Bootstrapping a New Age AI Services Venture: Anji Maram, CEO of CriticalRiver (Part 1)

Anji has bootstrapped CriticalRiver to $50M in revenue and is introducing AI into his services business model. We expect to see a lot of this happening all over the tech services ecosystem. AI Services is going to become a massively valuable category.

Sramana Mitra: All right, Anji, let’s start at the very beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where were you born, raised? What kind of background?

Anji Maram: I’m originally from India as you can tell by my name. I’m from a small village in Andhra Pradesh in South India. It has a very small population that is pretty much into farming community. My parents did not study, my siblings did not study. I somehow ended up studying.

I studied in a government school. For ninth and tenth classes and then plus one and plus two, I studied a local residential school.

After plus two, I ended up getting admission in BITS Pilani. I joined BITS Pilani as a master’s mathematics student. I got a dual degree in bachelor’s computer science. It was a five-year program. I finished both master’s and bachelor’s in BITS Pilani.

Sramana Mitra: What year was that?

Anji Maram: I joined BITS Pilani in 1994. I finished in 1999.

Sramana Mitra: OK.

Anji Maram: After that, I worked for a year in Hyderabad in Intelligroup Corporation, which was also founded by a BITSians. I had an ambition to come here for my master’s. So, I came here for master’s at Louisiana State University, Lafayette in August 2008. I was able to finish that in one year in a fast-paced mode. Then I ended up joining Oracle Corporation September 2001.

Sramana Mitra: OK. In Redwood City, in the headquarters?

Anji Maram: Yes, in headquarters. I joined as an engineer in Redwood City in the ERP applications engineering team.

Sramana Mitra: How long did you stay in Oracle?

Anji Maram: I was at Oracle until the end of 2006. After that, I wondered whether I should continue in engineering or explore other opportunities. I realized my strength lies in dealing with people and customers, so I transitioned into consulting.

I began my consulting journey, implementing the applications and products we built for customers. I found great value in helping customers configure and customize these applications to meet their needs.

I realized that customers often need a lot of support, even with well-built applications.

Sramana Mitra: Why are you doing this? What company were you doing this for? What year?

Anji Maram: My first consulting journey was with Sun Microsystems. While working at Sun Microsystems, I realized the importance of doing things right for customers. Regardless of the number of partners and vendors in the ecosystem, if someone can do it properly, customers value it. I saw a business opportunity in doing what everyone else was doing, but in the right way. However, I lacked a business and entrepreneurship background. I was just a techie who didn’t know how to sell or what to do.

An incident with my father pushed me further. My father is a farmer who never studied. When I started working, I told him that after a few years at Oracle, I could take care of him and the family, and he wouldn’t need to work. He replied that he had been farming all his life and had employed around 40 families in our village. He didn’t want to quit because he felt responsible for his employees. This made me realize that, despite his lack of formal education, he thought like an entrepreneur. It made me reflect on my own education and realize that I wasn’t doing enough to justify it.

This segment is part 1 in the series : Bootstrapping a New Age AI Services Venture: Anji Maram, CEO of CriticalRiver
1 2 3 4 5 6 7