Published on: Nov 07, 2025 01:07 pm IST
Varun Vummadi and Esha Manideep, both IIT alums, launched their AI startup Giga in 2023.
Giga, an Artificial intelligence (AI) support automation startup founded by two IIT Kharagpur alums, has raised $61 million in Series A funding led by Redpoint Ventures. An old LinkedIn post by one of the founders shows how both techies walked away from their high-paying job offers to build a startup that is now making headlines.
Varun Vummadi, in a two-year-old post, wrote about how he was offered a PhD from a renowned university and a high-paying job, but decided to leave it all to work on something of his own.
“I received a PhD offer from Stanford University and a $525K job offer from an international HFT as a quant trader. We left all those opportunities to pursue our passion towards solving challenging problems in Machine learning.” He added that his co-founder, Esha Manideep, left a “$150K job as a system engineer role with a prominent Indian HFT firm.”
The post, shared a day before Vummadi and Manideep launched Giga, was recently reshared on X, and it has created chatter.
Social media had a lot to say:
An individual posted, “Wow. Respect.” Another added, “They are indeed the biggest risk takers. I admire them so much; one day I want to do something like that.” A third expressed, “This is amazing.” A fourth wrote, “Kudos.”
Who are Varun Vummadi and Esha Manideep?
Varun Vummadi and Esha Manideep were both featured on the Forbes “30 Under 30 Asia” list in 2024. While Esha Manideep serves as co-founder and CTO of Giga, Varun Vummadi is the CEO and co-founder of the AI company. Both graduated from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kharagpur.
Announcing the $61 million funding, Varun Vummadi tweeted, “We have raised a $61M Series A to automate customer operations. The world’s leading companies like DoorDash trust Giga to supercharge customer experience with AI.”
