There’s now no shortage of Indian CEOs at giant tech companies, but Indian entrepreneurs are continuing to build successful new businesses in the US.
Data security company Rubrik has gone public in the US. The company debuted at the stock markets at a valuation of $6 billion (Rs. 50,000 crore), and its stock rose 16 percent on opening day. Amidst an indifferent tech scene in the US in recent times, Rubrik’s IPO has been hailed as a success by observers.
Interestingly, Rubrik has a strong Indian connection. The company was founded by four IIT graduates from 4 different IIT campuses. Bipul Sinha had attended IIT Kharagpur, Arvind Jain had attended IIT Delhi, Soham Mazumdar had attended IIT Kanpur and Arvind Nithrakashyap had attended IIT Madras. The four had charted different paths before they came together to found Rubrik — Bipul Sinha had completed an MBA from Wharton, worked with Oracle for nearly a decade and become a partner at VC firm Lightspeed Ventures; Arvind Jain had spent over a decade at Google and become a Distinguished Engineer; Soham Mazumdar had spent nearly a decade at Google and Facebook and Arvind Nithrakashyap had spent nearly a decade at Oracle.
But in 2014, these four got together to found Rubrik in Palo Alto. The amount of data collected by the world’s companies was exploding, and Rubrik helped these companies keep this data safe. Rubrik helped businesses with cloud management, data backups, data recovery and business continuity planning. The pedigree of the founders was beyond question, the Rubrik didn’t have much trouble raising money. — Rubrik raised funds from Greylock in 2015, and from Microsoft and Lightspeed Ventures as well. Its valuation rose quickly too — Rubrick was valued at $1.3 billion in 2017, which rose to $3.3 billion in 2019.
Cut to today, Rubrick is worth $6 billion, and has gone public. In 2023, it had revenue of $628 million (Rs. 5,000 crore), and has 3,100 employees. It has offices in 6 countries including India, where it is present in Bengaluru and Mumbai. Rubrick has prominent clients including Infosys, Home Depot, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and others.
And the IPO has resulted in a windfall for Rubrick’s four founders. The founders own around 7 percent of the company each, so are each currently worth around Rs. 3,500 crore from the IPO proceeds alone. At the IPO, one of the founders’ wives was seen wearing a saree. And while Rubrick is an American company, its success is yet another feather in the cap of the Indian community while has made a massive mark on the global tech ecosystem.