Knowlarity, one of the largest providers of cloud-based communications solutions to businesses in south-east Asia and Middle Eastern markets, has recently appointed Ajay Shrivastava as its Chief Technology Officer. Before joining Knowlarity, Ajay was the Head of Technology at OYO Rooms, a large branded network of hotels. Ajay has also been a technical leader in start-ups, as well as an established global leader working with the likes of Intel, Adobe, Microsoft, Expedia, SlideShare, LinkedIn and OYO. Considered a veritable tech wizard, he specialises in the high-performance execution of technology and will be bringing this prowess on board at Knowlarity to further bolster its tech infrastructure.
Ajay’s addition to the highly specialised and innovative team at Knowlarity will help the company deliver the best cloud communication solutions across the Middle East, Africa and other emerging markets across Asia.
At OYO, Ajay spearheaded the seeding and growing of OYO’s technology and team from scratch. He headed technology for the company during the phase in which OYO grew exponentially from four to 200 cities, from a handful of hotels to 7,000+ hotels, and from a few employees to 2,500 employees across India. Having diverse experience in building brands from the ground up to working with some of the largest companies in the world, Ajay has an instinct for identifying the strategy to apply at what stage of a company and how it should evolve with the growth of the venture.
Commenting on the appointment, Knowlarity’s CEO, Ambarish Gupta said, ‘It gives us immense pleasure to welcome Ajay on board. He is one of the most dynamic and respected leaders in the Indian technological sphere. He will help Knowlarity cement its leadership in the cloud communications industry. With his leadership, we will establish technology as the fulcrum of Knowlarity’s operations.’
The company is also launching a tech blog, engineering.knowlarity.com. The blog will feature expert opinions, insights, stories and experiences from Knowlarity’s engineering, design and product teams. Ajay’s writings will be a great addition to this blog, as these are already quire popular, and are read and followed by young professionals as well as industry veterans.
Expressing his happiness with the appointment, Ajay added, ‘It gives me great pleasure to join the thriving workspace of Knowlarity, which is doing seminal work in the cloud and business communications arena. I always enjoy working with fast-growing start-ups as it gives me ample opportunities as well as operational freedom to build awesome products, technology and organisations. I hope to create something unique and disruptive together with the passionate team at Knowlarity.’
Knowlarity’s vision to help business grow with effective use of technology has found an able commander in Ajay, who has been a thought leader and inventor of several engineering execution philosophies such as Solver Teams and Minimum Viable Technology (MVT). Ajay is a 2005 graduate from the International Institute of Information Technology (IIIT) in Bangalore.