[ Lokal · Social app · 0→1 ]

Making a new social app pay from day one

Launching a micro-transactional social application and owning its roadmap end to end — built for revenue and growth from the first release.

work for: Lokal · Behtar Technologies
date: Jan 2025 – Sep 2025
team: 30-member pod — engineering, design, analytics, ops, CX
focus: Monetisation, LTV, retention, trust & safety

(tl;dr) my role — Senior Product Manager · Lokal

$3mnmonthly revenue within 12 months of launch, with CM2 at +50%

15% → 2%call drop-offs after in-call recharge

65% → 80%call connectivity from supply-prioritisation logic

Revenue is a monthly figure, not an annualised run-rate.

The product

A new social application at Lokal: a micro-transactional product where revenue comes from many small in-app purchases. It was built for revenue and growth from the start, at $10 ARPU and 100% ROAS at scale.

What I worked on

Revenue & LTV

Reached $3mn monthly revenue within 12 months of launch and took CM2 to +50%, by optimising conversion and repeat purchase while keeping user growth going.
Built a behaviour-driven, LTV- and AOV-based personalised offer system — 75% revenue retention, 40% more repeat purchases and ARPU up to $12 for key cohorts.
Launched an in-call recharge flow that gamified top-ups — call drop-offs fell from 15% to 2%, talk time went up, and it drove 13% of daily revenue.
Expanded to 10+ countries, adapting the product to local regulations, with early traction at 2× LTV of active users.

Retention, trust & marketplace

Gamified retention with free-coin incentives to reactivate dormant users — P-DAU up 8%, blended CAC down 12%.
Set up a Trust & Safety team with AI-powered moderation to remove bad actors — NSFW incidents held under 1% while saving ₹15L a month in AI tool costs.
Built supply-prioritisation logic for call matching — connectivity up from 65% to 80%, connection time down from 13s to 7.5s.

Leadership

Led a 30-member pod across engineering, design, analytics, ops and CX, and mentored 2 PMs.
Set up an experimentation framework running 20+ A/B tests a quarter, later adopted across the org.