Ajeet Singh established Nutaniz and ThoughtSpot in the US.
Ajeet Singh, an IIT-Kanpur alumnus born into a family of farmers in Uttar Pradesh, boasts of creating two unicorn companies in Silicon Valley. His journey led to the establishment of Nutanix, a cloud computing company valued at over $6 billion and ThoughtSpot, a technology firm specialising in business intelligence analytics, valued at over $4 billion. One of these companies witnessed a significant tech IPO on NASDAQ in 2016.
In a podcast with Mukesh Bansal, founder of Myntra and Cult.Fit, titled 'SparX by Mukesh Bansal,' Singh recounted his path to founding these billion-dollar enterprises.
"I come from a family of farmers, my grandparents were farmers in Western UP. My dad was a research scientist in the Department of Agriculture and he was a chemist, so I grew up all over UP," he said, adding that the visits to his father’s labs had a lasting impression on him. Singh was eventually the topper in Chemical Engineering at IIT-Kanpur.
Singh excelled in Chemical Engineering at IIT-Kanpur. Subsequently, he completed an MBA in Kolkata and worked in Bengaluru for six years before going to the US. Despite being the first engineer in his family, Singh initially didn't really foresee a career in business.
After his MBA, Ajeet Singh went to do management consulting but said he hated it.
Dissatisfied with creating PowerPoint presentations without real-world experience, he joined i2 Technologies in Bengaluru, focusing on supply chain planning software.
After three years at i2, Singh joined Honeywell and then Oracle. "I went to the US with Honeywell and once the product was ready to be launched and I didn’t want to stay in a very large organisation for very long. I wanted to be closer to technologies, and went to Oracle. And once I was in the Bay Area, I thought I really can’t be here and not work for startups. So then I joined a startup," said Singh.
Singh emphasised the importance of early-career professionals focusing on maximizing learning and building relationships with skilled individuals.
Nutanix, a company significantly influenced by Singh, boasts a substantial team in Bengaluru, as does ThoughtSpot. With 400 global R&D employees, including 300 in India across Bengaluru, Hyderabad, and Thiruvananthapuram, Singh highlighted the global presence of his ventures.
"We have a no-HQ culture. I hated the HQ term,” Ajeet Singh said because he wanted to avoid the misconception that essential work is centralised at headquarters. Drawing from his experiences, Singh maintains a discerning approach when selecting collaborators, including co-founders, investors, and team members.
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