Ajeet Singh: Creativity Redefined
It's true that some are more creative than others. However, we can acquire creativity, develop and keep it honed over the years. Innovation through creativity is the skilled application of knowledge in new ways. It requires changing the normal routine, stepping outside of the comfort zone and focusing on the present moment. Mostly ideas develop from a steady percolation and evaluation of thoughts and feelings. But sometimes a big notion may break through in a flash of insight. Thus, we may generate a brilliant idea for a tech startup or find an answer to an engineering quandary.
Thanks to Ajeet Singh's passion for creation that helped him build two multi-million dollar technology companies from the ground up - Nutanix and ThoughtSpot. Nutanix is a cloud computing company that is estimated at over $6 billion while ThoughtSpot, a technology company that produces business intelligence analytics, is worth over $4 billion.
Ajeet Singh is the Co-founder and Executive Chairman of ThoughtSpot, which has revolutionized business analytics through search and AI. Prior to starting ThoughtSpot, he was Co-founder and Chief Products Officer at Nutanix, a leader in the enterprise cloud industry, which had the largest Tech IPO in 2016. Before he established Nutanix he was Senior Director of Product Management at Aster Data, which was later acquired by Teradata. Also, he was associated with Honeywell for some years. Later he worked for Oracle, where he, along with other team members, first launched Oracle Database to the Amazon EC2 cloud. Ajeet Singh, an IIT-Kanpur engineer, was born into a family of farmers. He hails from western Uttar Pradesh, India. He created two unicorns in the US.
Ajeet Singh's father, a chemist by profession, was a research scientist in the Department of Agriculture. Ajeet lived and grew up across Uttar Pradesh as his father being a government employee was often shuffled around. His early memories are of visits to his father's labs, which left a lasting impression on him. During his visits to the research labs his father would show him simple experiments, such as titration, which had a great influence upon his young mind. He topped in Chemical Engineering at the prestigious IIT-Kanpur. Thereafter, he studied MBA in Kolkata, and initially worked as a management consultant. He soon left the company, since he wished to do something creative, rather than preparing powerpoint presentations and explaining to people how to run a business. After leaving his first job, he travelled to Bangaluru to join the firm, i2 Technologies, which was engaged in supply chain planning software. At i2 he worked along with some top-skilled techies. He worked in Bangaluru for about six years, and received extensive exposure that would help in his future endeavours in the US
Nutanix, Inc.
Nutanix, Inc., located in San Jose, California, US, is a cloud computing firm. Dheeraj Pandey, Mohit Aron and Ajeet Singh founded the company in 2009. It sells software for data centres and hybrid multi-cloud deployments. The product-line comprises software for virtualization, Kubernetes, database-as-a-service, software-defined networking, security, as well as software-defined storage for file, object and block storage.
Within a few years Venture capitalists invested $312.2 million in Nutanix, which saw the company reachlng the $1-billion valuation mark by 2013, and thus it became part of the 'unicorn startups' group. It raised $140 million in a series financing in 2014, which brought the company's valuation to close to $2 billion. The venture capitalist firms, which funded Nutanix included Lightspeed Venture Partners, Khosla Ventures, and Blumberg Capital. However, in early 2013 Mohit Aron quit Nutanix to start Cohesity, a privately-held computer data storage company. Through an IPO in 2016 Nutanix raised about $230 million. Thus, it became the biggest VC-backed IPO of 2016 in the US.
In the following several years Nutanix grew rapidly through acquisitions, establishing itself as one of the leading firms in the US.
ThoughtSpot, Inc.
ThoughtSpot, Inc., based in Mountain View, California, US, is a technology company that produces business intelligence analytics search software. It was set up in 2012 by Ajeet Singh (CEO) and Amit Prakash (CTO). The latter, earlier associated with Google, is in charge of machine learning systems. In late 2012, ThoughtSpot raised $10.7 million through funding led by Lightspeed Venture Partners. In 2014, it raised $30 million through funding led by Khosla Ventures.
ThoughtSpot opened its London office in early 2016. In May that year it raised $50 million through General Catalyst Partners. Also, it received a boost with an investment from Hewlett Packard Pathfinder. Thereafter, as part of a deal it began selling software on Hewlett Packard Enterprise infrastructure. In 2018, it raised $145 million to expand its AI-based analytics platform.
In 2019, ThoughtSpot relocated its headquarters from Palo Alto to Sunnyvale. The company once again raised $248 million, and by 2020 it had $100 million in annual recurring revenue. Later in the year it went for another round of fund-raising of $100 million, thereby the company's valuation touched $4.2 billion. In 2021, ThoughtSpot partnered with Tech Mahindra, an Indian information technology firm. By March that year it made its first acquisition by taking over SQL-based analytics software startup, SeekWell, for $20 million. A few months later, it acquired the data integration firm, Diyotta. In 2023, ThoughtSpot took over the business intelligence startup, Mode Analytics, for $200 million.
According to Ajeet Singh, every employee, early on in his or her career, should focus on maximising learning and getting to know good people. Both Nutanix and ThoughtSpot are well-established top companies by their own right. Nutanix has had a big team in Bengaluru for a while, and ThoughtSpot also has a large team in the city. Of the 400 employees globally in R&D, 300 are in India.
(Photos: Courtesy Company Site)
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