Mantavya Upadhyay
Strategy, Product & Analytics
I am an IIT Kanpur alumnus working as Associate Manager, Strategy and Business Operations at Navi, where I lead cross‑functional initiatives blending strategy, product, and analytics.
My experience includes sustainability consulting for government and PSU stakeholders, AI‑driven automation projects with ITC Limited and Zydus Healthcare, and research published in IEEE and Springer.
I focus on building data‑centric products and driving impactful analytics.
Work Experience
A timeline of my professional roles, internships, and key initiatives.
Associate Manager, Strategy and Business Operations (SBO)
Navi • India's 4th largest UPI app with $1.36 billion+ AUM
July 2026 - Present
- Drive strategic cross-functional initiatives at the intersection of product, business, and analytics for the office of the Director of Strategy & Business Operations (SBO).
- Manage end-to-end vendor operations, optimizing partner solutions to improve cost efficiency and operational workflows.
Founder's Office
Byufuel • India's Largest Used Cooking Oil Aggregator for Sustainable Aviation Fuel
January 2026 - April 2026
- Led a team of 6 undergrads & designers to develop a route optimization algorithm.
- Focused on minimizing carbon emissions during used cooking oil collection from restaurants.
Net Zero Carbon Consultant
Joint Initiative of Government of Andhra Pradesh & IIT Kanpur
September 2025 - June 2026
- Developed a strategic roadmap to achieve Net Zero Carbon Emissions for Kuppam, the constituency of Andhra Pradesh's Hon'ble Chief Minister Shri Chandrababu Naidu.
- Built ML models to forecast electricity demand from Organic & Inorganic Growth and analyzed Scope 1 & 2 emissions for the constituency.
- Collaborating with Kuppam Area Development Authority to ensure compliance with upcoming and current industries in the area.
KITES Intern
ITC Limited • Paperboards & Specialty Papers Division
May 2025 - July 2025
- Analyzed the plant-wide electricity generation and distribution network to identify major power consuming equipment.
- Proposed energy optimization measures for 1.7% reduction in power consumption, leading to 21,000+ tons of CO2 emissions reduction and INR 6.89 Cr. annual savings.
Product Strategy Intern
Zydus Healthcare Limited • Neurosciences Division
January 2025 - July 2025
- Owned product positioning and promotional strategy analysis for the $120Mn brand LEVEXX within the $11.4 Cr+ Indian epilepsy therapeutics market; evaluated the 40+20 tablet promotional pack using adoption, response, & channel-level metrics to prioritize high-impact levers.
- Led primary research with 50+ neurologists, 30+ patients, and 20+ chemists into 12+ decision-driving KPIs and adoption models; delivered data-backed recommendations on messaging and rollout.
Making IIT Kanpur Net Zero Water
Chandrakanta Kesavan Centre for Energy Policy, IIT Kanpur • CSR Funding of INR 29.7 Lakhs
August 2023 - September 2024
- Led a team of 7 undergrads to pitch an extensive 4-phase roadmap to the Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI) for CSR Funding.
- Coordinated with the Institute Works Department to secure funding of INR 29.7 lakhs from SECI for monitoring water consumption across campus.
- Contracted Kritsnam Technologies to deploy 27 IoT-based flow meters and set up a water consumption & extraction dashboard.
Technical PM Intern
Noora Health • NGO working to improve medical literacy among caregivers
December 2023 - April 2024
- Owned the problem definition and rollout of an automated Nurse Attendance Tracker, aligning operations, engineering, and field teams; reduced administrative workload for 18.9k+ health workers by over 20%.
- Drove adoption of a multilingual medical QnA chatbot by automating responses at scale, improving access to reliable information for 155k+ mobile users across diverse language groups.
Education
My academic journey, credentials, and campus leadership positions.
Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur
Undergraduate | B.Tech in Electrical Engineering • GPA: 8.8 / 10.0
October 2022 - May 2026
Financial Risk Manager (FRM®) Part I
GARP (Global Association of Risk Professionals) • Cleared May 2026 Examination
May 2026
Class XII, CBSE (Senior Secondary)
M.B. International School • Percentage: 95.8%
2022 Completed
Class X, CBSE (Secondary)
Yogiraj Public School • Percentage: 96.8%
2020 Completed
Primary / Secondary Schooling
Delhi Public School Gwalior
Early Education
Publications & Research
Research papers accepted and published in IEEE and Springer Nature journals.
A Congestion-Aware Simulation-Based Planning Framework for Battery Swapping Station Expansion Planning
IEEE International Conference on Power Electronics, Drives and Energy Systems (PEDES) 2026
Publisher Link- Presents a simulation model to strategically plan the expansion of battery swapping networks while mitigating potential congestion.
SimulationOptimizationEV TechnologyEnergy
Optimizing Season-Specific Reference Temperatures and Probabilistic Forecasting for Indian DISCOMs
IEEE International Conference on Power Electronics, Drives and Energy Systems (PEDES) 2026
Publisher Link- Focuses on improving electricity demand predictions for Indian distribution companies (DISCOMs) through probabilistic forecasting and tailored seasonal temperature baselines.
ForecastingEnergyMachine LearningAnalytics
A Smartphone-Based Hybrid Model for Real-Time Monitoring of Aggressive Driving Behavior using Multidimensional Dynamic Time Warping
IEEE ICEPE Conference 2025 (Published in IEEE Xplore Digital Library)
Publisher Link- Predicts real-time harsh driving behavior in automobiles using accelerometer and gyroscope readings from smartphones.
- Employed Multidimensional Dynamic Time Warping technique for the identification of harsh braking and turning sequences while driving.
Signal ProcessingMachine LearningTransportation
Climate Change: Impact of global warming on India’s electricity consumption
Global Conference on Decarbonizing India 2025
Publisher Link- Received the Best Poster Award from Hon'ble Union Minister Shri Nitin Gadkari
- Modelled the relationship between temperature and electricity consumption for all 28 states of India.
- Calculated the temperature elasticity coefficients for all states to quantify the impact of global warming on electricity consumption.
Climate ChangeEnergyData Modeling
Energy Transition Modeling: Short-Term Electricity Demand Forecasting Using Seq2Seq Encoder–Decoder Model
Journal: IITK Directions, Springer Nature 2024
Publisher Link- Created a framework for data processing and deploying machine learning models to forecast electricity consumption.
- Deployed a Seq2Seq Encoder-Decoder Model incorporating hourly weather features.
Deep LearningForecastingEnergyMachine Learning
problems · experiments · learnings
Labs
A collection of problems I’ve explored, systems I’ve built, and ideas I’ve changed my mind about.
Strategy and Ops8 min
I Built a Route Optimization System. The Algorithm Wasn’t the Hard Part.
Designing a vehicle routing system for Used Cooking Oil collection to supply Sustainable Aviation Fuel feedstock across Indian metros.
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AI and Simulation8 min
Can a Digital Twin Actually Help Design an EV Battery-Swapping Network?
Building a digital twin of an EV battery-swapping network to simulate wait times, stress-test outages, and optimize station placement.
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Data Science7 min
Forecasting Electricity Demand When the Future Doesn’t Look Like the Past
Using STL decomposition, PACF lag features, and Random Forest on detrended demand profiles for long-term regional power grid planning.
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