Indian start-up in California taps into e-auction market-Meet the team Andale (Ahn-du-lay)
andale.com
Richard Springer (et)
SANTA CLARA (CALIFORNIA) 12 NOVEMBER
A START-up firm co-founded by an Indian American here is trying to tap into the e-auction market, a hot area on the Internet, by providing back-office support for order-swamped online sellers of goods and collectibles.
Andale Inc, the Santa Clara-based firm, was co-founded by Indian American Munjal Shah. It is located on the Web at andale.com and provides a platform to host images and handle customers' e-mails and offer financial management, shipping and other services.
Founded in April 1999, Andale announced recently that it raised $19.6 million of venture capital. Mr Shah, chief executive officer of Andale, told the California newspaper India-West that auction sites on the Internet are not geared to accommodate the big volume sellers......
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Founders
Munjal Shah
President, CEO & Co-founder
As the president and CEO of Andale, Munjal is charged with building the Andale vision and strategy. Focused on driving the company to become the business management partner for every volume seller on the Internet, Munjal wants to help every customer maximize their profits and reach their sales goals.
Previously, Munjal led the Internet Marketing and ecommerce group for the Baan Company and built its ecommerce operations to a multi-million dollar run rate in less than two years. Munjal also led product management and marketing activities for BlackSun Interactive, an Internet community software company funded by CMGI @Ventures.
At IBM, Munjal worked with the initial home banking applications group and was part of the team that brought Nation's Bank and Bank of America into the online home banking business for the first time, at the start of the Internet revolution.
Munjal is also a co-founder of Round Zero, an intimate forum for the exchange of entrepreneurial ideas. Today, Round Zero has become one of the Valley's premier meeting places for venture capitalists, innovators, visionaries and entrepreneurs to have in-depth discussions on industry trends and market opportunities.
Masters in Computer Science, Stanford University
Bachelors in Computer Science, University California, San Diego
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Amit Gupta
Chief Technology Officer
As Andale's CTO, Amit heads the design of the Andale Web-based Auction Business Management service, ensuring that it is the most powerful and scalable service auction sellers will use on the Web. Amit is focused on providing a fast, efficient, and dependable service that hundreds of thousands of auction users can use simultaneously.
Prior to co-founding Andale, Amit worked for Sun Microsystems in visionary SunLabs group, helping to define new technology architectures and protocols that would change the world. He specialized in networking infrastructure and how to make distributed Web-based services highly reliable.
Ph.D. in Performance Networking, University of California at Berkeley
Bachelors in Computer Science, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in Delhi, India.
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Vijay Chawla
Vice President of Product Management
As the VP Product Management for Andale, Vijay is responsible for making Andale's Web-based Auction Business Management service easy-to-use with rich functionality that meets the needs of volume auction sellers.
Previously, Vijay co-founded another startup in the online customer support market, called NetborHood. The company sold its technology after only six months, to Audio Highway.
Prior to NetborHood, Vijay held a market research position at Robertson Stephens and worked for three years at Intel where she held strategic marketing and product management positions.
Masters in Engineering Management from Stanford University
Bachelors in Economics, University of California at Berkeley.
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Prashant Nedungadi
Chief Information Officer
Prashant is Andale's CIO and keeps its systems up and running. Prashant's goal is to have Andale's operations in full production, even when other auction markets aren't. That way auction sellers can continue selling their goods 24-7, regardless of the state of the auction markets themselves.
Prior to co-founding Andale, Prashant was a principal engineer at TriQuest, where he architected and developed a large-scale client-server system. Prashant has also held senior software engineering positions at Cirrus Logic and Texas Instruments, where he earned outstanding achievement awards.
Masters in Computer Science from Stanford University
Bachelors in Computer Science, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in Delhi, India.
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Rajiv Dutta
Vice President, Engineering
In his role as VP of Engineering, Rajiv makes sure the product timelines remain on schedule and that customer commitments are always met. He also maintains the strictest of security standards for the Andale Auction Business Management service, and is responsible for designing Andale's intricate security platform.
Prior to Andale, Rajiv led a large engineering team at Summit Design. He was also the first employee at TriQuest, where he was instrumental in the design and development of several of the company's first products. TriQuest was sold to Summit Design in February 1997. Rajiv has also held various engineering positions at LSI Logic.
Masters in Computer Science and Engineering, University of Cincinnati
Bachelors in Computer Science, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in Kanpur, India. |
