It’s the season of management reshuffles at Indian unicorns. After Sachin Bansal had handed over Flipkart’s reins to Binny Bansal, Mu Sigma CEO Dhiraj Rajaram has stepped aside to make way for his wife Ambiga Dhiraj. Dhiraj Rajaram will continue as Chairman as his wife becomes the first woman CEO of an Indian unicorn.
Ambiga is an electrical engineer from College of Engineering, Guindy, Chennai and holds an M.S. in computer engineering from Wayne State University, Detroit. She started her career as a research lead at Motorola and has been with Mu Sigma for eight years. Ambiga will work from Bangalore while Rajaram will move to the United States to work closely with the company’s US clients.
According to ET, the management styles of the husband-wife are vastly different. While Ambiga is the one to get into granular levels of detail and deliberate over matters of design, Dhiraj is someone who wants to see quick results.
Mu Sigma is a management consultancy firm that offers analytics services. At a valuation of $6-7 billion, it is one of India’s unicorn startups but it different from the others in one crucial aspect – it is profitable. Unlike other Indian unicorns that are currently mired in losses, Mu Sigma had registered a profit of Rs. 380 crore last year. For comparison, Flipkart had losses of Rs. 2000 crore and Snapdeal lost Rs. 1150 crore.
This profitability had meant that Mu Sigma’s valuation has soared, and Rajaram, who hold a high stake in the company, is currently the highest valued Indian startup CEO with a net worth of Rs. 17,000 crore.