Treebo hires ex-Yahoo exec Khilan Haria as Head of Product

Treebo Group of Hotels, the Bangalore-based chain of tech-enabled budget hotels, has appointed ex Yahoo executive Khilan Haria as their Head of Product. Prior to joining Treebo, Khilan was working as Head of Product at Teabox, a vertical ecommerce company focused on premium tea, where he was instrumental in launching several products including subscription program and machine-learning backed recommendations engine.

Khilan has also worked at Yahoo India for three years. There he led Yahoo's flagship e-commerce platform, Yahoo stores, which hosted 40,000+ online sellers, and processed USD three B+ in yearly sales.

"Treebo is a digital hotel. We work with the heart of a hotelier, and the mind of an engineer. Building cutting-edge technology products is core to our success as a pioneering budget hotel brand. Therefore, we are excited to welcome Khilan into our team. His vast experience in building industry-defining products will be a huge asset for us in accomplishing this objective," said Co-founder, Sidharth Gupta.

Khilan is an alumnus of Indian School of Business Hyderabad and National Institute of Technology Durgapur. He started his career in engineering at Cisco Systems and also worked as a Product Manager at Taggle, a group-buying start-up in 2011.

"There is a huge opportunity to use technology to revolutionize the hospitality industry. This space hasn't seen as much innovation as some other spaces like retailing, food delivery, taxi, etc. I am excited about working with the stellar team at Treebo to build some such game-changing products," added Khilan Haria.

Treebo recently raised USD 17 million in a fresh round of funding from Bertelsmann India, Matrix Partners, and SAIF Partners.

Hiring experienced technology and product professionals is part of the company's effort to use these fresh funds for strengthening their technology leadership in this space.