Strategy & Operations · Crave Robotics
Nirav Sampat
I built my company's operating platform, dispatch system, and planning models myself, with AI, and ran them in production. Before that, demand planning at Botrista.
Featured work
The systems I built and ran at Crave Robotics, and the planning infrastructure behind them.
- Optimization 11% → 4.8% fleet-wide out-of-stock rate, while the fleet grew from 15 to 35 machines Autonomous technician dispatch Nightly route optimization that took a vending-robot fleet from 15 to 35 machines on the same technician team, and cut the fleet-wide out-of-stock rate from 11% to 4.8%. Crave Robotics Interactive
- Internal Tools $100K+ annual SaaS spend consolidated Operating platform, 0→1 Built the company's operating infrastructure from scratch – a multi-module platform replacing a spreadsheet stack and six figures of annual SaaS spend. Crave Robotics Interactive
- Strategy & Operations 70% of planning workflows automated Integrated business planning infrastructure Automated 70% of planning workflows and built a single source of truth across Sales, Finance, Operations, and Supply Chain. Botrista Interactive
- Strategy & Operations −33% Fleet OpEx per Unit, while the fleet grew from 15 to 35 machines Fleet OpEx per Unit – one number for a growing fleet Defined a per-machine operating-cost metric so the business could tell whether growth was getting cheaper or more expensive to run, then cut it by a third. Crave Robotics Interactive
- Product Operations FDA + USDA recall feeds checked automatically against every SKU we sell Automated FDA and USDA recall monitoring A monitor that pulls live FDA and USDA recall feeds, fuzzy-matches each notice to our SKU catalog, and alerts Slack – replacing someone reading the notices by hand. Crave Robotics Interactive
- AI / Automation 3.1% reply rate across 3,000+ agent-written outbound emails What 3,000 outbound emails taught me about list quality An agentic outbound workflow that researches companies, finds contacts, writes the email, and follows up on its own – and what measuring it honestly showed about list quality. Crave Robotics Interactive
More professional work
Forecasting, planning, and assortment work with measured results.
- Optimization +33% sales increase after reworking the fleet-wide product mix Location-level assortment optimization Crave Robotics Interactive
- Data / Analytics $3M+ procurement and planning savings from better forecasts Demand forecasting across 600+ SKUs Botrista Interactive
- Supply Chain / Operations −29% excess and obsolete inventory, plus $300K of at-risk stock recovered Cutting excess and obsolete inventory by 29% Botrista Interactive
- Supply Chain / Operations 12 mo rolling forecast horizon Demand planning and reorder logic Crave Robotics Interactive
Built on my own time
Small tools for my own problems. Same habit, lower stakes.
- Side Projects 3 stores one list, one Sunday trip The Sunday grocery problem Personal Interactive
- Side Projects ~40 exercises tracked with weight, reps, and difficulty per set Progressive overload needs a memory Personal Interactive
- Side Projects Every weekday unattended, since 2025 A daily market brief for my dad Personal Interactive
Where the work happened
M.S. Engineering Management, USC · B.E. Mechanical Engineering, DJS College of Engineering.
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Mar 2026 – Present · Los Angeles, CA
Crave Robotics
Strategy & Operations Analyst
- Built the operating platform, dispatch system, and planning models from zero, and consolidated $100K+/year of SaaS into one owned platform.
- Scaled the fleet from 15 to 35 machines with the same technician team; out-of-stock rate fell from 11% to 4.8%.
- Works directly with the CEO on weekly operating reviews, quarterly priorities, and Board and investor materials.
DispatchOperating platformFleet OpEx per unitRecall monitoringAI outreachAssortment
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Jun 2023 – Oct 2025 · San Francisco, CA
Botrista
Demand Planner
- Forecasts across 600+ SKUs improved accuracy 24% and enabled $3M+ in procurement and planning savings.
- Built the integrated business-planning system that automated 70% of recurring planning workflows.
- Cut excess and obsolete inventory 29% and recovered $300K of at-risk stock.
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Jan – May 2023 · San Francisco, CA
La Boulangerie (Shaw Bakers)
Project Management Intern
- Cut inventory variances 13% by rebuilding inventory-control processes, and supported an ERP rollout across Sales, Operations, Engineering, and Finance.
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May – Dec 2022 · New York, NY
Materne North America (GoGo Squeez)
Supply Chain Planning Intern
- Power BI dashboards across 200+ SKUs removed 8+ hours a week of manual reporting; packaging-station changes cut workforce requirements 60%.
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Feb – Jul 2021 · Mumbai, India
FactWise
Product Management Intern
- Co-developed the 0→1 product for a B2B procurement SaaS platform across the full Source-to-Pay lifecycle.
What I work with
- Agentic AI
- LLM integration
- Claude API
- Workflow automation
- API integrations
- ERP architecture
- Python
- SQL
- Google OR-Tools
- Google Apps Script
- Route optimization
- Demand forecasting
- Inventory optimization
- S&OP / IBP
- Scenario analysis
- KPI development
- Executive reporting
- Power BI
- Tableau
- Advanced Excel
Let's talk.
If any of this looks like the kind of work you need done, I'd like to hear about it.