Anirban Datta Gupta

Impact-oriented entrepreneur experienced across product, technology, and finance. Driven by customer empathy and professional relationships and possessing expertise across client-facing roles, high-impact responsibilities and necessity-led innovation.

Work Experience

Co-Founder and Chief Operations Officer | Praesus Technologies, Bangalore and Kolkata, India 

  • Co-founded the company and grew it 20x in valuation while raising ~ $1mn from marquee angel and VC investors, including raising money on Shark Tank India
  • Negotiated and closed multi-year SaaS deal with a $10 billion Indian food-tech company to implement data-driven solutions for 3,00,000+ delivery contractors
  • Drove deal to provide innovative internal IoT solutions for a 200+ member team of a $13 billion Indian two-wheeler manufacturing company
  • Led cross-functional team of 20+ across design, data and development domains to deploy a cutting-edge ML product utilizing serverless infrastructure to increase fleet transparency for Indian two-wheeler delivery/taxi players
  • Used a combination of Agile methodologies, a feedback-based Jobs-To-Be-Done approach and NPS-led customer satisfaction measurement to develop product roadmaps and development processes and cut down development time by 50%
  • Designed the company’s fundraising strategy for pitching to VCs and angel investors and was instrumental in raising pre-seed capital of $250,000, and follow-on capital of over $300,000 directly
  • Advised on investment deal with a $60 million strategic investor to bring in domain expertise and capital worth $200,000
  • Drove 15% reduction in turnaround time, a 20% increase in positive customer feedback in year-long engagement with one of India’s largest QSR brands 
  • Cut sourcing lead time by 60% by developing vendor relationships across China, US, India to build a global electronics supply chain 
  • Strategized plan to achieve 30% increase in accuracy of proprietary machine-learning algorithm through concerted ML software testing over more than 40,000+ km 
  • Led negotiations with investors and counsel over multiple financial and legal due diligence processes for 3 funding rounds, helping build consensus regarding liquidation preferences and valuation
  • Devised the digital architecture for the first iteration of the company’s B2B SaaS platform using React, Express, NodeJS and AWS products that landed it its first multinational client
  • Hired 5 members of the company’s web application development and design teams from helped upskill them in communication and presentation skills via dedicated one-on-one sessions


 

Fractional Product Head | Ecowiser, Hyderabad, India

  • Collaborated with management comprising former senior leaders from Google and Danaher to ideate strategy towards developing a platform for identifying, scoring and ranking sustainable products for EU/US-based online brands
  • Constructed hiring pipelines to onboard 30+ designers, developers and data scientists to build automation and natural-language processing into the product, while building it with continuous feedback from a tight-knit community of 20+ sustainability experts
  • Led teams to create prototypes, content and copy using tools such as InDesign, Adobe XD, Figma, Miro etc to build brand identity of the company, helping drive SEO efforts to achieve a 5x increase in backlinks
  • Built category-specific rating processes with University of London and Columbia University researchers to help the organisation onboard 15000+ sustainable products, and 1000+ brands through data-parsing and auto-scraping algorithms 
  • Spearheaded positioning strategy to appeal to correct customer segmentation as discovered using Hotjar, Microsoft Clarity, Kissmetrics and other web analytics tools, and increase website visits from 50,000 to ~1,000,000 annually 
  • Initiated 3x reduction in application load time to increase retention by > 30%
  • Led initiatives to contribute to firm's listing amidst Top 10 Startups of 2022 by Wellfound (AngelList) and Stanford Seed, and to the firm’s selection in the VISA-sponsored Greenr Sustainability Accelerator program in 2023
     

Head of Investor Relations | Ekaimpact Social Foundation, Mumbai, India

  • Devised the foundation’s GTM of building an elite invite-only community of high-value partnerships across MBBs, IBs, Big4s and MAANG by networking with and onboarding 60+ HNIs with funding capacities of over INR 30 lakh
  • Designed a comprehensive, multi-parameter NGO-vetting strategy in conjunction with NSRCEL @ IIM Bangalore to draw information from multiple data sources and compile a funding-feasibility report for prospective portfolio NGOs
  • Implemented multiple outbound channels to onboard donor partners across India, USA, Ireland and the UK over 20+ organisations
  • Derived synergies between 15+ portfolio NGOs nationwide to help reduce information paucity and promote efficiency

 

Accomplishments

Venture Funding Success  

Secured funding on Shark Tank India, ranking among 67 out of 65,000 teams; also 1 out of only 16 teams that got an offer from all judges (2021).  

Distinguished Industry Leader  

Received the Nation Pride Awards’ Distinguished Industry Leader Award for meaningful contribution to the state of West Bengal in entrepreneurship (2022).  

Sustainable Business Recognition  

Awarded Best Sustainable Business (in the East Zone) by CNBC's Thinkers of Tomorrow (2023).  

Government Startup Recognition  

Recognized in the top 75 of 12,000 NIDHI -funded startups by the Government of India (2022).  

Startup to Watch  

Featured in Inc42’s “30 Startups to Watch” (2020).  

Appointed to Board of Alma Mater’s Incubation Cell

Only alumnus and youngest individual to be appointed to  alma mater’s Institutional Innovation Council; Named Vice-President of the Council. (2023)

NIDHI Fellowship Winner  

Pitched to and won the prestigious NIDHI fellowship from the Government of India (2018) for my startup; received cumulatively around INR 15 lakhs in grants  

Novel Patent Filed

Co-filed and defended a patent for a novel accident detection methodology (2019).

National-Level Competition

Achieved 2nd place in a national-level Brand Strategy Competition at IIT Kharagpur (2015).  

Solar Lamp Installation  

Led the installation of 100+ solar lamps in Kumirmari, Sunderbans (2015).

Autism Support Volunteer  

Assisted the Autism Society of West Bengal, aiding parents in understanding behavioral triggers (2017-18).

Unique Compression Algorithm

Received highest grade for developing a novel paleokymophonic algorithm to compress high-fidelity MKV files for BluRay discs lossily in final year project during bachelor’s (2018)

Education

B. Tech in Computer Science Engineering, Heritage Institute of Technology 

PG Diploma in Finance from BITS Pilani

Certificates
Co/Extra-curricular

Speaker Series Secretary: Elected to the Speaker Series Committee (1/158) and to the core member team of the PGPX Entrepreneurship Club (4/158). Hosted 10+ illustrious industry leaders on campus including Pieter Elbers (CEO, IndiGo), Radhika Gupta (CEO, Edelweiss) and Pankaj Rai ( CDO, Aditya Birla)

Avid Quizzer: Participated in quizzes across NIFT Kolkata, Heritage Institute of Technology, Jadavpur University, Presidency University, IIM Ahmedabad; top ranker in quizzes across NIFT Kolkata SPECTRUM( 2017)(1/40+),  IIM Ahmedabad Freshers' Quiz (2024) (6/70+), IIM Ahmedabad Queeriosity (2024)(4/25+). Organized quizzes at Heritage and IIM Ahmedabad. 

Community Education Volunteer: Taught English to a group of 15+ children of sex-workers in Kolkata’s red-light district with DIKSHA on weekends (2015-18).  

Social impact through teaching art: Taught art to 12+ children of impoverished slum dwellers in the Chowbaga district of Kolkata for a year. (2015-2016)

Creative Writer: Accumulated over 400k YouTube and Reddit views on narrated stories; published by the British Council.

Hult Prize Judge: Invited as a judge to review and score candidates for the prelims of the Hult Prize International business plan competition.

Quick Look

  • Work Experience: 5.5 Years
  • Previous Roles

    Co-Founder and Head of Product, Praesus Technologies, Bangalore and Kolkata

    Fractional Product Head, Ecowiser, Hyderabad, India

  • Function : General Management
    Product Management/Development
    Strategy
  • Industry/Sector: Entreprenuership
    Technology
Work Experience

Co-Founder and Chief Operations Officer | Praesus Technologies, Bangalore and Kolkata, India 

  • Co-founded the company and grew it 20x in valuation while raising ~ $1mn from marquee angel and VC investors, including raising money on Shark Tank India
  • Negotiated and closed multi-year SaaS deal with a $10 billion Indian food-tech company to implement data-driven solutions for 3,00,000+ delivery contractors
  • Drove deal to provide innovative internal IoT solutions for a 200+ member team of a $13 billion Indian two-wheeler manufacturing company
  • Led cross-functional team of 20+ across design, data and development domains to deploy a cutting-edge ML product utilizing serverless infrastructure to increase fleet transparency for Indian two-wheeler delivery/taxi players
  • Used a combination of Agile methodologies, a feedback-based Jobs-To-Be-Done approach and NPS-led customer satisfaction measurement to develop product roadmaps and development processes and cut down development time by 50%
  • Designed the company’s fundraising strategy for pitching to VCs and angel investors and was instrumental in raising pre-seed capital of $250,000, and follow-on capital of over $300,000 directly
  • Advised on investment deal with a $60 million strategic investor to bring in domain expertise and capital worth $200,000
  • Drove 15% reduction in turnaround time, a 20% increase in positive customer feedback in year-long engagement with one of India’s largest QSR brands 
  • Cut sourcing lead time by 60% by developing vendor relationships across China, US, India to build a global electronics supply chain 
  • Strategized plan to achieve 30% increase in accuracy of proprietary machine-learning algorithm through concerted ML software testing over more than 40,000+ km 
  • Led negotiations with investors and counsel over multiple financial and legal due diligence processes for 3 funding rounds, helping build consensus regarding liquidation preferences and valuation
  • Devised the digital architecture for the first iteration of the company’s B2B SaaS platform using React, Express, NodeJS and AWS products that landed it its first multinational client
  • Hired 5 members of the company’s web application development and design teams from helped upskill them in communication and presentation skills via dedicated one-on-one sessions


 

Fractional Product Head | Ecowiser, Hyderabad, India

  • Collaborated with management comprising former senior leaders from Google and Danaher to ideate strategy towards developing a platform for identifying, scoring and ranking sustainable products for EU/US-based online brands
  • Constructed hiring pipelines to onboard 30+ designers, developers and data scientists to build automation and natural-language processing into the product, while building it with continuous feedback from a tight-knit community of 20+ sustainability experts
  • Led teams to create prototypes, content and copy using tools such as InDesign, Adobe XD, Figma, Miro etc to build brand identity of the company, helping drive SEO efforts to achieve a 5x increase in backlinks
  • Built category-specific rating processes with University of London and Columbia University researchers to help the organisation onboard 15000+ sustainable products, and 1000+ brands through data-parsing and auto-scraping algorithms 
  • Spearheaded positioning strategy to appeal to correct customer segmentation as discovered using Hotjar, Microsoft Clarity, Kissmetrics and other web analytics tools, and increase website visits from 50,000 to ~1,000,000 annually 
  • Initiated 3x reduction in application load time to increase retention by > 30%
  • Led initiatives to contribute to firm's listing amidst Top 10 Startups of 2022 by Wellfound (AngelList) and Stanford Seed, and to the firm’s selection in the VISA-sponsored Greenr Sustainability Accelerator program in 2023
     

Head of Investor Relations | Ekaimpact Social Foundation, Mumbai, India

  • Devised the foundation’s GTM of building an elite invite-only community of high-value partnerships across MBBs, IBs, Big4s and MAANG by networking with and onboarding 60+ HNIs with funding capacities of over INR 30 lakh
  • Designed a comprehensive, multi-parameter NGO-vetting strategy in conjunction with NSRCEL @ IIM Bangalore to draw information from multiple data sources and compile a funding-feasibility report for prospective portfolio NGOs
  • Implemented multiple outbound channels to onboard donor partners across India, USA, Ireland and the UK over 20+ organisations
  • Derived synergies between 15+ portfolio NGOs nationwide to help reduce information paucity and promote efficiency

 

Accomplishments

Venture Funding Success  

Secured funding on Shark Tank India, ranking among 67 out of 65,000 teams; also 1 out of only 16 teams that got an offer from all judges (2021).  

Distinguished Industry Leader  

Received the Nation Pride Awards’ Distinguished Industry Leader Award for meaningful contribution to the state of West Bengal in entrepreneurship (2022).  

Sustainable Business Recognition  

Awarded Best Sustainable Business (in the East Zone) by CNBC's Thinkers of Tomorrow (2023).  

Government Startup Recognition  

Recognized in the top 75 of 12,000 NIDHI -funded startups by the Government of India (2022).  

Startup to Watch  

Featured in Inc42’s “30 Startups to Watch” (2020).  

Appointed to Board of Alma Mater’s Incubation Cell

Only alumnus and youngest individual to be appointed to  alma mater’s Institutional Innovation Council; Named Vice-President of the Council. (2023)

NIDHI Fellowship Winner  

Pitched to and won the prestigious NIDHI fellowship from the Government of India (2018) for my startup; received cumulatively around INR 15 lakhs in grants  

Novel Patent Filed

Co-filed and defended a patent for a novel accident detection methodology (2019).

National-Level Competition

Achieved 2nd place in a national-level Brand Strategy Competition at IIT Kharagpur (2015).  

Solar Lamp Installation  

Led the installation of 100+ solar lamps in Kumirmari, Sunderbans (2015).

Autism Support Volunteer  

Assisted the Autism Society of West Bengal, aiding parents in understanding behavioral triggers (2017-18).

Unique Compression Algorithm

Received highest grade for developing a novel paleokymophonic algorithm to compress high-fidelity MKV files for BluRay discs lossily in final year project during bachelor’s (2018)

Education

B. Tech in Computer Science Engineering, Heritage Institute of Technology 

PG Diploma in Finance from BITS Pilani

Certificates
Co/Extra-curricular

Speaker Series Secretary: Elected to the Speaker Series Committee (1/158) and to the core member team of the PGPX Entrepreneurship Club (4/158). Hosted 10+ illustrious industry leaders on campus including Pieter Elbers (CEO, IndiGo), Radhika Gupta (CEO, Edelweiss) and Pankaj Rai ( CDO, Aditya Birla)

Avid Quizzer: Participated in quizzes across NIFT Kolkata, Heritage Institute of Technology, Jadavpur University, Presidency University, IIM Ahmedabad; top ranker in quizzes across NIFT Kolkata SPECTRUM( 2017)(1/40+),  IIM Ahmedabad Freshers' Quiz (2024) (6/70+), IIM Ahmedabad Queeriosity (2024)(4/25+). Organized quizzes at Heritage and IIM Ahmedabad. 

Community Education Volunteer: Taught English to a group of 15+ children of sex-workers in Kolkata’s red-light district with DIKSHA on weekends (2015-18).  

Social impact through teaching art: Taught art to 12+ children of impoverished slum dwellers in the Chowbaga district of Kolkata for a year. (2015-2016)

Creative Writer: Accumulated over 400k YouTube and Reddit views on narrated stories; published by the British Council.

Hult Prize Judge: Invited as a judge to review and score candidates for the prelims of the Hult Prize International business plan competition.