<p><p><b>Introduction</b><p>Bangalore-headquartered Open Financial Technologies Pvt. Ltd. was founded in 2017, Open offers a neo-banking platform that integrates all the tools used by small businesses and integrates it with the business's current account. Today the platform powers more than 2.3 million SMEs and processes over USD 30 billion in annualized transactions. The platform also adds over 100,000 SMEs monthly, making it the fastest-growing SME-focused neo-banking platform globally. Open is backed by leading global investors like IIFL, Temasek, Google, Visa, Tiger Global, Beenext, Recruit Strategic Partners, 3one4 Capital, Speedinvest, Tanglin Venture Partner Advisors, Angellist and Unicorn India Ventures, to name a few. It has raised over USD190 million in funding to date. </p><p>Today, the company has evolved into an end-to-end digital FinTech service provider. Open recently launched embedded finance platform Zwitch which enables fintech and non-fintech companies to launch digital banking services, and BankingStack, a financial OS for financial institutions to launch innovative digital banking solutions. In December 2021, Open acquired consumer neo-banking platform Finin. Open raised its Series C funding back in October 2021 doubling its valuation with the round.</p><p><b>Problem Statement </b></p><p>India’s 100th Unicorn was seeking to hire a tech leader for the position of Vice President of Engineering who would join the tech team in building stronger and integrated services for the end consumers. It was of importance that the candidate was a perfect fit for the organization from a cultural and technology perspective. </p><p><b>Solution and Execution</b></p><p>When Purple Quarter was approached to find a candidate that would fill in the shoes of a tech leader, the team devised a custom approach to locate the best tech-org fitment. Open being a closely knit family-run business rooted in Kerala by founders, Ajeesh and Aneesh were seeking to hire a tech leader for the 1st time in the organization. The management clearly defined the responsibilities for their search. They wanted a techie with a nurturing culture who exhibited excellence in three parameters of exceptional technical know-how, is a people person and has the right aptitude for the org’s cultural fitment. </p><p>It was imperative for Purple Quarter to locate a leader who would easily fit in the organization’s culture. After thoroughly screening the talent pool of candidates, a few profiles were shared with Open. Of the candidates shared with the team, Vijay Sriram was unanimously the preferred choice. He is a seasoned techie, humble, soft-spoken, has hands-on experience in technology, is a strong leader who has attracted the right people and helped them grow in the company and was the best performer in his previous organization. These qualities along with his in-depth knowledge of technology and nurturing attitude make him the ideal candidate. </p><p><b>Open</b></p><p><b>Vijay’s Stint at Open</b></p><p>With deep product and industry knowledge, Vijay served as the VP of Engineering at Open for one and a half years. During his time, he helped Open build and scale various products aligned with their business vision.</p><h3> </h3><p>For more information, please reach out to the <a href="Marketing@purplequarter.com">Marketing Team.</a></p><div class="wp-block-file"><object class="wp-block-file__embed" style="width: 100%; height: 200px;" data="http://www.purplequarter.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Open.pdf" type="application/pdf" width="300" height="150" aria-label="Embed of Open Case Study."></object><a id="wp-block-file--media-6d445ec2-60ff-44e3-b6b6-7eaa9884a4f7" href="http://www.purplequarter.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Open.pdf">Open Case Study</a><a class="wp-block-file__button" href="http://www.purplequarter.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Open.pdf" download="" aria-describedby="wp-block-file--media-6d445ec2-60ff-44e3-b6b6-7eaa9884a4f7">Download</a></div><p> </p></p><!-- wp:file {"id":125817,"href":"http://www.purplequarter.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Open.pdf","displayPreview":true,"previewHeight":200} --><!-- /wp:file --></p>
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<p><b>Introduction</b></p> <p>India’s first full-stack financial solutions company, Razorpay has grown from being a payment gateway to a solutions-driven organisation that boasts an extensive product suite to accept and disburse payments and raise capital and park money. Founded in 2014, Razorpay has grown from being a payment gateway provider to a leading full-stack financial services company with an extensive product suite for businesses to manage their financial infrastructure. The company looks to adopt a holistic approach by integrating technology into the organization’s business processes. </p> <p>Founded by alumni of IIT Roorkee, Shashank Kumar and Harshil Mathur, Razorpay is the second Indian company to be a part of Silicon Valley’s largest tech accelerator, Y Combinator. Marquee investors such as Lone Pine Capital, Alkeon Capital, TCV, GIC, Tiger Global, Sequoia Capital India, Ribbit Capital, Matrix Partners, Salesforce Ventures, Y Combinator and MasterCard have invested a total of $741.5 Mn through Series A, B, C, D, E & F funding. A few angel investors have also invested in Razorpay’s mission to simplify payments and banking and redefine how finance works in India.</p> <p><b>Problem Statement </b></p> <p>Shashank Kumar, Co-Founder and CTO managed the technology vertical at Razorpay, with the expansion and newer additions to the existing structure, the company was looking for a seasoned techie to join the team as the Senior Vice President of Engineering. As the SVP of Engineering, the designated leader would be responsible for managing the teams, translating business strategy into engineering requirements and focusing on the scalability of the products.</p> <p><b>Solution and Execution</b></p> <p>Purple Quarter with Razorpay devised a custom approach to map and locate the ideal fit for the mandate. Purple Quarter on the mandate took an unconventional approach of finding a candidate that would fill in the shoes of a Chief Technology Officer eventually taking the engineering burden off of Shashank, directing his expertise and leadership role more towards the business. This approach came as a surprise to Razorpay as they were looking out for a comparatively less senior role. Following detailed discussions, the management went ahead with appointing a C-Suite Leader in June 2022. </p> <p>It was essential to look for a leader who has handled large teams in the past, and had a 360-degree experience with technology, engineering, product, program, data science and people. By the profiling of Purple Quarter’s BMM, the best-suited candidate would be a Transformer with the mindset of a Creator. After thorough detailing and mapping of candidates across companies, <a href="https://www.purplequarter.com/razorpay-trusts-purple-quarter-to-onboard-ex-amazon-techie-as-the-cto/press-release/">Purple Quarter helped close the mandate with a seasoned technologist - Murali Brahmadesam</a>. He proved to be the best match for the mandate, he is an expat who has managed 600+ team sizes in his recent stint. The seasoned technologist has successfully led and managed multiple teams during his tenure. At Amazon, Murali built and managed products such as Aurora database engines (MySQL/PostgreSQL) from the ground up. Murali was identified as the perfect profile fitment of a creator with a product mindset - an ideal find for leading tech at Razorpay. He comes with the right organizational-cultural- technology fit. With expertise in technology, engineering background, product know-how, programming, and data science, Murali is also a people-oriented individual. Murali is undoubtedly the right person at the right time. </p> <p><b>Looking Forward </b></p> <p>Purple Quarter identified a role that helped bridge the gap between tech leaders and the tech team by identifying and locating Murali as the Chief Technology Officer for Razorpay. The organization is expanding its product avenues and with Murali on the team, Razorpay is further integrating technology into its business models. Technology and engineering integration are of paramount importance in keeping ahead of the competition. It is only a matter of time before Murali takes the team and the tech vertical of Razorpay to new heights. Purple Quarter is pleased to have rightly believed in Murali being the best fit for the tech-leadership role. </p> <p>For more information, please reach out to the <a href="mailto:marketing@purplequarter.com">Marketing Team.</a></p> <!-- wp:file {"id":125607,"href":"http://www.purplequarter.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Razorpay.pdf","displayPreview":true,"previewHeight":200} --> <div class="wp-block-file"><object class="wp-block-file__embed" style="width: 100%; height: 200px;" data="http://www.purplequarter.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Razorpay.pdf" type="application/pdf" width="300" height="150" aria-label="Embed of Razorpay."></object><a id="wp-block-file--media-1d8a18c5-24bf-4d32-a144-9aef5c3bea05" href="http://www.purplequarter.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Razorpay.pdf">Razorpay</a><a class="wp-block-file__button" href="http://www.purplequarter.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Razorpay.pdf" download="" aria-describedby="wp-block-file--media-1d8a18c5-24bf-4d32-a144-9aef5c3bea05">Download</a></div> <!-- /wp:file --> <p> </p>
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<h4>Introduction</h4> <p>Headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, Clari is a connected revenue operations platform that uses AI and automation to unlock the data captured in business processes. Clari helps turn strategic goals into superior performance and sales teams into revenue machines. Clari continues to innovate, collaborate, and push the limits to build marketing, sales, and customer success professionals across 170 companies such as Okta, Zoom, Medallia, Adobe, and Atlassian. The company has always envisioned the India office as a development center doubling down on investments to support all the efforts in India to continue innovating in several areas of the product.</p> <h4>Problem Statement</h4> <p>With the vision to make the India team independent and have suitable technical leadership upon execution of new projects alongside leveraging US tech expertise, Clari was on the lookout for a leader experienced in driving the company's technological development roadmap, product layout plan, and engineering practices over the long run. It had been a while since Clari was searching for a leader with extensive experience in Engineering and Data Science roles, as well as an overview of all aspects of business, technology, and data science. Clari sought an entrepreneurial VP of Engineering / Head of Engineering who was passionate about building elite - teams, ideas, architectures, and platforms. Clari needed a leader that would bring a strategic mindset and drive to solve business and technical challenges for the India Engineering team. A tech leader capable of becoming a brand ambassador for the Clari India tech team. The company was primarily seeking a Site Leader for India who would be both a thought leader and a people person.</p> <h4>Solution and Execution</h4> <p>Upon Clari’s role mandate, Purple Quarter dived in to search for an ideal and culturally fit candidate. After carefully drafting the need and precisely profiling the candidates, only the best-fit profiles were shared. Clari has always envisioned the India office as a key development center and is doubling down on investments to support all the efforts in India to continue innovating in several areas of the product. Since Clari was aspiring to have a strong presence in India and expanding the Engineering team at that time, it became difficult to persuade the candidate that the position covered all areas. In addition to numerous discussions regarding Clari's advancement strategy across geographies and the vision for the India team to become independent and with enough technical leadership after talking about multiple data points with Vishy, selling Clari proved to be a challenging endeavor.</p> <p>With years of expertise in the executive search for tech leadership and a consultative approach in furtherance to the requirement, Purple Quarter made an early closure with Vishy Ranganatha. Purple Quarter's tech, talent pool and robust network made the search for Vishy Ranganath effortless. An IIM Madras alumnus, Vishy Ranganathan, was the erstwhile Engineering Leader at Google before his appointment. He has around 27 years of industry experience and hands-on expertise in playing multiple roles from bringing business acumen, lead engineer for various security features, ingestion from data sources, and solving problems at a large scale. In his previous stints, he was associated with Intuit and MindTree and played integral roles like Delivery Manager for multiple US-based customer accounts in strategic direction and future growth entwined with the organization’s tech vision. Purple Quarter was able to drive the candidate.</p> <h4>Looking Forward</h4> <p>Purple Quarter with its specialized tech-centric approach, played a crucial role in closing Clari’s Vice President of Engineering mandate. Even before the Series F funding round, Clari was flourishing. Vishy's deployment in Clari's roadmap suggests the company’s trajectory in a fast-track mode. The organization is expanding its revenue operations team. Clari, the developer of a revenue operations platform, has closed a $225 million Series F round, raising the company's total valuation to more than $2.6 billion. Having just completed a new round of funding that has increased the company's valuation by more than four times in two years, Vishy is now seen expanding the Engineering team by calling out Principal Engineers at Clari. Purple Quarter envisioned Vishy to be the ideal mandate upon Clari’s requirement for a tech leadership search. With Vishy leading the Tech front, Clari is experiencing rapid growth with India team expansion and accelerated operations.</p> <h3> </h3> <p><!-- wp:file {"id":125816,"href":"http://www.purplequarter.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Clari.pdf","displayPreview":true,"previewHeight":200} --></p> <div>For more information, please reach out to the <a href="mailto:marketing@purplequarter.com">Marketing Team.</a></div> <div> </div> <div class="wp-block-file"><object class="wp-block-file__embed" style="width: 100%; height: 200px;" data="http://www.purplequarter.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Clari.pdf" type="application/pdf" width="300" height="150" aria-label="Embed of Clari Case Study."></object><a id="wp-block-file--media-48c6e545-2702-423d-864d-1e2828100288" href="http://www.purplequarter.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Clari.pdf">Clari Case Study</a><a class="wp-block-file__button" href="http://www.purplequarter.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Clari.pdf" download="" aria-describedby="wp-block-file--media-48c6e545-2702-423d-864d-1e2828100288">Download</a></div> <!-- /wp:file -->
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