Rajesh Nerlikar Joins Regrow as Vice President of Product

Hey there, I’m Rajesh, and I’m thrilled to join Regrow as Vice President of Product. I’ve spent my entire career working on mission-driven B2B2C products: at Opower, our products encouraged residential energy efficiency; at HelloWallet and Morningstar, our products helped people improve their financial wellness; and at Savonix, our products reduced the prevalence of Alzheimer’s across the world. It’s deeply gratifying to know you’re making a difference in the world.

My interest in climate tech started 15 years ago.

I was frustrated by the number of paper receipts that I received at every retail store. I never needed them, and it felt like such a waste of paper and ink. After deciding to leave Accenture’s government consulting practice to go to business school, I wrote my application essay about a paperless receipt system that could improve the efficiency of retail ecosystems. It really got me thinking about how software can tackle environmental challenges across the world.

While at Michigan Ross, I met classmates from the Erb Institute who were getting their MBA degrees focused on Sustainability. In my second year there, I started a company with a classmate to encourage residential energy efficiency. Our first product was a Facebook app that compared your energy usage to that of friends and family. Unfortunately, we couldn’t get enough traction selling to utilities, so I joined Opower a few years before it went public as a Product Manager (my first official role with the title.) At Opower, I worked on improving the efficiency of our operations through internal tools that automated tasks like personalizing the three energy-saving tips on our Home Energy Reports, which went to millions of consumers each month.

The last six years of my career have been spent building Prodify, a consulting firm that helps startups, scaleups and enterprise companies become more product-driven through product coaching, advising, consulting and recruiting. I worked with nearly 40 different product teams during that time, which gave me a unique perspective on the most common challenges faced by SaaS product teams. It also helped me decide that I was ready to get back into a  full-time product leadership role. Climate tech was the first sector I researched, and I was so fortunate to connect with Anastasia through one of Regrow’s investors.

I often think about the legacy I’ll leave behind through the products I work on.

I couldn’t think of a more exciting mission and product portfolio to work on than Regrow’s platform. I’m so excited to help producers improve the resilience of their farms, both financially and environmentally through the adoption of regenerative farming practices. And I’m so excited that those interventions can also help Regrow customers accelerate their path to hitting their sustainability goals. This is the beauty of the B2B2C business model - the key outcomes of both our customers and their food producers are tightly aligned.

Please follow me - and Regrow - to see how our team and products reduce GHG emissions globally, driving other key environmental outcomes including water quality and biodiversity.

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