Rahul Nayak Joins Alike to Lead Global Growth

Alike appoints Rahul Nayak as Director – Growth & Performance Marketing to drive full-funnel growth, acquisition, and revenue acceleration worldwide.

Rahul Nayak joins Alike as Director – Growth & Performance Marketing

Alike has appointed Rahul Nayak as Director – Growth & Performance Marketing, a move that aligns with the company’s push to scale internationally in the travel and experiences category. From a Global Martech Alliance lens, this is the kind of leadership hire that typically signals sharper full-funnel execution, tighter measurement, and a more disciplined growth engine as a platform expands across markets.​

Why this leadership move matters now

Alike operates as a social travel marketplace focused on helping travelers discover, plan, and book experiences while also enabling travel content creators to monetize influence through bookable content and revenue share. That model is inherently growth-sensitive: it relies on efficiently acquiring users on both sides of the marketplace, building trust, and converting inspiration into bookings without friction.​

Rahul’s mandate—leading full-funnel growth across user acquisition, performance marketing, and revenue acceleration in global markets—puts him at the center of that balancing act. The timing also makes strategic sense because travel-tech growth today isn’t just about buying traffic; it’s about compounding retention, referral, creator-led distribution, and repeat booking behavior with strong unit economics.

Alike’s model: marketplace growth with creator-led demand

According to Alike’s company description, the platform connects global travelers and travel content creators, lets users plan trips with an in-app trip planner, and supports booking experiences on the same platform. It also positions itself as a way for creators to earn income by making their content bookable and sharing revenue on bookings influenced by that content.​

For performance marketers, that creates a distinctive funnel:

• Top-of-funnel: creator content + community discovery (often more “intent-adjacent” than search).
• Mid-funnel: itinerary planning, trust-building, and proof (social validation, reviews, creator credibility).
• Bottom-of-funnel: booking conversion, payment confidence, cancellations/refunds clarity, and post-booking service.
• Flywheel: repeat trips, creator partnerships, and referral loops.

Separately, Alike.io has previously been described as a “creator economy-based travel platform,” highlighting how creator recommendations can translate into bookable itineraries. That emphasis reinforces why a growth leader with cross-category experience would be valuable as the company scales.​

Rahul Nayak’s experience, mapped to the job

As shared in the leadership announcement, Rahul brings 8+ years of experience across PropTech, consumer D2C/B2C, and B2B SaaS, with a track record centered on scaling growth. In his most recent role (per the same announcement), he joined from Nestaway as Director of Marketing (India & UAE), where he reportedly delivered 223% year-on-year growth in his first year and drove 360% revenue acceleration via integrated digital and ATL campaigns.

Earlier in his career, he served as Performance Marketing Lead at Team Pumpkin and managed growth for 18+ global clients, including brands such as Tata, Plum Goodness, and Prega News (as stated in the announcement). The through-line here is range: he’s operated both in-house (owning outcomes) and agency-side (scaling playbooks across multiple business types).

From the GMA perspective, that range is especially relevant for a travel marketplace because the channel mix rarely stays static. What works in one geo (paid social + influencer whitelisting, for example) may underperform in another where search intent is stronger, partnership inventory differs, or trust barriers are higher.

What “full-funnel growth” should look like at Alike

A Director of Growth & Performance Marketing role can easily devolve into “more spend, more installs.” For a marketplace like Alike, the stronger blueprint is full-funnel in the real sense: aligning acquisition, activation, conversion, and retention around measurable profit drivers.

Here are the growth pillars that typically matter most for Alike’s type of model:

• Acquisition efficiency that respects payback windows: clear CAC targets by geo, channel, and cohort, and fast creative iteration so spend follows learning rather than habit.
• Activation that converts inspiration into intent: reducing time-to-first-plan and time-to-first-booking, and making it easy for users to move from “saved” to “scheduled.”
• Conversion-rate optimization (CRO) built for trust: transparent pricing, clear inclusions/exclusions, strong cancellation/refund cues, and credibility signals near the booking decision.
• Lifecycle and retention loops: post-booking engagement, next-trip recommendations, and creator-driven reactivation that doesn’t rely solely on discounts.
• Revenue acceleration beyond “more transactions”: improving AOV/ARPU, reducing churn, lowering support costs, and strengthening repeat frequency.

If Rahul’s team executes this well, the upside is not just growth—it’s durable growth that survives channel volatility and rising media costs.

What marketers can learn from this appointment

Leadership changes are often the earliest visible indicator of where a company wants to go next. In this case, the appointment strongly suggests Alike is prioritizing:

• Data-led execution and measurable performance discipline (especially important when scaling internationally).
• A sharper link between brand-building and performance outcomes (the announcement explicitly references integrated digital + ATL experience).
• A growth organization that can operate across multiple business contexts (consumer, SaaS-like mechanics, and marketplace dynamics).

For martech and growth teams watching the travel/experience economy, the meta-lesson is clear: creator-led discovery is powerful, but it still needs rigorous funnel engineering, attribution discipline, and retention design to translate attention into predictable revenue.