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.
Childhood.
I was born in a small town in south India. The formative experience of my childhood was this: at the age of 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. This gave me (what I think is) unusual levels of optimism, detachment, perspective, and risk tolerance.
School.
I graduated from high school as valedictorian and head boy. I was on my school’s debate, quiz, math, soccer, track and basketball teams (captaining the first four), and won intramural and interscholastic (state, regional) competitions with all of them; I also edited the school magazine. I did these for fun: extracurriculars don’t count towards college admissions in India.
I was accepted, via competitive exam, into India’s top medical school AIIMS, as well as India’s top engineering school IIT Bombay (<0.2% admit rates at each; very dissimilar exams!). I chose to join the latter.
IIT.
I graduated from IIT Bombay with a B.Tech. in Engineering Physics. While at IIT-B, I was elected Institute General Secretary (GSHA – the highest post in student government) with a record number of votes, and served as sole student rep on IIT-B’s Senate. I captained IIT-B’s quiz, debate and literary teams, and won many intercollegiate and national competitions. I was also very active in competitive intramurals, and won a bunch of awards including the institute’s “Roll of Honour”.
But I realized that a career in physics was not for me. I was accepted into India’s top business school IIM-A (I believe I ranked #1 nationally in the entrance exam; <0.2% acceptance rate again); I decided not to go. Instead, I joined a Japanese hedge fund, Simplex.
Simplex.
Simplex Asset Management, headquartered in Tokyo, is one of Asia’s oldest and largest quant hedge funds, with several billion dollars under management. I joined them as employee #7, and built many of their core trading systems. I started as a programmer and quant analyst, then became a junior trader, and eventually, senior portfolio manager and head of all non-Japan investments. While at Simplex, I built a system for automated quant trading of the US Treasury market, one of the first in the industry.
I was an excellent trader: contrarian, aggressive, thoughtful, informed. My best trade at Simplex was my last one: I exited all my positions at the high-water mark in 2007, just before the global financial crisis of 2008. I then quit my hedge fund job and moved to Toronto, looking for new challenges.
Quandl.
A few years later, 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 fragmented and intractable: hard to find and hard to use. We built technology to aggregate and harmonize millions of datasets from thousands of sources, all in a single data marketplace with a uniform, powerful API.
Quandl pioneered the category of “alternative data for finance” – datasets of great value to professional investors, but previously unused (and often unknown). Our alt data was used by a majority of the world’s top hedge funds, asset managers, fintechs, and investment banks, serving millions of downloads and powering billions in investment decisions.
I wore many hats at Quandl: heading all things data as Chief Data Officer; raising $20M in venture capital from blue-chip Silicon Valley investors; managing (at various times) finance, marketing, sales and ops; recruiting and team-building; and perhaps most importantly, setting culture and vision.
Quandl was acquired by Nasdaq in 2018, in a substantial and successful exit. Tammer and I stayed on to run the business for a while longer, before moving on to fresh pastures.
Excellence.
I am an unabashed believer in excellence. I abhor sloppiness and unseriousness. When I commit to something, I want to be the best: not just the best in my school, or company, or city, or country, but among the very best in the whole world. My career is testament to this. I’m drawn to hard challenges – trading in hyper-efficient markets, building novel technology, founding a category-creating startup – and succeeded in them, on my own terms. I make no apologies.
Excellence requires confidence, curiosity, humility and hard work. It often entails taking risks and straying from the beaten path. Talent helps, and so does luck, but they’re far from sufficient.
Above all, excellence is a choice: it is downstream of the desire for excellence. This is rarer than one might think.
Free Agent.
I’ve been a free agent for the last few years. I’m an active and successful angel investor in early-stage tech startups (40+ portfolio companies, 25% blended IRR, meaningful DPI). I also write Pivotal, a highly-regarded newsletter on data, investing and startups, with over 5000 subscribers. I advise a small and select group of firms (both tech startups and investment managers), and I serve on private-company boards.
I’m always open to new opportunities.
And More.
I’m insatiably curious, and a lifelong learner-doer. In parallel with my professional accomplishments, I keep busy with lots of hobbies, pursuits, side-projects and weekend adventures. I used to run a poem-a-day mail server in the late 90s with over 5000 subscribers. I played tournament Scrabble and reached expert level (1600). I used to hike and bike, but do less of that now. I’m a solid tennis player (4.0), and getting into distance swimming and weight-training (kettlebells). I volunteer.
I’m a skilled amateur photographer. I have a large collection of tabletop (Euro-strategy) board games. I listen to a vast range of music (but not the popular stuff I’m afraid). I’m an excellent cook. I read non-stop, on everything under the sun. I’ve travelled a bit. I think I’m unusually well-informed on a very wide range of topics: history, science, art, language, music, literature, you name it. I’m interested in everything.
I currently live in Toronto with my family, 7000 books, and 3 pianos. Also, I know how to use an Oxford comma.
This is the memoir version of my bio.
You can also read the professional version or the 4chan version.