The IIT Madras founder who sold to Amazon & Walmart; Now owns a cricket team | Anand Rajaraman

[00:01:22] Anand Rajaraman: A self introduction

[00:02:45] Junglee: The beginning, its use case and the founding team

[00:05:00] Acquisition by Amazon: The forest connection

[00:06:56] Junglee: The story behind the name

[00:10:25] The Washington Post: Junglee’s first investor

[00:12:30] Zero to One Journey: Why is it so special for Anand?

[00:14:58] Sports Team Owner: Taking cricket to America

[00:16:51] Major League Cricket: An overview of the format and the teams

[00:20:41] Anand as an Investor: His venture journey

[00:21:30] Facebook: Their first investment

[00:25:23] Mini Masterclass: Venture Capital firm and VC investing

[00:27:34] Data-Driven Venture Capital: How does that work?

[00:29:30] The Ph.D Journey at Stanford: Why does he call himself a failure?

[00:30:55] Foray into Teaching: 20 years of teaching and writing a textbook

[00:36:02] AI and Computer Science split: What does he think of the future of AI

[00:37:30] Collaboration with Venky Harinarayan: A journey that started with grocery shopping

[00:39:05] Kosmix: Evolution into Walmart Labs

[00:41:23] IIT Madras: An opportunity rich environment

[00:43:20] Medibuddy: Story of another IITM startup funded by Rocketship.vc

[00:45:00] Talk at ICSR: Beginning of the IITM entrepreneurial fund

[00:47:32] India’s Potential: Technical talent and big market for technology

[00:50:27] Advice for Parents and Students: What does joining IITM today mean?

[00:00:13] IIT Madras 

[00:02:06][00:29:21] Anand went to Stanford University after graduating from IITM

[00:10:30][00:22:47] The Washington Post Company was one of the first companies to invest in Junglee

[00:16:51] Major League Cricket 

[00:18:22] Adobe’s CEO is also an investor in the San Francisco Unicorns

[00:37:51] Anand’s partner Venky studied in UCLA after IITM

[00:45:00] Anand gave a talk at ICSR about Entrepreneurship in 2012

[00:03:01][00:37:30] Venky Harinarayan was the co-founder of Junglee and Anand’s business partner

[00:03:07] Ashish Gupta was the co-founder of Junglee who is an alumnus of IIT Kanpur

[00:04:32] [00:45:25] Rakesh Mathur was the co-founder and CEO of Junglee

[00:05:06] Jeff Bezos is the founder of Amazon which acquired Junglee

[00:08:58] Sergey Brin and Larry Page, the co-founders of Google, were in the same batch as Anand.

[00:15:06] Anand mentions Indian cricket legend Kapil Dev as his inspiration

[00:17:48] Satya Nadella is the CEO of Microsoft who has also invested in the Seattle Orcas

[00:18:09] Anand talks about Nita Ambani being present at the Major Cricket League finals last year

[00:18:21] Shantanu Narayen is the CEO of Adobe who is also an investor in San Francisco Unicorns

[00:18:51] Shane Watson is the coach of the San Francisco Unicorns

[00:19:01] Ricky Ponting is the coach of the Washington Freedom team

[00:19:04] Amrut and Anand talk about how football picked up in the US after David Beckham went to the US and joined a football team 

[00:19:14] Pat Cummins is the Australian cricket captain who also plays for the San Francisco Unicorns

[00:21:45] Mark Zuckerberg is the founder of Facebook, now Meta.

[00:22:32] Sean Parker was the connection between Anand and Zuckerberg

[00:24:29] Anand mentions Rishabh Pant when he mentions how investing is like a T20 game

[00:30:47] Professor Hector Garica-Molina was a professor at Stanford

[00:31:37] Professor Jeffrey Ullman is a Turing Award winner and Anand’s co-instructor at Stanford

[00:33:10] Mayank Singh Bawa is the co-founder of Aster Data who was also a PhD student at Stanford

[00:36:57] Professor Balaraman Ravindran is the head of the AI Department at IIT Madras

[00:43:07] Sharan Jagathrakshakan is the co-founder and CTO of Mindgrove Technologies

[00:43:34] Satish Kannan and Enbasekar D are the co-founders of Medibuddy and an IIT Madras Alumnus

[00:45:50] Professor Bhaskar Ramamurthi was the former Director at IIT Madras

[00:46:04] Swaroop (Kittu) Kolluri, Arvind Purushotham and Rohini Chakraborty are all alumni of IIT Madras

[00:03:00] [00:37:53] [00:45:25] Junglee was Anand’s first venture - an online comparison shopping platform

[00:04:25] Amazon acquired Anand’s company Junglee where he had worked for 2 years

[00:08:44] Stanford students founded Google after Junglee

[00:09:07] Anand mentions Yahoo as another student-founded company which was a precursor to Junglee

[00:11:17] eBay was just getting rolling towards going public

[00:16:51] Anand is the owner of one of the Major League Cricket teams

[00:17:23] The Texas Super Kings are affiliated with the Chennai Super Kings

[00:17:33] The MI New York are affiliated with the Mumbai Indians

[00:17:38] The LA Knight Riders are affiliated with the Kolkata Knight Riders

[00:17:43] The Seattle Orcas have been invested in by Satya Nadella

[00:18:13] The San Francisco Unicorns are owned by Anand and his partners

[00:18:25] Washington Freedom is coached by Ricky Ponting

[00:20:48] Facebook, now Meta, was one of Anand’s early investments

[00:21:18] Kosmix was the second company founded by Anand after Junglee

[00:22:42] Accel is the VC firm that invested in Facebook

[00:23:50][00:37:53] Anand co-founded a VC fund called Cambrian Ventures

[00:27:36] Rocketship.vc which is Anand’s current VC firm is a data-driven VC firm

[00:34:07] Aster Data is a firm that was started by Mayank Singh and funded by Anand

[00:34:25] Aster Data was acquired by Teradata which is one of the biggest database companies in the world 

[00:39:25] Anand’s company Kosmix was acquired by Walmart

[00:39:29] Anand and Venky set up a group called Walmart Labs within Walmart

[00:43:10] Mindgrove Technologies is funded by Rocketship.vc

[00:43:25] Medibuddy is also an IIT Alumnus founded company that is funded by Rocketship.vc

[00:44:41] Ather and Hyperverge were founded in 2012 to 2014 - the same period as Medibuddy

[00:32:09] Anand and Professor Jeffrey co-wrote a textbook called Mining of Massive Datasets

[00:04:11] Comparison Shopping - The concept pioneered by Junglee that helped transform e-commerce

[00:06:09] Marketplace Model - The third-party seller platform that Anand helped develop at Amazon

[00:12:20] Zero-to-One Innovation - Creating something entirely new rather than incremental improvements

[00:13:17] First Principles Thinking - Questioning fundamental assumptions to find novel solutions

[00:16:25] T20 Cricket Format - The shorter, more action-packed cricket format suitable for American audiences

[00:25:05] Portfolio Theory in Venture Capital - Distributing investments across multiple companies to manage risk

[00:28:20] Data-driven Venture Capital - Using data analytics rather than networks to identify promising startups