In an extraordinary display of conviction and vision, two IIT Kharagpur graduates made career choices that defied conventional wisdom. Varun Vummadi and Esha Manideep walked away from prestigious job offers totaling nearly $700,000 to pursue their entrepreneurial dreams in artificial intelligence.
The Road Not Taken: Rejecting Extraordinary Opportunities
Both computer science and artificial intelligence students from IIT Kharagpur, one of India's premier engineering institutions, Varun and Esha had exceptional career prospects laid out before them. Varun received a staggering $525,000 quantitative trader position in the United States along with a highly coveted PhD admission at Stanford University. Meanwhile, Esha secured a $150,000 offer from a leading Indian high-frequency trading firm.
These opportunities represented the pinnacle of financial security and professional prestige that most engineering graduates aspire toward. Yet both young engineers believed they could create greater impact by building their own product rather than climbing traditional corporate ladders.
Building Giga: From High-Risk Idea to Funded Reality
In 2023, the founders moved to San Francisco and established Giga with a clear mission: to create advanced voice AI agents capable of natural communication. Their technology enables instant switching between chat and voice while handling multiple languages simultaneously, aiming to revolutionize how large companies manage customer communication.
As co-founder and CEO, Varun focused on strategy, fundraising, and building enterprise client relationships. As CTO, Esha engineered the core systems that allow Giga's agents to process speech in real-time, maintain context, and produce human-like responses. This sophisticated voice and chat synchronization quickly became Giga's key differentiator in the competitive AI market.
Rapid Success and Global Recognition
Investors quickly recognized Giga's potential. The company raised $61 million in Series A funding from top Silicon Valley venture capital firms including Redpoint Ventures, Y Combinator, and Nexus Venture Partners. Their technology soon attracted major clients, with DoorDash among the first global companies to implement Giga's voice AI solutions for customer support.
The journey wasn't without challenges. The founders faced racism, online trolling, and skepticism about their abilities and career decisions. However, they remained focused on product development and team expansion rather than engaging with negativity.
Their perseverance paid off when both Varun and Esha were featured in Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia list in 2024, recognized for their significant contributions to artificial intelligence and enterprise technology.
Inspiring a New Generation of Indian Entrepreneurs
Varun Vummadi and Esha Manideep represent an emerging wave of Indian-origin founders combining deep technical expertise with the courage to take unconventional risks. Their story demonstrates that true innovation often comes from those willing to step away from established career paths.
Giga's remarkable ascent from a high-risk concept to a $61 million-funded voice AI platform serves as a powerful inspiration for young engineers and aspiring entrepreneurs across India and beyond. By choosing vision over security, these IIT graduates have created a company that's already shaping the future of enterprise artificial intelligence.
The success of Giga underscores how Indian technical talent, when combined with entrepreneurial courage, can compete and excel on the global stage, potentially inspiring more graduates to consider building their own ventures rather than following traditional career trajectories.
