Alumni Spotlight: Lokesh Yadagiri, MS ’16

Subscription boxes have only increased in popularity since the start of the pandemic — not just as a means to get things like groceries and household items delivered to your doorstep, but as a way to keep our minds active and engaged.

Lokesh Yadagiri, who earned his master’s degree in industrial and systems engineering at Binghamton University’s Thomas J. Watson College of Engineering and Applied Science in 2016, is now the operations manager for Hunt A Killer, a subscription box perfect for true crime fans.

QUESTION: When did you first become interested in engineering?

ANSWER: I obtained my bachelor’s degree is in mechanical engineering at an affiliate of Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University, in India, and my MS from Binghamton is in industrial and systems engineering. Growing up, I was always the really inquisitive kind of kid. I really liked learning how things worked and figuring out processes, so mechanical engineering seemed like something where I could learn as much as I could.

When I was deciding on my major for my master’s, I chose industrial and systems engineering because it seemed like there was so much room for growth and opportunity after I graduated.

Q: Why did you decide to attend Binghamton University?

A: I got my bachelor’s, and then I did some work for Google Maps before deciding what I really wanted to do with my life. I applied to about eight universities, but Binghamton was so quick in its response, and the structure of the courses at Watson convinced me to move to the U.S. and Binghamton in 2014.

Q: How difficult was it to move across the world and begin graduate school at the same time?

A: It took me an entire semester to get acquainted with the culture. I hadn’t been outside of home in over 20 years. It’s a new country, a new place, lots of new people, but after that first semester I really got into the groove and made a lot of new friends. My first winter was one of the harshest ever — it was one of the coldest years here in a while. All the walks to the campus buses, especially the late ones in the cold, made me really strong.

Q: What were your experiences like at Watson?

A: It was really an open community. Everyone was so helpful, especially in the department. They made me feel like I wasn’t missing home. Yes, I was looking at the fundamental courses, but the specializations were what I was more inclined toward. There was electronic manufacturing, electronic packaging and so on. I mean, it was the Watson School (now Watson College), so IBM was a part of it! I wanted to go even further and look at how an entire operation runs. That was something I was really looking forward to. Also, logistics: How do you make something run really efficiently? The research options, alongside the faculty to motivate you, really helped everyone have their own path.

Q: What was your path like after graduation?

A: My job at Hunt A Killer started right out of college. I was, at first, very much inclined toward the entrepreneurship side of things. I even had a couple of friends from Binghamton who’d been having practice in that world, but when I applied for a job, I thought it’d be nice to work for a startup. There’s endless possibilities and you learn so much.

I still remember the day I got two offers. One was from a good firm in Michigan — they offered me a job as an industrial engineer, and it was a good-paying job. At the same time, I had an offer from a startup that was based in Baltimore, low-paying, no sponsorships or anything. I put all my chips in and took a risk.

Q: When you work for a company in its very early stages, the creative aspect of the business must be intense. How did you shift from working as a student to helping build a company to what it is today?

A: I was the second hire for the company. When I joined, the co-founders of the company handed me the keys to the office and said, “OK, you run the show.” That creative aspect gave me so much freedom to put into practice what I learned over the years. There was no one telling me to do things this way or that way — you just fail, you learn, you do it again. Now we’ve gone from a 1,000-square-foot office space to a 25,000-square-foot warehouse, which I designed.

What we do with Hunt A Killer is almost like a hybrid between a television show and a board game. To design the box, we need to know the perspective of a subscriber while still thinking of things like supply-chain logistics to get boxes out. We used to have our writing and design team come up with just one box with a crime to solve for those receiving it, and then we had to replicate that thousands and thousands of times. So many boxes are unique for people on different “seasons” of the program. We’ve grown from 1,500 to 125,000 subscribers over the past few years, and we were always thinking, “How can we make this better?”

Q: The ongoing coronavirus pandemic has deeply affected business across the country. How did you and your colleagues at Hunt A Killer approach this challenge?

A: We did not see this coming. At one point, we were getting almost 1,000 new subscribers a day during a six-to-eight-week period from the end of May to early June. That was when the lockdowns were taking effect, and we were scrambling for inventory. Sales spiked so much, but at one point we had enough inventory to last us a few months just sitting in a trailer in case we shut down.

Another challenge was if our warehouse wasn’t allowed to open, we couldn’t ship boxes. We had to prepare for the worst-case scenario. Thankfully, sales went up, so we could spend more money on shipping, constant sanitation and personal protective equipment (PPE). We did survive, and, in the future, we’d even like to branch out into different genres.

Q: After dealing with so many challenges over the course of your career, what advice would you give to students graduating during this time of uncertainty?

A: Continue learning always. I’ve learned, and I could never have asked for more from this experience. I learned things like project management, staying very organized and giving motivation to others. Now I even act as the liaison between our operating and marketing teams, and I have a hand in many projects. Spread yourself out and make connections, especially with those who have more experience than you. When they speak with you, it’s free information that you wouldn’t have received otherwise.