Product Marketing Manager with extensive background and expertise in product development, sales & marketing, and business development in the solar industry.

 

Skills/Experience in,

 

Market Analysis	Technology Assessment	Customer Management
Strategy & Roadmaps	Product Innovation	Account Management
Business Plan	Competitive Analysis	Sales & Support

                                                                 


 

• MS in Materials Science & Engineering, 2005, University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL

Courses based on basic materials science, energy management and its application to the high-tech industry.

• BS in Metallurgy & Engineering, 2000, Government College of Engineering (COEP), India

Courses based on metallurgical & mechanical engineering for automobile and mining applications.

• MBA Level Courses Taken for Management Studies in University at Albany, State University of New York.


• SAP, SFDC, JIRA, PTools, FusionOps, OneNote, LabView.

 


 

KLA, July 2019 – Present, Milpitas, CA

Role: Product Marketing Manager IV

 

• Responsible for driving market penetration of metrology products used in the semiconductor industry. Engaged four major customers in semiconductors with $47M annual bookings by differentiating product with competitors and convincing customers with the value proposition.


• Perform SWOT analysis, prepare, and drive the product roadmaps. Develop & own marketing documents such as business plans, market requirement documents, and product introduction plans.


• Manage and present marketing studies & product results through various PLC phases to executives for approval. Manage the product promotions and launches with marketing communications group.

 

Advanced Energy, March 2016 – June 2019, Milpitas, CA

Role: Product Manager

 

• Responsible for design, product development, and growth of new products used for energy and thin film applications. Demonstrated 30% revenue increase in the product line with the new customers engagements.


• Work closely with customers and regional sales staff to fully understand the customer needs. Convey requirements to internal stakeholders with defining clear priorities and drive the design wins, and product growth. Improved GMs from 55% to 70% with the high value high ASP approach by driving innovative engineering designs and reducing COGS.


• Lead the stake holder teams to improve business processes for ECOs, product holds, BOM, and material analysis.

 

Lam Research, September 2013 – March 2016, Albany, NY

Role: Product Management, Application Engineering

 

• Performed market and customer analysis. Align the company technology roadmap to the customer roadmap to help deliver products for 14nm, 10nm technology nodes in customer fabs.


• Identified critical opportunities for the revenue growth, product evangelist to internal product development teams. Drove 25% increase in market share by displacing competition with the improved technical results in customer fabs.


• Managed the projects at customer sites with cross functional teams including engineering, sales, service; qualify new deposition tools in semiconductor fabs for the front-end and back-end applications.

 

College of Nanoscale Science & Engineering, December 2011 – September 2013, Albany, NY

Role: Technical Management, Product Marketing

 

• Defined the market and developed a business plan for the PV product; lead marketing solar consortium efforts and engaged manufacturers in the entire solar supply chain to become a member of photovoltaic consortium.


• Managed a solar program to develop thin film PV manufacturing line; defined technical and business objectives for designing, manufacturing, installing and monitoring of solar panels. Demonstrated the world-record efficiency for solar cell for residential, commercial and utility scale applications.


• Present quarterly and annual reports to executives on the technical and commercial side and provide frequent updates on progress, limitations and finance needs for solar program.

 

 

Intermolecular, March 2010 – December 2011, San Jose, CA

Role: Staff Process Engineer

 

• Designed and developed thin film product line for clean energy applications.


• Owned the customer interface; engaged customers for joint development projects to increase their R&D efficiency by 2X with high combinatorial approach of simultaneous multiple site isolated depositions on the substrate.


• Responsible for product promotional activities and pitching the product to customer executives.

 

Daystar Technologies, June 2006 –March 2010, Santa Clara, CA

Role: Process Development Engineer

 

• Led thin film process development projects with cross functional engineering and hardware teams on developing CVD and PVD processes for manufacturing of solar devices for aerospace applications.


• Differentiated company's thin film product in the market for terrestrial and lightweight applications by introducing proprietary hybrid sputtering technology.


• Analyzed and interpreted data obtained with electrical testing for developing solar devices with higher efficiencies on the large area of the panel.

 

Florida Solar Energy Center, June 2002- May 2006, Cocoa, FL

Role: Research Associate

 

• Led projects to build solar pilot production line for light weight and aerospace applications (Funded programs were from NASA and NREL), and clean energy areas including various solar material fabrication, battery technology development, and increasing hydrogen fuel efficiency.  


• Worked on engineering projects for installing solar panels in solar farms and performed monitoring of the solar device data to improve long term reliability of solar panels.


• Performed outdoor reliability testing of c-Si, a-Si, CIGS and CdTe solar panels from various manufacturers and correlated performance of solar panels with varying climate conditions.

 


 

1. “Combinatorial methods for developing superstrate solar cells”, Upendra Avachat, US Patent # 8835212.


2. “Combinatorial methods for making CIGS thin film solar cells”, Upendra Avachat, Tony Chiang, Craig Hunter, Jian Li, Guizhen Zhang, US Patent # 8927322.


3. “Methods for making CZTS solar cells”, Upendra Avachat, Tony Chiang, Craig Hunter, Jian Li, Guizhen Zhang, WO 20130280853.


4. Upendra Avachat, Anant Jahagirdar and Neelkanth Dhere, “Multiple bandgap combination of thin film photovoltaic cell and photoanode for efficient hydrogen and oxygen generation by water splitting”, Solar Energy Materials and Solar Cells, vol. 90, pp. 2464-2470, 2006.


5. Upendra Avachat and Neelkanth Dhere, “Preparation and characterization of transparent and conducting ZnTe:Cu back contact interface layer for CdS/CdTe solar cell”, Journal of vacuum science and technology, vol. 24, pp.1664-1667, 2006.


6. Upendra Avachat, Anant Jahagirdar and Neelkanth Dhere, “Development of p-type, transparent and conducting back layer for CdS/CdTe thin film solar cells for photoelectrochemical application”, presented at Annual Joint Symposium of Florida Chapter of the American Vacuum Society, March 2005.


7. Neelkanth Dhere, Anant Jahagirdar, Upendra Avachat, and Ankur Kadam, “Photoelectrochemical Water Split-ting for Hydrogen Production Using Combination of CIGS2 Solar Cell and RuO2 Photocatalyst”, presented at the Int. Solar Energy Soc. Conference Solar 2004.


8. Anant Jahagirdar, Upendra Avachat and Neelkanth Dhere, “Direct Water Splitting Using Multiple Bandgap Tandem of Thin Film Photovoltaic Cell and a Photocatalyst”, MRS Spring Meeting, San Francisco, March 2005


9. Upendra Avachat and Neelkanth Dhere, “Preparation and characterization of transparent and conducting ZnTe:Cu back contact interface layer for CdS/CdTe solar cell”, presented at AVS symposium, October 2005


10. Upendra Avachat, Fadong Yan, David Metacarpa, Pradeep Haldar, “Impacts of Humidity and Temperature on the Performance of Transparent Conducting Indium Tin Oxide and electrical interconnects for solar applications”, submitted to IEEE PVSC, March 2013