Subash Rajaseelan

Early life and education

Rajaseelan grew up in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India. He attended Chettinad Vidyashram for his secondary education, where he studied a computer science track.^[1]

He earned a Bachelor of Engineering (B.E.) in Electronics and Communication Engineering from Anna University in May 2018, with a minor in Business and Management. As an undergraduate, he was a member of the Institution of Electronics and Telecommunication Engineers (IETE) and IEEE student chapters and volunteered with the National Cadet Corps.^[1] His final-year work included a publication in the International Journal of Engineering and Technology on an automated firefighting robot using image processing.^[5]

In September 2021, he relocated to the United States to begin a Master of Science in Engineering Management at Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts, with coursework spanning advanced product management, digital product design, statistics, and entrepreneurship. He graduated in August 2023 with a 3.8 GPA.^[3]

Career

SigIQ.ai

In June 2025, Rajaseelan joined SigIQ.ai in Berkeley, California, as Chief of Staff and Product Lead, reporting directly to founder and CEO Dr. Karttikeya Mangalam. SigIQ had emerged from stealth in April 2025 with a $9.5 million seed round to build personalized AI tutoring; its flagship product, EverTutor.ai, surpassed 10,000 users in its first three months.^[6]

Within his first month, Rajaseelan led senior hiring across engineering and machine learning, helping the company close several foundational technical roles. He led development of the first version of the product, which improved learning outcomes for tier-3 students by 20%, and executed a go-to-market strategy that drove 30% month-over-month lead growth.^[1]

Thinkverse

In May 2023, Rajaseelan joined Thinkverse as Founding Product Manager and head of go-to-market. The company was pre-revenue and pre-customer at the time of his joining. Over two years, he led 0-to-1 product, design, and GTM for an adaptive whiteboard-interactive AI math tutor across grades 3–12, lifting student learning outcomes by an average of 30% across pilot districts.^[2]

He drove the product from zero to product-market fit through weekly teacher co-creation cycles and rapid iteration loops; 80% of users reported being "extremely disappointed" without it in a Sean Ellis test, well above the 40% PMF benchmark. His engagement and retention loops sustained 60% teacher weekly active usage and 50% student weekly usage across 30+ schools, both 1.5× the PMF benchmark and a leading indicator of expansion.

Rajaseelan designed and executed a conference and cold-outreach GTM motion, building a CRM pipeline from scratch and scaling annual recurring revenue from $0 to multi-six-figure across 30+ schools and 15,000+ students. He stood up a hybrid onshore/offshore curriculum team from scratch (hiring, ops, QA), compounding content-delivery velocity by 50%+ month-over-month and unlocking coverage of 50+ curricula across all 50 U.S. state standards. He served as the company's spokesperson at the Future of Education Technology Conference (FETC).^[1]

Aliaswire

From May to December 2022, Rajaseelan held a Fintech Product Manager Co-op at Aliaswire, Inc. in Boston, Massachusetts, working on the Payvus SMB Credit Card platform. Reporting to the company president, he owned the cardholder experience end-to-end, from research through launch.^[2]

He achieved a 20% increase in card activation and a 40% reduction in KYC and shipping time through product-led enhancements; defined CLTV, churn, and activation KPIs from BI dashboards. He partnered with the company president to validate go-to-market strategy via customer research, and led KnockNoc, an internal operations product, from charter to handoff aligning engineering, data, and devops.

Northeastern era

Beginning in September 2021, Rajaseelan held multiple concurrent roles at Northeastern University while pursuing his master's degree. As Program Lead, ITS Operations and Digital Experience, he built an operational BI dashboard that identified and resolved 30% of operational inefficiencies, and shipped PowerApps tools used daily by 70+ ITS staff. As an Instructional Assistant managing daily classroom-tech operations, he ranked in the top 10% of performers, leading to his promotion to Program Lead in four months.^[1]

He also improved engagement on the Student Hub Portal's "My Day" tab by 35% via UX research, user interviews, and A/B testing of 500+ unique user behaviors.

From February to September 2022, he served as Graduate Research Assistant at the D'Amore-McKim School of Business under Prof. Fernando F. Suarez, co-authoring research on Web3 innovation, market dynamics, and "hybrid trap theory," combining statistical and market research.^[3]

Freshworks

In December 2019, Rajaseelan joined Freshworks in Chennai as a Product Consultant for Sales and Marketing Automation. He owned go-to-market for the company's CRM and marketing automation suite in the Eastern United States, closing more than 200 customer logos including Hollywood.com and Getcallers at 120% of MRR and quota targets, with a 10% close rate and 24% qualification rate.^[1]

He ran full-cycle sales, led targeted Freshmarketer campaigns, and drove the integrations roadmap via cross-functional PRD analysis with Product and Pre-sales, increasing trial conversion by 13%. He was named Freshworks' Rising Star in Q4 2020 and Chief Closer in Q2 2021.

Extramarks Education

Rajaseelan began his career at Extramarks Education in June 2018 as part of the founding business development team for the company's Chennai retail expansion.^[2] He earned three promotions in 18 months as part of the founding Chennai retail team, advancing from Founding Business Development Executive to Senior BDE and then Assistant Business Development Manager, by achieving 140% of revenue target.

He pioneered the company's hub-and-spoke sales model across Tamil Nadu, and reduced customer acquisition cost by 30% through school partnerships and referral campaigns. He was awarded the company's Presidents Club recognition for 2018.

Aspiring Product Managers Club

In September 2021, shortly after arriving at Northeastern, Rajaseelan co-founded APMC with Pearl Pullan and others as a professional-development organization for early-career product managers, originally distinguishing practical product management from project management coursework.^[3] APMC scaled from three founding members to 1,200+ learners nationwide by August 2023, becoming the largest ed-tech organization for aspiring product managers in the United States.^[1] Rajaseelan co-led the organization with 6 executive vice presidents, 10 vice presidents, and a 20-person product team. APMC has continued to expand since his tenure as Co-President.

APMC ships four flagship learning products:

• Protothon: a two-week no-code product prototyping hackathon designed as a hands-on introduction to product thinking (editions 1.0, 2.0, and 3.0). The first edition (Spring 2022) drew 100+ learners across 33 teams; the curriculum has since been adopted by other universities.^[3]
• NorthStar: a four-week structured product management bootcamp.
• Product Alpha: an applied product incubator where APMC learners ship real web and mobile applications under PM mentorship.
• A year-round mentorship program pairing learners with practicing product managers across industry.

The organization drove 100,000+ field and social impressions, maintained a 60% email open rate via HubSpot learning-ops automation, hosted 21+ events including hackathons, interview series, and case-study programs, and secured partnerships with ed-tech brands like Clicked and RocketBlocks.^[1] Rajaseelan continues to contribute to APMC through its alumni speaker series.

Awards and recognition

Speaking, writing, and media appearances

Rajaseelan has spoken or served as a panelist at the following venues:

• Speaker, "How to Disagree: The Power of Productive Disagreement in an Increasingly Polarized World," Innovative Learning Conference, The Nueva School (March 12–13, 2026), joint session with SigIQ.ai CEO Dr. Karttikeya Mangalam.^[8]
• Speaker, MTSS Summit 2025, Branching Minds.^[9]
• Speaker, "Building AI Products," Product Conference at Northeastern University (2025).
• Speaker, "Evolution of the Role of the Builder," Product Conference at Northeastern University (2026).
• Speaker, "GenAI's Impact on Education," Boston AI Forum (2025).
• Panelist, "Empathy & Evangelism in Product Management," TPG Live Roundtable (2024).
• Panelist, Sherman Center Alumni Panel, Northeastern Generate (2025).
• Panelist, YIPNE × Northeastern Indian Culture Association Leadership Panel (2025).
• Spokesperson, Future of Education Technology Conference (FETC), for Thinkverse.
• APMC Alumni Speaker Series at Northeastern University, ongoing.

He writes on LinkedIn about "AI × product and how PM roles are changing."^[1]

Judging and review

Rajaseelan has served as a judge for the following hackathons and competitions:

• Ohlone Hacks (2026).
• LaunchAthons Demo Day (2025).
• Northeastern Protothon (2024), the student product-management hackathon at his alma mater.

Media appearances

• C-Suite Brief (2026): "Subash Rajaseelan: Making 1-on-1 AI Tutoring Accessible to All Students," a feature article on his work at SigIQ.ai. Read.^[10]
• Podcast appearance: "The AI EdTech Frontier: Assumptions to Outcomes" on Spotify. Listen.^[11]
• Tech Roast Show (2024): episode of Socially Inept's Tech Roast Show, a viral street-comedy series in which professional comedians interview tech workers in cities like Boston and San Francisco. Published on the show's TikTok (view) and YouTube (watch) channels.^[7]

Personal projects

• MetaEstate: a Web3/DeFi application for buying and selling virtual land on metaverse blockchains without prior crypto knowledge.
• RightNow: a classroom Q&A platform allowing students to ask anonymously to remove fear of judgment.
• Pepperuni: an AI-powered resume builder.
• Bleutwo: a CO₂ footprint tracking app.
• Automated firefighting robot (Anna University, 2018): a image-processing-based robot, published in IJET.^[5]

Personal life

Rajaseelan is fluent in English (full professional proficiency) and Tamil (native), with elementary Hindi. He is the first member of his family to obtain a foreign master's degree.^[2] He resides in the San Francisco Bay Area.

References