Tiger Global Management-backed jobs portal Apna, operated by Apnatime Tech Pvt Ltd, has announced the appointment of PayU’s Shantanu Preetam as its Chief Technology Officer.
“As the first CTO at Apna, Shantanu will be responsible to build upon the technology foundation, strengthening it further through the platform and right organisational structure. He will be closely working with the business, growth and product teams to align technology with company goals,” the company said.
An alumnus of the University of Pune, Shantanu comes with over two decades of experience in digital transformation, technology architecture, eCommerce, consumer-facing products, supply chain technologies, AI/MI, and data analytics.
Previously worked with companies including PayU, Walmart, Yahoo, and Dell, Shantanu has led teams across geographies and industries to design and develop products and driven tech growth strategies to enable software development, cloud platforms and infrastructure engineering.
Founded in 2019, Apna (apna.co) is professional network for grey- and blue-collar workers, which joined the unicorn club in September last year.
Since inception, it has secured more than $190 million from marquee investors such as Tiger Global, Owl Ventures, Insight Partners, Lightspeed India, Sequoia Capital India, Maverick Ventures, GSV Ventures, Greenoaks Capital and Rocketship.vc.
Bengaluru-based Apna was started by serial entrepreneur Nirmit Parikh, a Stanford alumnus and former Apple executive who also founded Incone Technologies in 2009, Cruxbot in 2012 and Armada Intelligence Labs in 2017. Cruxbot was acquired by another company, which was then acquired by Intel in 2013.
“Shantanu and I have already spent hours together, discussing everything from engineering and products to culture strategy and vision. We firmly believe that Shantanu will help shape our long-term vision and help build a robust tech platform that will determine the future of Apna and the dreams of 2.3 billion people around the world,” said Nirmit Parikh, CEO and Founder, apna.co.
“I am confident that through technology, we will be able to scale apna faster than any other consumer-facing product and not only change lives but also become the world’s largest jobs and professional networking platform in the next few years” Shantanu said about his new role.
Among other hiring, Apna recently appointed Ronak Shah as the Head of Data Strategy and Suresh Khemka as the Head of Platform Engineering and Infrastructure. The startup also plans to onboard more than 400 professionals in data sciences, engineering, and product in the next six months.
Apna claims to have around 22 million-plus users with over two lakh employer partners, and a presence in 50-plus Indian cities. The platform currently enables more than 18 million interviews and 35 million professional conversations monthly.