__NOTOC__
Ajit Gupta was a Silicon Valley–based entrepreneur and the founder of
Aryaka, AAyuja, JantaKhoj, and
Speedera Networks. He holds 21 technology patents for Internet content delivery and global traffic management. Ajit Gupta graduated from Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee in Electrical Engineering Batch of 1984.
Ajit Gupta died on October 7, 2016. He was survived by his wife (also an IIT-Roorkee graduate) and two children.
Career
Gupta was a founder of Aryaka, a cloud-based WAN Optimization and application acceleration company. Founded in 2009, and headquartered in
Milpitas, California
Milpitas (Spanish for or little cornfields) is a city in Santa Clara County, California, part of Silicon Valley and the broader San Francisco Bay Area. Located on the eastern shore of San Francisco Bay, it is bordered by San Jose, California, S ...
, with offices in
Bangalore, India
Bengaluru, also known as Bangalore (List of renamed places in India#Karnataka, its official name until 1 November 2014), is the Capital city, capital and largest city of the southern States and union territories of India, Indian state of Kar ...
, Aryaka employs more than one hundred and fifty people worldwide. Gupta and his team have raised US$59.5 million in four rounds of funding from InterWest Partners, Presidio Ventures, a
Sumitomo Corporation
is one of the largest worldwide '' sōgō shōsha'' general trading companies, and is a diversified corporation. The company was incorporated in 1919 and is a member company of the Sumitomo Group.
It is listed on three Japanese stock exchange ...
Company, Trinity Ventures,
Mohr Davidow Ventures, and Nexus Venture Partners.
Gupta's first successful venture was a company he co-founded in 1999 –
Speedera Networks. Speedera was acquired in 2005 by
Akamai Technologies
Akamai Technologies, Inc. is an American company specialized in content delivery networkJ. Dilley, B. Maggs, J. Parikh, H. Prokop, R. Sitaraman, and B. Weihl. (CDN), cybersecurity, DDoS mitigation, and cloud services. It is headquartered in ...
(NASDAQ: AKAM).
After Speedera, Gupta founded AAyuja, a technology
sales acceleration company, serving as its CEO. He was Chairman of the company. Gupta was also the Chairman and Founder at JantaKhoj, an India-based premium background verification service provider, which had also built the first and the largest people search engine on Indians.
Gupta was a notable alumni of the
Boys' High School & College (Allahabad, Uttar Pradesh), (BHS), an independent school in Allahabad, India.
Honors
Gupta won The Big Idea Award (for the most disruptive business model in the past 12–18 months) at The Innovator Awards 2013. Gupta was recognized by the Golden Bridge Awards for leadership and innovation in October 2012 for launching Aryaka's WAN Optimization as-a-Service offering.
Gartner, Inc. recognized his company Aryaka as a ‘Cool Vendor’ for ‘Enterprise Communications and Network Services’ in April 2011.
The company was also named a
GigaOM
Gigaom is a technology-focused analyst firm and media company. It was founded by Om Malik in San Francisco, California. In March 2015, it was shut down and in June 2015, its website and content were acquired by Knowingly and relaunched.
History
...
Structure 50 Company in May 2011 and
CRN recognized Aryaka as a "Hot Emerging Vendor" in June 2011. Gupta has spoken at conferences around the world, including
GigaOM
Gigaom is a technology-focused analyst firm and media company. It was founded by Om Malik in San Francisco, California. In March 2015, it was shut down and in June 2015, its website and content were acquired by Knowingly and relaunched.
History
...
Structure 2011, Cloud Connect,
Red Herring
A red herring is something that misleads or distracts from a relevant or important question. It may be either a logical fallacy or a literary device that leads readers or audiences toward a false conclusion. A red herring may be used intentiona ...
, Kagan Digital Media Summits, Datacenter Ventures events, and
Streaming Media
Streaming media refers to multimedia delivered through a Computer network, network for playback using a Media player (disambiguation), media player. Media is transferred in a ''stream'' of Network packet, packets from a Server (computing), ...
. A notable alumni of
IIT-Roorkee, he is a founding board member of the IIT-Roorkee Heritage Fund.
Philanthropy
In 2003, Gupta established a philanthropy program for Speedera called "Giving Back", which provided free Internet infrastructure services to non-profit organizations including Unicef.org,
Goodwill Industries International, Autism.org, and the
St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. Under Gupta's leadership, Speedera assisted
UNICEF
UNICEF ( ), originally the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund, officially United Nations Children's Fund since 1953, is an agency of the United Nations responsible for providing Humanitarianism, humanitarian and Development a ...
during the
2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami
On 26 December 2004, at 07:58:53 local time ( UTC+7), a major earthquake with a magnitude of 9.2–9.3 struck with an epicentre off the west coast of Aceh in northern Sumatra, Indonesia. The undersea megathrust earthquake, known in the sci ...
by providing pro-bono services to enable UNICEF websites to accept contributions and to help victims and families communicate with each other.
References
External links
Net Neutrality and CDNs – No level playing field anymoreAjit Gupta: How to Compete on Price Without Sacrificing ProfitabilityIs The Internet Holding Back BRIC Entrepreneurs?5 Enterprise Cloud and Networking Trends to Watch in 2014The Cloud is Revolutionizing the Enterprise WANWhy Can’t Mid-Market Companies Have It All?The Changing Enterprise WAN in the Era of the CloudHow Ajit Gupta's Aryaka Is Disrupting the Wide Area Network Business
External links
aryaka.comaayuja.comjantakhoj.com
{{DEFAULTSORT:Gupta, Ajit
1961 births
2016 deaths
American people of Indian descent
American computer businesspeople
IIT Roorkee alumni