Sanchit Juneja: Bestowing Tech Platform Product Management at the Intersection of E-Commerce and Travel

Ever hear about e-commerce and the travel merge? Yes, that is where the world is headed to, thanks to technology. The global tech-driven markets are pushing the boundaries to become more customer-centric now than ever before. An E-commerce platform can play a key role in the travel industry by gaining more customer engagement and driving profit to one of the most affected industries, especially post-pandemic. 

Booking.com is one of the leading digital travel companies in the global travel and tourism sector. It seamlessly connects avid travelers with memorable experiences also through the integration of an e-commerce platform. There are six primary consumer-facing brands such as Booking.com, Agoda, Priceline, KAYAK, OpenTable, and Rentalcars.com. The mission is to help the customers and tourists discover places and grow their businesses through the platform. 

A Go-to Techno Geek

Sanchit Juneja has over 13 years of professional experience across Southeast Asia, Africa, the US, and now Europe in organizations such as National Instruments, Rocket Internet, AppsFlyer, Paytm, and now Booking.com. Sanchit is a Director-Product for the DSML full-stack track of Booking.com with hands-on experience, almost exclusively in tech platform product management for 8 years after 5 years as a hardware engineer. He completed his MBA from ISB, Hyderabad after B.E. from NSIT, Delhi University.

Evangelizing Tech Platform Product Management 

Sanchit has been spearheading and evangelizing tech platform product management across tech ecosystems in Southeast Asia and Europe. His notable achievements include launching Gojek in Southeast Asian Decacorn, internationally in Vietnam and Thailand. Internationally, this was the first foray for Gojek, which paved the way for break-neck growth going forward. 

In his current role, he is instrumental in setting up the e-commerce platform ecosystem for Booking.com (order, shopping cart, etc.), thus, enabling the platformization of a Fortune200 giant. He has now moved into his new role in the same organization, to set up and evangelize the analytical and machine learning ecosystem within.

Delivering a Seamless App for Immersive Travel Experience

His greenfield, 0-to-1 foray, launching Gojek in international markets was a key strategic initiative in the most-heated super-app competition in Southeast Asia (between Gojek and Grab). It was instrumental in changing Gojek's image from an Indonesia-only org. to a regional counterweight to Grab one of the most well-funded tech startups in the world.

Sanchit has continued leading high-valued deliverables in another continent, Europe, where he streamlined the e-commerce ecosystem for the biggest travel experience app in the world, Booking.com. The scale and business impact of this realignment are immense and industry-defining.

Denting the Travel Industry with Ecommerce Platforms 

Sanchit's streamlining of the e-commerce platforms in Booking.com is part of an industry-wide paradigm of bringing e-commerce experience to travel as an industry-connected trip. With Booking.com's head run in this modernization period; the team has a start ahead of its competitors in this realm.

'Technical Excellence' as a Catalyst to Innovation

Booking.com is aiming to redefine its tech ecosystem to lead the industry in connected trips. Sanchit's efforts were instrumental in kicking off this initiative and yielding strategic and monetary dividends for the organization.

A String of Pains and Purposes 

Evangelizing and selling an ecosystem in an Industry-leading org. is always challenging and enervating. Aligning people across the organization, creating champions, and converting detractors were the biggest challenges in Sanchit's journey.

Stepping into the Data-centric Future 

The modernization of Booking's tech organization didn't happen in isolation but required dedicated tech partners inside and outside the organization, notably key CoTS solution providers who became design partners in the journey. Whilst the previous generation of successful tech orgs treated data as-at best-a commodity and at worst a liability. The next generation would only survive whence they treat data as a first-class citizen.