Our India centres are a powerhouse of innovation: ThoughtSpot's Kumar Gaurav

Founded in 2012, ThoughtSpot is an example of new software ventures tapping India's talent for much of their product and engineering

By Harichandan Arakali Forbes India Staff

Published: Feb 25, 2025 12:09:16 PM IST

Updated: Feb 26, 2025 12:51:14 PM IST

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Kumar Gaurav, VP Engineering and country head for India, ThoughtSpot. Image: Selvaprakash Lakshmanan for Forbes India

ThoughtSpot, a search/AI-based data analytics provider, is the youngest company in this series. It’s also an example of how a new generation of software companies is looking at India, tapping the talent in the country for much of their product development and engineering.

Ketan Karkhanis, who was named CEO in September 2024, is so gung-ho about his teams in India that he declares they are collectively “not a centre of innovation, but a powerhouse of innovation”, in an interview with Forbes India. Karkhanis previously led Sales Cloud, a $7 billion business at Salesforce.

Two years ago, when ThoughtSpot announced a $150 million India expansion plan, the teams in India represented about a third of ThoughtSpot’s overall workforce. The company has its biggest presence in Bengaluru with another centre in Hyderabad and a smaller team in Thiruvananthapuram, which came to ThoughtSpot via an acquisition, and has since grown.

Today, about 70 percent of the company’s engineering staff are in India, with the rest mostly in the US, but also in Europe, the company’s fastest growing market, Japan and Australia. Overall, ThoughtSpot has more than 500 employees in India.

And senior executives such as Kumar Gaurav, VP of engineering and country head for India, and Bhargav Addala, senior VP of product management, based in Hyderabad, work closely with those who’re leading operations and sales in the biggest markets, while being based in India, the CEO says.

“Think of ThoughtSpot as a company with two global headquarters—one in Mountainview and the other in Bengaluru,” he says, with senior engineering and go-to-market leaders coordinating across geographies in a “two-in-a-box” fashion. This gives the company the ability to serve customers 24x7, Gaurav tells Forbes India.

Initially, the focus was on establishing a strong engineering presence in India, Gaurav adds. Today, “we have all the core functions getting established here”, he says. This includes aspects of go-to-market, support, legal and HR. The combination almost works as a global centre on its own, catering to many of the needs of customers round the clock, he explains.

ThoughtSpot was founded by American entrepreneurs Ajeet Singh and Amit Prakash in 2012. Investors in the company include March Capital, Silver Lake, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Khosla Ventures, General Catalyst, GIC and Snowflake. The company has raised about $674 million in funding and was valued at $4.2 billion in 2021, according to private markets intelligence provider Tracxn.

Among its customers are Capital One, Daimler, Comcast, Cigna, Royal Bank of Canada, Nasdaq and Unilever.

Outgoing CEO Sudheesh Nair, who led ThoughtSpot for close to six years, noted in a LinkedIn post in March 2024 that the company is on the right track with its own transformation. On his watch, it went from an on-premises product company to a cloud software business with $150 million in annual recurring revenue run rate for 2024.

Notable product launches at the company post-Covid include Sage, which tapped the power of generative AI via OpenAI’s GPT, and Analyst Studio, which helps businesses get their data into analytics shape. In June 2023, ThoughtSpot purchased Mode Analytics, a business intelligence platform provider, in a deal valued at $200 million.

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ThoughtSpot’s SaaS AI analytics platform, “we call it the ThoughtSpot Intelligence platform”, Karkhanis says, “is growing 41 percent year over year.” He adds: “And the innovation coming from India is fuelling a lot of that.”

Ketan Karkhanis, CEO, ThoughtSpot

With the advent of agentic AI—where artificial intelligence software assistants will go beyond answering queries and complete various tasks on their own—ThoughtSpot too has released its own agentic AI, named Spotter.

The teams in India built Spotter, the CEO says, which the company has recently launched in the market. The centre in Bengaluru is also an AI centre of excellence for ThoughtSpot, that’s how he envisions it, Karkhanis says.

Plans being discussed within the company include deeper AI research in which ThoughtSpot India will play a “strategic part”. Overall, Karkhanis wants to double the company’s workforce, and a large piece of that will be in India, including potentially expanding to new locations.