Below is a summary of our interview with Pooja Gerera. You can listen to the full interview using the embedded media player below or on your favorite podcast platform (e.g., Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Amazon Music).
In this episode of Pricing Heroes — the retail pricing podcast for practitioners and executives — we sit down with Pooja Gerera, Vice President of Sales and Pricing at Zooplus, Europe’s leading online pet retailer. Over nearly a decade, Pooja has helped grow pricing from a small, experimental team into a cross-functional discipline spanning 20 European markets. Her background in systems engineering and value-based pricing informs a structured approach to automation, elasticity modeling, and cross-functional leadership, guiding a 60-person organization that includes pricing, promotions, forecasting, analytics, and sales operations.
Our discussion explores how pricing teams can scale effectively across markets, balance autonomy and control, and prepare for a future in which AI and automation redefine how e-commerce operates.
From Tech to Retail Pricing
Pooja’s path into pricing began in technology. After earning a degree in engineering, she joined Infosys as a systems engineer, developing pricing software for enterprise clients, including Australia’s Telstra. That early exposure to pricing from a technical perspective shaped how she approached the discipline later in her career.
She transitioned into aviation at Airbus Helicopters, where she focused on value-based spare-parts pricing and wrote her MBA thesis on the topic. The experience cemented her belief that scalable pricing systems require both analytical rigor and commercial understanding — an outlook she later carried into retail.
When Pooja joined Zooplus, the company was still treating pricing as an operational task rather than a strategic function. Under early leadership from Fabian Uhrich, the first pricing team began formalizing pricing processes. After taking over the function, Pooja expanded its scope to include promotions, forecasting, analytics, and sales operations, transforming pricing into a central commercial capability.
Building Discipline and Scale Across Markets
Managing pricing across 20 diverse European markets requires a balance of consistency and flexibility. To maintain both, Pooja implemented what she describes as “freedom within a framework.” Annual planning defines budget allocations, guardrails, and key objectives, while weekly leadership routines allow teams to adjust priorities and respond to fast-moving competition.
The result is a pricing system that scales without losing local nuance. Markets like Poland, where promotions drive traffic, require a different cadence than the Nordics, which are less discount-driven. Zooplus’s model empowers regional leaders to customize within defined parameters, ensuring local relevance while preserving governance and profitability.
This structure also reduces friction between teams. By clarifying ownership and aligning on shared KPIs, pricing, promotions, and sales operations can make faster, more unified decisions — a vital capability in a competitive e-commerce environment.
Segmentation, Elasticity, and Channel-Based Strategy
One of Pooja’s first priorities as VP was to move away from manual price adjustments and develop a segmented approach tailored to product roles and demand patterns. Items were grouped by elasticity, visibility, and customer relevance, allowing differentiated strategies that balanced growth and margin protection.
During this process, the team uncovered unexpected elasticity in certain long-tail items previously assumed to be insensitive. That finding prompted adjustments in pricing rules and improved overall accuracy. Zooplus also adopted channel-based pricing for acquisition sources such as shopping ads and comparison engines — a move that boosted traffic and improved perceived value without resorting to aggressive discounting.
The broader lesson, Pooja explains, was to design systems that standardize parameters while still allowing customization. “Scalability only works if it doesn’t erase local insight,” she notes.
From Manual Pricing to Machine Learning
Two years ago, Zooplus completed its transition to fully automated pricing using an in-house machine learning model built by its data science team. The model measures not only product-level elasticity but also substitution effects between brands and similar products, producing more accurate recommendations across the assortment.
Implementation required careful change management. Country teams worried about losing competitiveness under the new system, so Pooja’s group developed clear “what-if” rules, training materials, and a temporary rollback option to build confidence. In practice, no team reverted to manual pricing, and results validated the new approach.
Rolling out the model just as post-pandemic e-commerce slowed created additional scrutiny, but benchmarking against market data helped separate pricing performance from broader demand trends. The experience reinforced Zooplus’s commitment to governance, transparency, and data-driven decision-making.
Leadership and Cross-Functional Alignment
Pooja credits much of Zooplus’s success to clear communication and a people-centric leadership style. She emphasizes the need for pricing leaders to understand the perspectives of both the executive board and operational teams. By translating data into commercial implications and maintaining consistent routines, she’s built credibility across departments and reduced the natural tension that arises when pricing touches every function.
This cross-functional alignment, she says, is what enables sustained change. When teams share context and operate under common frameworks, decisions accelerate and resistance fades. Pricing becomes not a gatekeeper but a partner in shaping commercial outcomes.
The Road Ahead: AI and the Next Wave of E-Commerce
Looking ahead, Pooja sees artificial intelligence as the next major disruption in retail — one that could reshape everything from marketing budgets to customer acquisition. She anticipates a future where AI shopping assistants compare prices across hundreds of retailers, pushing brands to focus on transparency, fairness, and long-term value perception rather than reactive price changes.
She predicts companies will eventually shift ad spend from traditional search to AI ecosystems and emphasizes that organizations must already begin preparing by strengthening governance and data foundations. “AI will become the new SEO,” she observes, describing a competitive landscape where smarter systems — not faster discounts — determine success.
Recommended Resources
Pooja encourages pricing professionals to keep learning through diverse sources and industry communities:
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EPP (European Pricing Platform) events and networking opportunities
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Thought leaders Fabian Uhrich, Danilo Zatta, and Chris Herbert on LinkedIn
- Research and literature on value-based pricing, the focus of her MBA thesis
About Pricing Heroes
Pricing Heroes is the leading retail pricing podcast for pricing practitioners and retail executives focused on building smarter strategies, protecting margins, and earning customer trust. Each episode features leading voices in retail and pricing who share practical lessons on pricing strategy, technology, leadership, and transformation. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your preferred platform.
