gaps are. 

That makes her good at her job. But it also means she has to consciously remind herself to zoom out and trust that not everything needs to be solved right now. 

In times like these, she reminds herself to focus on what is in her control. Being rigorous without being restless. 

“I notice a lot. That makes me good at my job. But it also means I have to remind myself to zoom out and trust that not everything needs to be solved right now.” 

The gap between how a career looks and how it feels from the inside is one of the central themes of this series. She names it without softening it. Strategic and intentional on the surface. Constantly processing underneath. Both things are true, and neither cancels the other out. 

Quieter and More Specific 

Do you think ambition becomes healthier or more exhausting as people grow older? 

It depends entirely on you, she says. 

In your twenties, ambition is fuel. It pushes you that extra mile. As you get older, it can stay fuel, or it can become a weight: an expectation carried over from your past, a pressure to keep showing up the same way you always did, even when what you want has quietly shifted. 

For her, ambition has become quieter and more specific. Less interested in titles. More interested in building things and contributing to problems she is genuinely passionate about. 

“My ambition has become a little quieter and more specific. Less interested in titles. More in building things that matter to me.” 

Quieter and more specific is one of the better descriptions of what healthy ambition looks like mid-career. It is not less ambitious. It is more directed. The noise of external validation has been turned down, and what remains is cleaner. 

Growth Is a Boring Process. She Means That as a Compliment. 

What is one thing about the growth marketing industry that people glamorize too much from the outside? 

The silver bullet myth. The idea that growth marketing is about genius one-off hacks, one Dropbox referral loop, one Airbnb-Craigslist trick, and that the job is essentially waiting for a cinematic epiphany to arrive. 

People read the case studies and think growth is a sexy product. It is not, she says. It is a boring process. And she means that with full affection. 

The reality: about 80% of experiments fail. You have to make peace with being wrong most of the time. You have to let data kill your favourite ideas. A huge chunk of the actual work is data plumbing: cleaning messy tracking, auditing broken pixels, patching leaky onboarding flows. Weeks of that before you get to anything interesting. 

Real growth is not a hockey-stick spike from one brilliant campaign. It is stacking dozens of one-percent improvements across retention, pricing, and triggers until the compounding quietly does something remarkable. 

And none of it works if the product is not genuinely good. You cannot hack your way out of something people do not care about. A viral loop on top of a hollow brand is just a leaky bucket. Growth marketing, at its core, is a rigorous way of scaling something that already deserves to grow. 

“Growth marketing is a boring process. And I mean that with full affection.” 

This is the most precise debunking of growth mythology we have heard in this series. She is not being cynical about the field. She loves it. But she loves the real version of it, the unglamorous, plumbing-heavy, mostly-failing version that actually produces results. That distinction matters. 

The Anxiety Is Normal. The Premise Is Wrong. 

If someone younger feels anxious because their career path looks non-linear or unconventional, what would you want to tell them? 

The anxiety is normal, she says. But the premise is wrong. 

There is no conventional path. The people whose careers look straight and clean from the outside have had their own detours, reversals, and moments of not knowing. You just cannot see it. 

And the diversity of experience is not a liability. It is the thing. She has worked across fintech, hospitality, e-commerce, entertainment, and mobility. On paper, that could look unfocused. But every one of those contexts gave her something the others did not. She understands users in a way that someone who has only ever worked in one industry simply cannot. That is her actual expertise. 

Your non-linearity is not something to apologise for. It is your edge. The sooner you start owning it as a narrative instead of explaining it as a liability, the better. 

“Your non-linearity is not something to apologise for. It is your actual edge.” 

She says this from inside a career that looks exactly like what she is describing. Five industries in seven years. And she is not explaining it apologetically. She is presenting it as the thing that makes her better at the job. That is the reframe. And it is the right one. 

A Note From Decoding Draupadi 

What stayed with us is the answer on belongingness. She could have said retention, or loyalty, or brand affinity. She said belongingness. The sense of association. Does this brand make me more associated with the kind of person I am or want to be? 

That is a consumer insight dressed up as a marketing answer. And it applies far beyond her industry. The communities people join, the content they share, the brands they stay with: all of it is, underneath the behaviour, a question about identity. Who am I? What does this say about me? Does this fit? 

Apoorva has been asking that question on behalf of users across five industries. She has also, clearly, been asking it about her own career. Both things are true. Both are worth reading. 

If this felt like someone you know, share it with her. 

From the outside she probably looks like someone with a plan. Privately, she says, she is someone who is constantly processing. This conversation is about both. Find it at @decodingdraupadi. 

Apoorva is a Growth Marketing Leader. This interview was conducted as part of the Decoding Draupadi Brand Manager Series.