Ranjan’s experience has been mostly in helping build or advise tech startups across the globe – in the US, UK, Europe, Japan and of course India. He wrote his first computer program on punched cards on an IBM 360 in 1976, studied computer science on green screens at Harvard, and worked on expert systems development at the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon in the early 1980s, before heading international business development for Carnegie Group Inc, an AI spinoff out of CMU. In 1987, after a few hectic years circumnavigating the globe evangelizing AI (a few decades too early!), he moved back to India with Hewlett Packard to help plan HP’s entry into the country’s computer market.
A few years later, after experience leading two Indian software startups, he was recruited to establish Oracle Corporation’s India Development Center. Becoming one of India’s earliest and most successful offshore software operations, Oracle IDC grew from systems R&D to encompass Applications development, Support, Consulting and back-end functions, and is today the company’s largest development organisation outside the US.
Eventually, Ranjan moved into VC as a venture partner with Oak Investment Partners, engaging with a wide variety of their global portfolio companies over two decades. Working with Oak introduced him to VenCap International, the UK-based venture fund-of-funds, where he has been an advisory board member since the global financial crisis of 2008. Based on this wide exposure to tech investment, he later co-founded an Oracle IDC alumni group that came together to invest in startup Indian tech companies.
While Ranjan remains involved with the tech and investment world in advisory or board roles, he has most enjoyed his periods of exposure outside the commercial environment, on the International Advisory Board of Tufts University, as a Visiting Fellow with the Cambridge Judge Business School, as chair of the advisory board for Oakridge International School in Hyderabad, and getting actively involved in the fight against the spread of fake news in India. Most recently, he spent an extraordinary twelve years as a member of the governing board of Plan India (the India chapter of Plan International), a remarkable NGO impacting the lives of millions of under-privileged children across the country.
He has had the freedom over the years to “work on projects he enjoys, with people that he likes,” and continues to mentor entrepreneurs and organisations working in interesting impact areas.