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Lakshmi Narayanan

Analytics Lead / Head of Analytics

Chennai, India • +91 90030 71294 • lakshmi.narayanan@proton.me • linkedin.com/in/lakshmi-narayanan-analytics • github.com/lnarayanan-data

Portfolio: www.eliorexa.com/portfolio/data-analyst-senior

Professional Summary

Analytics leader with 11 years building data-driven decision cultures across fintech, retail and logistics. Sets KPI frameworks and data governance, leads analyst teams of 8–14, and turns SQL, Python, Power BI and Tableau work into executive narratives that shape strategy. Stood up self-serve BI platforms, established a single source of truth across departments, and ties every dashboard to a business outcome — revenue, cost or risk.

Skills

Leadership: Analytics strategy & roadmap, Team building (8–14), Data governance, Exec reporting & storytelling, Hiring & mentoring

Data platform: Snowflake, BigQuery, dbt, data modeling, data quality / cleaning, Airflow

BI & analytics: Power BI, Tableau, Looker, SQL, Python, advanced statistics

Frameworks: KPI frameworks, experimentation (A/B), forecasting, self-serve BI enablement, Excel (modeling)

Core Competencies

analytics leadership · data governance · SQL · Power BI · Tableau · Python · KPIs · statistics · dashboards · storytelling · Snowflake · forecasting · experimentation

Work Experience

Head of Analytics — Paytrail Financial

Mar 2019 – Present

Chennai

  • Lead a 12-analyst function serving a fintech platform with 4M+ users, owning the company-wide KPI framework and a ₹3.2Cr annual analytics budget.
  • Stood up a self-serve Power BI + Snowflake platform that cut ad-hoc report requests 62% and gave 300+ employees governed access to trusted data.
  • Established a data governance program (definitions, ownership, quality SLAs) that reduced metric disputes in leadership reviews by ~80%.
  • Drove a fraud-pattern analysis (SQL, Python, statistics) that informed rules saving an estimated ₹6.5Cr in annual losses.
  • Hired 9 analysts and grew 4 into senior/lead roles; instituted the storytelling and dashboard-review standards used across the org.

Analytics Manager — Cartograph Retail

Jul 2015 – Feb 2019

Mumbai

  • Led a team of 6 building Tableau dashboards across merchandising, supply chain and marketing, adopted in weekly C-suite reviews.
  • Built a demand-forecasting and assortment model that improved inventory turns 15% and reduced markdowns ~₹4.8Cr/year.

Data Analyst → Senior Data Analyst — Earlier roles — TCS, Freshworks

2013 – 2015

India

  • Delivered SQL/Excel reporting and Python analyses across CRM and operations; promoted for impact and analytical rigor.

Education

M.Sc. Applied Statistics

2013

University of Madras, Chennai

B.Sc. Mathematics

2011

Loyola College, Chennai

Certifications

  • Tableau Certified Data Analyst — Tableau (2022)
  • SnowPro Core Certification — Snowflake (2021)

Selected Achievements

  • Built a self-serve BI platform that cut ad-hoc report requests 62% and reached 300+ employees.
  • Drove a fraud-pattern analysis credited with ~₹6.5Cr in annual loss reduction.
  • Speaker, DataHack Summit 2024 — "From dashboards to decisions: KPI frameworks that stick."
  • Mentor at a women-in-data fellowship; advises 2 startups on analytics and governance.