Kiran Kulkarni

• Drive strategic marketing function for FDA regulated Food & Beverage (F&B) & Waste Water segments
• Creating customer/market insights, business models/segmentation, NPD stage-gate, and Go-To-Market (GTM) strategies
• P&L and Strategic Planning: Market sizing, growth (>10%YoY), product pricing/mix, rationalization, deliver high margin growth (>45% EBITDA)
• Products: Antimicrobials for direct intervention to control foodborne pathogens
• Cross functional synergies: products, resources, CRMs, marketing campaigns, and market opportunities with parent organization
• Decision influencer for key customer contracts, digital marketing, and sustainability.
• Supervisor and interview panel member for technical, marketing, and account management sales roles
• Chemistry advocacy team member of Arxada for California and EPA.

• Functional lead for EPA regulated disinfectants portfolio ($100M) and SME for disinfectant wipes
• Market lead: Consumer/sustainability private label, Food Safety, Healthcare & I&I market segments
• Created five-year healthcare and supported five-year consumer market strategy for disinfectant products to add ~ $40M in revenues with EBITDA margin ~ $25M
• Cross-functional leadership: Customer/market insights, stage-gate projects ~ $30M in 5-year peak sales
• Utilized CEB Gartner’s Marketing/Sales Challenger >$500k-$1M in annual sales for NUGEN NR wipe
• Sales: Indirect reports/interface with 5 account managers
• P&L decisions on pricing, new contracts, volume and gross margins
• Built business cases to decide on financing or risking equity dilution of a start-up company

Key achievements:

• Grew pre-saturated disinfectant wipes business 5x (~ $35M) from 2018-2020
• Promoted in title and corporate grades 3x in 5 years
• Role Model” for leadership of disinfectant wipes business
• 2 out of 3000 employees received it
• Above & Beyond” Lonza cash reward/recognition
• About 70 out of 3000 employees received this award
• Drove “No rinse food contact disinfectant wipe” to second position at the World of Wipes 2020
• Drove sustainable innovation “NUGEN EHP RTU” to EPA Safer Choice award for 2020
• Presenter at Industry events – Cleaning Products Latin America, World of Wipes, and ACI 2022.

• Provided commercial leadership for Industrials products ($40M)
• Markets: Plastics & Lubricants
• Drove product pipeline growth understanding asset constraints, risks, costs, and margins.
• Cross-functional lead (Sales/R&D/plant/QA/Customer service) for New Product Development (NPD)
• SWOT analysis to define market strategy
• Defined forecasts, budgets, pricing strategy of product line and manage pricing of products
• Managed demand, price agreements, costs, and margins of product lines.
• Streamlined the product development process for faster time-to-market and improved efficiency via flexible production.
• Led cross-functional teams to deliver high-quality products on time and within budgetary constraints.

• Provided market intelligence for new opportunities in existing and new markets (personal care/Oil & Gas)
• With sales teams, identified and evaluated market opportunities-based on plant capacity, volume and margin potential
• Managed NPD product commercialization process from pilot scale to full scale production
• Identified products with positive/negative capacity impact on plant for add/drop decisions
• Analyzed personal care/Oil &Gas for market entry and changes to existing markets (plastics, lubricants).

Key achievements:

• Drove underutilized assets of a 70-year-old plant and product lines to full capacity.

• Eliminated liquid ester packaged products with negative contribution margin ~ est. $1M in cost savings.

• Added solid ester products to portfolio ~ est. $4M Revenue (~$1.2M EBITDA)

• Drove the commodity product line from flat growth to respectable 5% growth and EBITDA ~ $15M.

• Planned & implemented first ever price increase

• Executed contracts (est. $10M) with sales management

• Qualified potential customers across Pharma (APIs), Food, Personal Care, & Biotechnology markets
• Developed customers and applications for patented MRT technology for nano fluidizing application
• Marketing support: public relations, case study interviews, webinar/email campaign support and fulfillment.

• Defined target specialty chemical markets and analyzed needs
• Devised business concepts/product offerings across markets
• Recommended value creating strategies for Polyglycols and Surfactants business unit.

• Led start-up trading business division- Pharmaceutical raw materials for APIs.
• Developed and managed portfolio of multiple customer & vendor accounts
• Managed supply/demand pricing, documentation, & international logistics
• Products/Markets: Petrochemical solvents- Pharmaceuticals (APIs)/Agrochemicals (Herbicides).