IIT Alum Trades ₹4 Crore Salary for $61M AI Success

The classic entrepreneurial narrative of forsaking comfort for a passion-driven venture has found a new, high-stakes example in the story of Varun Vummadi, the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kharagpur alumnus and CEO of the Artificial Intelligence (AI) startup, Giga. Vummadi’s decision to walk away from a highly lucrative job offer, which has been widely reported to be a $525,000 (approximately ₹4 crore) quant trader role, coupled with a PhD offer from Stanford University, has paid off handsomely as his company just announced a massive $61 million Series A funding round.

The Audacious Choice

Vummadi, alongside his co-founder and IIT classmate Esha Manideep, launched the San Francisco-based AI support automation startup Giga in 2023. The duo’s conviction to pursue a challenging problem in machine learning led them to reject pathways most young graduates only dream of.

In a resurfaced LinkedIn post shared just before Giga’s launch, Vummadi outlined the sheer scale of the opportunities he and Manideep declined:

• Varun Vummadi: A $525,000 per annum job offer as a quant trader at a prominent international High-Frequency Trading (HFT) firm, in addition to a fully-funded PhD offer from Stanford University.
• Esha Manideep: A $150,000 per annum role as a system engineer at a major Indian HFT firm.

“We left all those opportunities to pursue our passion towards solving challenging problems in Machine learning,” Vummadi wrote, encapsulating the high-risk, high-reward mindset that fuels Silicon Valley’s most successful ventures.

Giga’s Ascent in Enterprise AI

The risk has now culminated in a significant financial win, with the $61 million Series A funding round led by Redpoint Ventures, and participation from high-profile investors like Y Combinator and Nexus Venture Partners.

Giga is a force in the enterprise AI space, specializing in voice-based AI agents designed to handle complex, real-time customer service workflows. The company’s technology is engineered to engage in simultaneous speech and chat, operate across multiple languages, and seamlessly integrate into the operations of large enterprises. Giga’s AI agents are already handling hundreds of thousands of customer conversations daily and are currently deployed with major companies like the food delivery giant DoorDash. The fresh injection of capital is earmarked for scaling its platform and expanding its reach within Fortune 100 companies.

An Inspiration for the Risk-Takers

The co-founders, who were jointly recognized in the Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia list for 2024, have become a major talking point on social media. Their journey from IIT Kharagpur to becoming founders of a highly-funded, cutting-edge AI company is being hailed as a testament to the power of vision and entrepreneurial courage over conventional security.

In a time when the AI sector is growing exponentially, the Giga story serves as a powerful reminder that the greatest opportunities often lie on the other side of an audacious leap of faith—even one that means walking away from a ₹4 crore safety net.