Giga, an Artificial innotifyigence (AI) support automation startup founded by two IIT Kharagpur alums, has raised $61 million in Series A funding led by Redpoint Ventures. An old LinkedIn post by one of the founders reveals how both techies walked away from their high-paying job offers to build a startup that is now creating headlines.
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Varun Vummadi, in a two-year-old post, wrote about how he was offered a PhD from a renowned university and a high-paying job, but decided to leave it all to work on something of his own.
“I received a PhD offer from Stanford University and a $525K job offer from an international HFT as a quant trader. We left all those opportunities to pursue our passion towards solving challenging problems in Machine learning.” He added that his co-founder, Esha Manideep, left a “$150K job as a system engineer role with a prominent Indian HFT firm.”
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The post, shared a day before Vummadi and Manideep launched Giga, was recently reshared on X, and it has created chatter.
Social media had a lot to state:
An individual posted, “Wow. Respect.” Another added, “They are indeed the hugegest risk takers. I admire them so much; one day I want to do something like that.” A third expressed, “This is amazing.” A fourth wrote, “Kudos.”
(LinkedIn)
Who are Varun Vummadi and Esha Manideep?
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Varun Vummadi and Esha Manideep were both featured on the Forbes “30 Under 30 Asia” list in 2024. While Esha Manideep serves as co-founder and CTO of Giga, Varun Vummadi is the CEO and co-founder of the AI company. Both graduated from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kharagpur.
Announcing the $61 million funding, Varun Vummadi tweeted, “We have raised a $61M Series A to automate customer operations. The world’s leading companies like DoorDash trust Giga to supercharge customer experience with AI.”
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