Head of Growth & Marketing at Guru Dhoondo (Founding Team)

Guru Dhoondo is a live, 1:1 and small group tutoring marketplace connecting learners with independent tutors ("Gurus"). Our learners range from school and college students preparing for exams, to working professionals upskilling, to adults pursuing a long held personal interest, someone finally learning to play an instrument, a homemaker picking up a new skill. We're early, currently ~1,300 registered students and ~1,730 Gurus, with a near term target to grow session volume roughly 9x over the next few months, and a 7 year plan to scale nationally and internationally.
The Role
We're looking for a founding team Head of Growth & Marketing to own acquisition, activation, and retention on both sides of our marketplace, learners and Gurus, from the ground up. This is a hands on role: you'll be running campaigns yourself in month one, and building a team under you as we scale. You'll report directly to the founders.
What You'll Own
Learner side growth
Paid and organic acquisition across Meta/Instagram, Google/Search, YouTube, SEO/content, and referral
Campaigns that speak to our full learner base, not just exam prep, but professionals and hobbyist adult learners too
The near term milestone: scaling from ~5 to 45 sessions/day by March 2027
Guru/tutor side growth
Recruiting supply through LinkedIn, job boards, referral programs, and teacher/education communities: a genuinely different playbook from consumer acquisition, since you're recruiting a workforce, not just acquiring customers
Guru activation and retention, so acquired tutors actually convert into consistently active, session delivering Gurus
Funnel ownership, both sides
Full funnel metrics: registered to active to paying, tracked rigorously, including the gap between headline acquisition cost and true cost per paying customer
Budget allocation across channels, balancing paid spend against content/brand building to reduce long run acquisition dependency
Setting up whatever analytics/reporting infrastructure doesn't exist yet
As we scale
Building and eventually leading a growth team as headcount grows
Adapting channel strategy for international markets as we expand beyond India
What We're Looking For
Genuine hands on experience in growth/performance marketing: you've run the campaigns yourself, not just managed an agency
Comfort with both paid acquisition (Meta, Google Ads) and organic/content growth
A "player coach" mindset: execute solo today, hire and lead a team tomorrow
Data fluency: you think in cohorts, funnels, CAC/LTV, not just impressions and clicks
Marketplace experience is a strong plus, two sided growth (demand and supply) is a different skill from single sided consumer growth, and most marketers have only done the latter
Startup tolerance for ambiguity, resource constraints, and a fast changing plan
What You'll Get
Real ownership of growth strategy from a very early stage, not a narrow slice of a mature function
Direct access to and partnership with the founders
Compensation: competitive for stage, with meaningful equity, happy to discuss specifics once we're talking

Work arrangement
No