Bootstrapping Using Services: Krishna Kumar, CEO of AppOrchid (Part 1)

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Sramana: Krishna, let’s start with the beginning of your personal story. Where are you from, what is your background? What leads up to your entrepreneurial story?

Krishna Kumar: I was born in India. I came to the US in 1996. I worked my way up the consulting chain from an SAP consultant to the Vice President of Ness, a consulting firm based in New Jersey. Ness was also primarily an SAP shop. It was a NASDAQ-listed company and I had exposure to both the strategy and product sides of the house.

I founded my first company Enterprise Horizons after my time at Ness. Enterprise Horizons later became Space Time Insight. That was primarily a venture-funded outfit, which had close to $44 million dollars of venture funding. I made my journey there from founder all the way to board member and CTO. Once the company had grown to a sizeable company, I decided to carry on my next entrepreneurial gig.

Sramana: Let’s capture this chronologically. When did you do your schooling?

Krishna Kumar: I did my studies in Bombay. I studied electronic engineering. After I graduated, I landed a job with Siemens as an SAP consultant. After Siemens, I was able to get an SAP position with Hitachi in the US. From that point on, my career progressed into the VP position and entrepreneurial career.

Sramana: When did you come to the US?

Krishna Kumar: I came in 1996.

Sramana: After Hitachi, you worked at Inteligroup as an SAP consultant as well. How long were you there?

Krishna Kumar: That lasted about 4 years. I was there from 1996 to 2000.

Sramana: What happened in 2000?

Krishna Kumar: I had to return to India briefly and I started the underpinnings of my entrepreneurial venture there for a year and a half. I then came back to the US in 2001 and worked for Ness Global where I ran their SAP practice. In 2003, I started the company that eventually became Space Time Insight.

Sramana: What did Space Time Insight do? How did you get that company off the ground?>

Krishna Kumar: Space Time Insight basically pioneered the market called situational intelligence. That has since become the Internet of Things. Using situational intelligence, you can integrate massive amounts of sensor data. We worked primarily in the energy space. We could integrate smart meters, high speed transmission line sensors, and info from the electric grid. We would combine that with work force data and asset management data.

The premise was that there were a lot of sensors coming onto the electric grid, and at the same time, there was a lot of instrumentation happening in the Internet of things landscape. We were building the platform to integrate data spatially and temporally. That means we were using space and time dimensions to evaluate the data. We brought everything together geospatially.

This segment is part 1 in the series : Bootstrapping Using Services: Krishna Kumar, CEO of AppOrchid
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