Akila Kesavasamy

AI-Native Product Executive

Akila Kesavasamy — AI-Native Product Executive

AI-native product executive with 15+ years building and scaling products at the intersection of AI, consumer, and enterprise. Proven track record owning P&L, leading high-performing teams, and shipping agentic platforms and multimodal AI experiences at global scale (100M+ users).

Portrait of Akila Kesavasamy

Building

What I'm working on

Current

My day job — leading product and GTM at an early-stage AI startup.

Head of Product & GTM

Gateway AI

Building an agentic CFO platform to help companies automate their business operations.

  • Run a 6-person forward-deployed team
  • Acquired first 25 business customers through rapid AI-first iteration, with strong retention over the 4 months since launch

Personal AI Products

A few things I'm building independently — exploring what AI can do for everyday human moments and high-stakes preparation.

Mobile App

giftstring

Thoughtful gifting, made effortless. An AI-powered companion that helps you remember what matters and find the right gift, every time.

App Store (iOS)Google Play (Android)

AI Interview Coach for PMs

Rehearse

Practice product management interviews with an AI coach that gives real-time feedback on your structure, depth, and delivery.

GitHub repositories are private. If you'd like access or a code walkthrough, please reach out.

Get in touch

Launch Highlights

Shipping at global scale

Two flagship launches that defined chapters of my career at Meta — both announced by Mark Zuckerberg on the main stage.

01

Facebook Messenger · iOS

LightSpeed

Rewrote Messenger to be 2× faster, 4× smaller — scaled to 350M+ MAU worldwide

Led a 150+ person team through a complete rewrite of Messenger iOS. Drove +4% DAU growth in the US and announced by Mark Zuckerberg on stage at F8.

02

Ray-Ban Meta · Assistive Multimodal AI

Be My Eyes on Meta AI Glasses

Meta's first assistive multimodal AI experience — exceeded MAU goals by 30%

Integrated real-time visual AI with live human expertise via Be My Eyes to help blind and low-vision users navigate the world independently. Announced by Mark Zuckerberg at Connect '24.