Groww has named Santosh Hegde as its new Head of Growth, giving the fintech brand a single senior leader for customer acquisition, brand building, content, distribution and user engagement. Hegde announced the move on LinkedIn.
A full-funnel growth seat
Unlike a narrow performance-marketing brief, the remit brings demand generation and engagement under one roof. That means the role is expected to drive new users, shape the brand, guide content and distribution, and keep existing users active.
The structure is a useful signal for marketing teams. Growth leadership is moving beyond top-of-funnel acquisition. Retention, brand equity and content are being treated as growth levers in their own right.
A cross-category resume
Hegde brings 15 years across financial services, consumer brands, media and technology. His recent roles include:
- Atlys: Head of Marketing from August 2024 to May 2026, leading global marketing across brand, creative, content, public relations, performance and online reputation.
- Licious: Vice President, Marketing from January 2022 to July 2024, where he led a 28-member marketing team covering brand, creative, social media, consumer insights, packaging and public relations.
- Disney+ Hotstar: Joined as Senior Manager, Brand Development and User Growth in June 2018, became Associate Director in January 2020, and was elevated to Director of Brand Marketing in February 2021.
- Marico: Seven years in brand management across activation and the Parachute portfolio, with work on marketing strategy, product launches, P&L management and annual business planning.
The full-funnel lens
A simple way to read this appointment is through the funnel. Acquisition sits at the top, brand and content shape consideration in the middle, and engagement drives repeat usage at the bottom. When a company fuses these into one role, it is betting that messaging, media and product usage should be run as one system rather than as separate silos.
For marketers, that has an immediate implication: the strongest growth candidates now have to show fluency in both brand building and performance marketing, plus the ability to connect them.
What to watch
The test of the hire will be how quickly Groww can move between acquisition, content and engagement experiments. Hegde’s time at Atlys, Licious and Disney+ Hotstar gives him a broad playbook, but applying it inside a fintech growth engine is the real challenge.
For teams watching from the sidelines, the practical lesson is to define growth roles by outcomes across the full customer journey, not by channel ownership.
Source: MediaNews4U
