Sai Teja Challapalli
Growth Marketer & Indie Maker
6+ years scaling 30+ brands across growth and marketing, managing $10M+ in managed marketing budgets across Meta, Google, LinkedIn, Reddit, and Amazon. Alongside paid acquisition, strong hold on conversion rate optimization, retention, and SEO. Built 3+ startups of my own too, not just running other people's growth, but shipping, marketing, and shutting down my own products when they didn't work.
Acquisition was never where the work stopped. At every engagement below: 8Views, KoinX, BondbloX. The real value was in what happened after the click: fixing activation, retention, and whatever was actually broken in the funnel, not just buying traffic.
8Views
Performance Marketer
2021 – 2023 · 30+ brands · Real estate, e-commerce, D2C, healthcare, education
(Dryp by Evolut)
(Nourish You)
~₹3Cr each
Dryp by Evolut Visit
Athleisure e-commerce · Meta Ads + Shopify CRO
Took the brand from 0.2 to 2 ROAS in 45 days. Started by mining competitor reviews and Amazon/Flipkart listings to find real customer language and actual pain points, then rebuilt ad copy and creative around what customers already said in their own words.
When traffic still wasn't converting after the creative overhaul, the problem shifted to the storefront. Used Hotjar and heatmaps to trace where users dropped off on the Shopify store, then fixed SKU presentation, social proof placement, and trust signals. Once conversion rate improved, layered email and WhatsApp retention sequences on top.
Nourish You Visit
Organic superfood brand · Meta Ads + retention
Ran the same playbook as Dryp. Mined competitor and Amazon/Flipkart reviews to find real customer pain points and language, rebuilt ad copy and creative around what customers were already saying. Used Hotjar and heatmaps to find drop-off points on the storefront and fixed SKU presentation, social proof, and trust signals. Layered email and WhatsApp retention on top once conversion improved, which is what drove the returning customer rate up.
customer rate
Vamshiram Homes Visit
Real estate developer · Meta + Google · ₹10–15L/month managed spend
Managed ₹10–15L/month across Meta and Google, owned creative and landing page conversion end-to-end for a high-ticket developer.
- Meta: open video-view campaigns across micro-located audiences, retargeting 25%+ video viewers with dedicated lead-gen sequences to filter for real intent
- Google: Search, Performance Max, and Display running in parallel for intent capture + discovery coverage
~₹3Cr each
KoinX Visit
Founding Growth Team
2022–23 (India) · 2025–26 (Global) · Crypto tax platform
in 90 days
(global expansion)
tested & called
Fixed a broken attribution system. iOS 14+ killed cookie-based tracking: campaigns were showing double-counted or missing attribution, so spend decisions were being made on bad data. Moved to GTM server-side tracking and added a persistent signup user ID cross-checked against GA to eliminate double-counting.
Got the ad accounts live when no one else could. As a founding team member, paved the way for Meta and Google ad accounts on a crypto tax platform, the kind most agencies won't touch. Worked directly with legal teams and platform specialists, handled contracts and compliance documentation. Google is now one of KoinX's most profitable channels as a direct result.
Fixed the drop-off, stage by stage. The real funnel was signup → OTP verification → wallet addition → filing and payment. Mapped where users actually dropped off between each stage and built ConvertKit email + Wati WhatsApp sequences targeting each specific gap, not a generic "complete your signup" nudge.
Global expansion (2025–26): Inherited an account with ROAS under 0.2. Took it to 1.1 in 3 months running Google as the primary channel into Canada, US, and Australia.
Spent ~$20K on Reddit as part of the global channel mix. Landed at roughly break-even, not profitable. Recognized it wasn't the highest-leverage channel and stopped pushing spend into it rather than continuing to optimize a losing bet.
BondbloX Visit
Growth Marketing Manager, full-funnel
~1 year · Regulated fintech · Ultra-HNI bond investors · Built from zero, no team
Owned growth end-to-end for a regulated fintech platform serving ultra-HNI bond investors, no team, no existing playbook, built from zero.
Lifecycle & Retention
Built CleverTap segmentation across three user states: bought bonds, signed up but never bought, bought once and stopped, and ran differentiated email, push, and WhatsApp sequences per segment. A single "you haven't done X" nudge doesn't work on an ultra-HNI investor; the message had to match where they actually were in the decision process.
Acquisition: Google Ads
Ran Google Ads across global markets, optimized for signup quality over volume. A regulated investment platform can't absorb high-volume, low-intent traffic: every unqualified lead adds compliance overhead, so the optimization target was qualified signups, not raw count.
SEO: owned solo
- On-page: schema markup, FAQ structure for featured snippets
- Off-page: backlinks from relevant DR domains in the finance space
- Technical: page speed improvements, load time reduction
Email Marketing
Automation and personalized sequences building webinar funnels to move prospects toward conversion before sales ever entered the conversation. The goal was to arrive at the sales call already informed and partially convinced, shortening the cycle on a high-consideration product.
Own Tools
Self-directed · Built, shipped, and in two cases shut down
2022 – present
Before Hustle Club and Future Self, two earlier products didn't make it: Performance Rhino (2022, an ad-copy generator for e-commerce, built pre-ChatGPT) and Shri Sri GPT (2023, an AI chatbot trained on Art of Living's knowledge base, which drew investment interest that ultimately didn't convert). Both got shut down. Those lessons are what built what's below.
Hustle Club Visit
Currently pausedSleep & early-rising community · 21- and 30-day structured challenges · Paid
Started as a personal fix: waking at 5am to build consistency. Grew into a paid community helping people fix sleep and become early risers through structured challenges, with a personalized, therapy-informed approach.
- Word of mouth, the first real signal the product worked
- Cold outreach into adjacent communities (5am clubs, running clubs, book clubs), leading with value not a pitch
- Reddit, the breakout channel. Built to 3,000+ karma writing real sleep-hygiene content, generated 200+ signups for a free resource, converted ~10 paid sales once monetized
- Paid Meta campaigns running alongside, contributing additional sales
(sleep content)
Operational bandwidth was the constraint, not product-market fit.
Future Self Visit
LiveWebsite blocker · Browser extension · Focus & sleep hygiene
The insight from running Hustle Club: the problem was never waking up early, it was staying up late. Built Future Self as a website blocker that warns users during work hours and, specifically, during wind-down and sleep hours when distraction costs the most.
- Aggressive ASEO: directory launches, ranked top 20 of the week on Peerlist
- Embedded in self-improvement and productivity subreddits with organic comments and posts
- Organic discovery via ChatGPT and Perplexity surfacing the extension
- Ongoing build-in-public