My Story
I went from being a wartime refugee as a child, to a student leader in university, to a portfolio manager at a large hedge fund, to co-founder of a successful tech startup. This is my story.
At 13, I spent 3 days in the hold of a cargo ship, escaping a war zone with nothing more than what I could carry in a backpack.
At 17, I graduated from high school in south India as valedictorian and head boy; I was also on my school’s basketball, soccer, debate, quiz and math teams. I was accepted into both AIIMS and IIT Bombay, and chose to study Engineering Physics at the latter.
At 21, I turned down graduate school to join a tiny firm that “used math to predict the market”. One of Asia’s first hedge funds, Simplex eventually grew to hundreds of people and billions of dollars. I joined as employee #7.
By 26, I was a portfolio manager at the fund. I set up and ran the fund’s US office; I also co-led the team that designed, built and traded one of the bond market’s first algorithmic trading systems.
At 30, I quit my hedge fund job. I exited all my positions near the high-water mark of the portfolio in 2007, and moved to Canada. (I’ve been an immigrant three times!)
At 33, I started Quandl with my friend and co-founder Tammer Kamel. We set out to solve a well-known problem: there’s an enormous amount of valuable data in the world, but it’s hard to find and hard to use.
I was 37 when we launched the Quandl data marketplace. We pioneered the category of alternative data for finance, and acquired many of the world’s top hedge funds, asset managers, fintechs and investment banks as our customers.
I was 41 when Quandl was acquired by Nasdaq, in a successful and substantial exit.
At 44, I moved on from my time at Quandl (now known as Nasdaq Data), and embarked on a new adventure as an angel investor, advisor and writer. I’m excited for what the future holds!
With gratitude: Over my career, I’ve benefited from privilege, serendipity and kindness, from friends, family, mentors, partners and complete strangers. I thank you all. We are none of us alone.