I was born in a small farming village in Andhra Pradesh, India, and grew up in the hustle and bustle of Mumbai, India. I spent a couple of my formative years in Manchester, UK, where I developed a strong passion for football (soccer). I have been a Manchester United fan for as long as I can remember (since the early 2000s).
I have always liked math and science, which led me to pursue Electrical Engineering for my undergraduate degree at the Indian Institute of Technology (Bombay), Mumbai. In addition to learning theoretical concepts, I often tinkered with broken or dysfunctional equipment in our labs - dismantling them and figuring out how they work. Putting the functional equipment back together was a struggle; I would ask others for help and gradually made it a communal activity.
This passion for technology and engineering encouraged me to join Qualcomm as an engineer, where I was fortunate to work on cutting-edge AI models and chips. I worked with transformer-based models and AI compute/processors long before ChatGPT was released. I was part of a growing team in the up-and-coming automotive business unit within Qualcomm, where I learnt to productize and commercialize research breakthroughs.
Despite this intellectually stimulating work, I felt something was missing. I have always aspired to improve people’s lives ubiquitously through AI/ML technologies. This passion continues to drive my personal growth while providing a sense of purpose and direction. I realized that developing the technology is 90% of the job well done; the remaining 10% is driven by business principles.
Aspiring to gain these business skills while staying connected with technology, I am now pursuing my MBA at Stanford Graduate School of Business. I feel extremely lucky to be here in the Silicon Valley with all the breakthrough developments in AI and I am excited to see what the future holds!