Aerathe Rajeev Nair

A career built around making things happen.

Senior Program Manager (Product & Design)
at Lollypop Design Studio, based in Bengaluru.

Rajeev smiling, in a sunlit wooden room

The story so far

I started far from design: selling ad space to local businesses in Goa, onboarding retailers onto a SaaS product, running campaigns across 14 brands for a gaming and hospitality group. Every one of those jobs was about getting people to trust a promise and then keeping it.

At QYou, I built a TV network's content library from the ground up, licensing from 300+ creators and partners, and helped keep a 24×7 broadcast schedule on air for 650M+ viewers. Live broadcast doesn't forgive missed handoffs. I learned that nothing ships on time without a system behind it.

In 2022 I joined Lollypop Design Studio as a project manager. 170+ product initiatives later, I lead its program function: 11 PMs, 250+ designers, 45+ engineers and 35 programs running at once across 7 centres.

The scale changed. The job didn't: build the conditions where good people do their best work, then get out of their way.

Career

  1. Jul 2026 – nowSenior Program Manager (Product & Design)Lollypop Design Studio · program governance across the studio, team velocity and operational rigour
  2. Jul 2025 – Jun 2026Design Program Manager (Lead)Lollypop Design Studio · 11 PMs, 110+ initiatives, 95% on-time delivery, utilisation 55% → 70%
  3. Jul 2023 – Jun 2025Senior Project ManagerLollypop Design Studio · 35+ engagements, 96% on time, $3M+ client portfolio
  4. Feb 2022 – Jun 2023Project ManagerLollypop Design Studio · 22+ engagements, $1M+ client portfolio
  5. Oct 2017 – Sep 2020Curator, Outreach & TV ProgrammingQYou Media · 300+ content partners, 24×7 schedule for 650M+ viewers
  6. Dec 2015 – Mar 2017Marketing Co-ordinatorDelta Corp · campaigns across 14+ brands in gaming, hospitality and real estate
  7. Jan – May 2014Sales ExecutiveWebware.AI · onboarded 80+ retailers onto a retail SaaS platform
  8. Dec 2012 – Aug 2013Marketing ExecutiveFree Voice Media · advertising sales and distribution partnerships across Goa

Core skills

Delivery and governance
Design delivery management · Portfolio governance · Risk and dependency management · Escalation and recovery · Agile and SAFe®
Capacity and operations
Resource and capacity planning · Utilisation management · Operating model design · Operational KPIs and executive reporting
Commercial
Presales, RFPs and scoping · Deal structuring · CXO stakeholder management
Tools
Jira, Confluence, Smartsheet, Airtable, Notion, Figma, Miro, Dovetail, Claude, Cursor

Credentials

Beyond work

I free-dive and film people, places and moments that intrigue me. In 2015 I volunteered with Teach for Nepal on earthquake relief in Kathmandu, and in 2014 I was one of 128 people chosen from 175,000 applicants for the Times of India's I-Lead India youth programme.

See my films →