UW Foster School of Business

New Jersey Institute of Technology

Indian Institute of Technology, Madras

Entrepreneur

Responsible for building a product to serve as a Co-Pilot for AI-HEDIS product in health care quality improvement initiaitives to make abstraction more efficient and save $10M+ in costs for United Health Group.

Optum

Independent Consultant

Vassar Labs

Co-Founder

CORPORATE PROFILE:  Ikon Financial services is a lender to small and medium-sized businesses. 
	
RESPONSIBILITY PROFILE:  Reporting to the Founder and Chairman, I am responsible for liaising with the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to acquire approval for the transfer of management control, business strategy and the new business plan. Worked on operations strategy and was further in charge of regulatory relationships, risk management, compliance, and overseeing financial and regulatory filings. Since its founding, Ikon has experienced a ~22% RoE. 

ACHIEVED IN THIS ROLE:

BUSINESS STRATEGY AND REGULATORY RELATIONS: 

I partnered with a team of entrepreneurs to acquire an existing, non-banking financial company, which required the creation of a business plan to pass the intense regulatory process with the Reserve Bank of India. Over the following 60 days, planned a strategy, co-developed the business plan, and navigated regulatory scrutiny. This plan became the company's foundation, resulting in several acquisition requests. Asked to serve on the Board of a similar firm and utilized this strategy to achieve swift regulatory approval for another company.

Ikon Financial Services

Co-Founder and Board Member

RESPONSIBILITIES:
I worked in two teams at Amazon, Seller Pricing and Shipping and Region Authority reporting to Senior Managers with team sizes of up to 120 employees. I was responsible for the products that determined Shipping / Pick-up eligibility, Ship charges and consumer quantity discounts. 

ACHIEVED IN THIS ROLE:

Artificial Intelligence / Machine Learning: Historically, ship charges were determined using a static formula and I was tasked to improve this. My investigation revealed an architectural issue that limited the system’s use. I crafted a plan over the next two weeks and worked with multi-functional teams to implement an AI model to estimate ship charges to address the issue. This delivered dynamic, accurate, ship pricing expected to save ~$100M next year and is on track to yield billions in long-term revenue.

E-Commerce Development: After previous engineering teams failed, I was tasked by the leadership to develop a system that incentivized customers to place multiple-unit orders. I partnered with cross-functional teams to define the product/use cases to build an optimization/ML model that defined products/discount tiers. I successfully launched the pilot, which has revealed significant customer insights useful in scaling the business.

Product Development / Strategy: More than 700 teams regularly make changes (such as shipping charges) to Tier-1 services processing +2M transactions per second. These proposed changes experienced slowdowns due to lack of automation, which hindered Amazon’s growth and innovation. I was charged to integrate first-time automation in this space to reduce time to make changes. I worked with teams to build a collaborative test case validation system and automation to generate test cases from historical records. The system was launched within three months and immediately reduced change times by 75%, which enables partner teams to foster more innovation and launch products faster.

Amazon

Principal Product Manager

RESPONSIBILITIES:

I am a Co-Founder of the company and was part of the core management in growing the company to 180+ people. I was responsible for vision, strategy, marketing, inside sales, sales, customer engagement/relationships, defining the product and working with engineering/UX designers deliver the product.  

ACHIEVED IN THIS ROLE:

DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION:  A large state in South India requested us to implement innovative municipality performance tracking solutions after consultants had failed to deliver. I led these efforts, crafted and presented an integrated dashboard able to track analytics and monitor revenue collection, SLAs, citizen complaints, etc., to be improved by 110 municipalities in a large south Indian state. I integrated ways to unearth lapses in building compliance, measure green cover, and identify infrastructure issues using these innovative solutions. These improvements increased property tax collection by 22%, reduced customer complaint resolution times by 25%, and secured 120+ municipalities as customers; the system received two awards as a result.

ANALYTICS / BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE: A large state in South India (3M students across 30K schools) lacked a platform to generate reports on education outcomes based on varying parameters, real-time data, etc. We were requested to build a solution to address this. I led a team and collected/analyzed customer feedback, identified pain points, assimilated siloed data, collaboratively created reports and digital solutions (adaptive learning system, digital progress reports) for an analytics platform with geospatial features that tracked various parameters and outcomes in addition to student subsidies/payments worth $500M/year. The platform has helped to improve educational outcomes for the state and elevated its National Assessment Survey rankings on an average from 19 to four.

Co-Founder, Head of Analytics, Smart Cities Solutions and US Business

ACHIEVED IN THIS ROLE:

PRODUCT AND ENGINEERING LEADERSHIP: Real-time data visibility and decision support were lacking for a South Indian state’s water assets due to a missing integrated view, mismanagement, and no scientific way of managing water. We built a first-of-its-kind, holistic SaaS solution to address the problem. Led a team for over nine months to identify pain points and craft the sensor-based, real-time water management solution. Integrated data siloes to build scientific models to provide a data continuum. This platform became a single source of truth statewide. The solution was expanded/adopted by six other states in India, eventually and received many awards including a National Water Mission award.

Co-Founder, Head of Smart Water Business

SRI Capital is a $100M fund investing typically first professional round in early-stage startups primarily in Enterprise Tech, Consumer, Health/Bio with SaaS (software-as-a-Service) and deep tech. 

RESPONSIBILITIES:
Reported to the Managing Partner and was responsible for working with portfolio companies in governance, aiding in operations, technology, sales, management, etc., raising money when required, advising on deal terms, and serving as a bridge between the Managing Partner and the investee companies. 

ACHIEVED IN THE ROLE:

FUNDRAISING: I was recommended by investors from Hyderabad Angels and SRICapital and was recruited by an investee company, “Green India Building Systems and Services” (GIBSS), a clean-tech pioneer in Geothermal Air-Conditioning systems, to serve as a Board member and assist with fundraising. Over the following year and a half, provided governance, presented the company to various investors, and negotiated items found within term sheets. These efforts secured $5M in Series A capital from multiple organizations (SRI Capital Included), which enabled GIBSS to scale and increased the company’s stock valuation by 4X. GIBSS was a recipient of several awards. I also worked with two other portfolio companies in helping them with strategy, operations, technology and sales.

SRI Capital

Venture Partner

RESPONSIBILITIES:

Medstar is an online pharmacy providing subscription service with monthly medicines for chronic patients. I was the founder reporting to the board. My responsibilities included raising angel/venture money, strategy, hiring, developing, and launching the E-Commerce website, partnerships, sales, and operations.

ACHIEVED IN THE ROLE:

PRODUCT INNOVATION: Indian pharmaceutical drug retailers did not exist online in 2011, and the existing brick-and-mortar system was rampant with cost inefficiencies and  spurious drugs. Despite regulatory challenges, I resolved to intervene. I researched the industry for six months, then worked with regulators over the next four months to design compliant solutions. Secured funding, recruited a team, and then worked with engineers, suppliers, and partners to launch the service in four months. I built and provided e-prescriptions using licensed medical brands and formulations data. I set up B2B relationships with hospitals, nursing homes, old age homes, drug distributors and doctors. I scaled the business and brought it to be close to operational breakeven in under a year and this industry has since become a multi-billion-dollar market in India.

MedStar

Founder & CEO

Solix is a $30M enterprise data life cycle management company with about 350 employees. Solix unifies enterprise data (Legacy, Inactive and Active data) of all types (structured and unstructured) in a single, scalable and compliant data platform for infrastructure optimization, Information Life Cycle Management (ILM), data security and advanced analytics. This empowers organizations to unleash data-driven applications for improved customer engagement, operational efficiency and profitability. Solix has many Fortune 500 customers and has been named a leader in Structured Data Archiving and Applications Retirement in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant. I managed the Application Retirement practice at Solix.

Solix Technologies

Practice Lead

SCOPE OF RESPONSIBILITY & ACHIEVEMENT:  Hyderabad Angels is a leading platform to connect angel investors with early-stage startups in India. I was recruited by the Board and Chairman/CEO to lead the formulation of the angel group, develop processes, and head post-investment management. Worked with regulators to establish the group along with modalities, deal flow, and due diligence processes. Negotiated with entrepreneurs and worked with the group to formulate consensus in investments and term sheets, then monitored investments. Invested in three companies – two that received follow-on rounds and a third that is still growing and profitable. The group has since grown to 120+ investors with 50+ investments and 10+ successful exits.

Hyderabad Angels

Executive Director / Head of Secretariat

RESPONSIBILITIES:

A $400M IT solutions organization with 4000+ employees publicly listed in India. I reported to the Chairperson and CEO with a $2M OPEX and grew the business from zero to 110 employees. Responsible for building an IT solutions practice from the ground up focused on Enterprise Mobility and Apple Platform Solutions.

ACHIEVED IN THE ROLE:

ENTERPRISE PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT:  At the time, Apple Retail stores were using Windows-based devices for their mobile POS systems, which were slow and crashed frequently. After leading the acquisition of a close partner of Apple’s, engaged (along with another company) to build a mobile POS system, “EasyPay,” to replace legacy systems. Over nine months, led teams to develop a system that supported card and cash transactions on an iPod touch, the first technology of its kind, and enabled associates to automatically activate a wireless number if required. The product enjoyed a successful pilot and was expanded to more stores; this technology created industry buzz and was eventually replicated by companies like Square.
MERGERS & ACQUISITIONS (M&A): I was charged by the leadership to lead the acquisition of niche, distressed assets from a $50M fund. Over four months, led due diligence, determined if the companies aligned with overall business strategy / goals, structured leadership compensation plans, and worked with legal teams and investment bankers to close the deal. Led people and customer integration post-acquisition, navigated a legacy customer lawsuit, and successfully won the case. The acquisitions were successfully closed, one of which was a certified partner of Apple in their professional services practice, and the other grew 12-15X to a $24M annual revenue run rate post acquisition.

Prithvi Information Solutions

Vice President of HiTech and Apple Platform Solutions

I joined PortalPlayer as an early employee which was acquired by NVIDIA. Before the NVIDIA acquisition, PortalPlayer was a $250M maker of complete system-on-chip software and firmware for digital media players with 400 employees. I participated in the innovation and growth of the company from its early days through the company going public on NASDAQ in 2005 and an eventual acquisition to NVIDIA. I started a Software Engineer and was promoted to be a Tech Project Lead in the first few months. I was responsible for the technical delivery of various programs, which included products such as digital media players for end customers (Apple, Samsung, SanDisk, Bang & Olufsen, Philips, Microsoft, etc.). Product involved a System-On-Chip (SoC), firmware and software with dual ARM core engine that powered digital media (audio and video) players. 

ACHIEVED IN THE ROLE:

PROGRAM MANAGEMENT: I was promoted to manage various programs delivering digital media players. With each customer, aligned expectations, managed technology delivery and program management, and worked with global partners to ensure delivery of the final products. Customers included SanDisk, Microsoft (for their digital rights management initiative), Philips, Samsung, and, most notably, Apple (technology used in the first six generations of the iPod). The business was later sold to NVIDIA due to these successes, and the technology now forms their Tegra line of products.

NVIDIA

Program Manager

Quadramed is a $85M provider of mission-critical IT solutions for the healthcare IT space with 750 employees. I started as a Software Engineer where I architected and developed an online auction system for New Jersey Hospitals Association where the member hospitals could trade equipment.

Quadramed Corporation

Software Engineer

A1Books was a pioneer in the online commerce. I was the only employee of the company working with the founder to redesign and launch a new e-commerce website.

A1Books.com

Consultant

I worked as a summer intern in building a prototype of a product for Siemens Corporate Research.

Chandrakiran Mallarapu