With the global AI market projected to surpass $1.8 trillion by 2030, marketing these technologies requires a sharp focus on user needs. Milind Khandare, a go-to-market strategist for innovative companies, has led the launch and growth of several billion-dollar products at Intuit, SoFi, and other tech giants. He is currently leading marketing at Ontra, an AI-powered legal and compliance platform for private equity and venture capital firms. Khandare’s approach blends intuition with data, storytelling with subject matter expertise, and user empathy with intelligent automation.
From product to platform: The art of growth
Khandare’s marketing journey began at Intuit, the financial software leader behind TurboTax, Quickbooks, Credit Karma and Mailchimp. There, he led the launch of QuickBooks Capital — a lending solution embedded into the QuickBooks accounting platform.
“We could only promote the product to existing QuickBooks customers,” Khandare said. “Traditional advertising wasn’t an option.”
Instead, he collaborated with product teams to build in-app promotions tailored to user behavior.
“We had to create a custom ad manager for QuickBooks marketers — our own internal tool,” Khandare explained. It worked. His campaigns helped drive over $1 billion in funding to small businesses and earned him the company’s top marketing award.
Khandare’s key lesson: reach users where they are — and when they need you most. “Pop-ups won’t work if they interrupt the user flow,” he said. “We had to surface relevant messages at exactly the right moment inside the product.”
Turning user pain points into scalable tech
At SoFi, a top fintech company, Khandare was tasked with launching a credit card in a saturated market. But instead of competing on flashy perks, he went deep on customer pain points.
“The world didn’t need another credit card that creates debt,” he said. “So we built one that helps you reduce it.”
He interviewed dozens of users and built a proposition around financial wellness: a card that lets users apply reward points toward paying down student loans, redeem into crypto, and receive proactive payment guidance. The product attracted over 100,000 customers in its first year.
To drive adoption, he leaned on owned channels — email and a 60,000-member Facebook community — plus affiliates like Credit Karma and direct mail for precision targeting.
Khandare believes the fastest way to build what people actually want is by creating the customer feedback loop. “Listening to your community, extracting insights, and acting on them — there’s no substitute for that,” he said.
Entering AI with precision: Legal tech and the trust challenge
Today, Khandare leads a marketing team at a fast-growing AI legal tech firm, where he recently launched a software product that helps private equity legal teams process NDAs faster using large language models. But marketing AI to legal professionals isn’t easy.
“They’re extremely data-sensitive and cautious about compliance. And rightly so,” he said. “We had to focus on trust before even demonstrating functionality.”
To do that, his team focused on a zero data retention policy to assure clients their information wouldn’t be stored or reused to train models; industry-standard certifications like ISO 27001; and live demos that clearly showed how the AI worked — no abstractions, just results.
Within months, the product had secured a dozen high-value clients. Case studies showed the product cuts time spent on routine NDA workflows by as much as 66%.
Khandare’s key lesson: when marketing AI in sensitive, regulated industries like legal tech, trust must come before the product value.
The B2B vs. B2C paybook
Having marketed to both consumers and enterprises, Khandare knows the nuances. B2B, he explains, is slower and more layered.
“In B2C, feedback is instant — you launch a Facebook ad and know later that day if it’s working. In B2B, sales cycles can last months. You’re not selling directly. You’re enabling and empowering your sales team.”
His tactics include personalized sales materials, strategic use of seller feedback, and customer advisory boards.
Whether in B2B or B2C, Khandare follows three core principles for marketing breakthrough, AI-powered products:
Trust is everything: “For AI especially, transparency around data use and security is non-negotiable.”
Customer empathy wins: “Whether consumer or enterprise, the best insights come from listening — at scale.”
Show, don’t tell: “Skeptical buyers need to see exactly how AI helps them. Demos matter more than decks with tall claims.”
Unlike established products, new AI solutions require careful positioning to overcome skepticism and regulatory scrutiny. With more than 250 new AI tools launching every week, marketing innovative technologies has become less about promotion and more about education and trust.
