Neha Narkhede is an Indian-American technology businesswoman. She also serves as a technology investor and advisor to many well-known international software companies. She co-founded Confluence, a streaming data technology company, in 2014 and served as chief technology officer (CTO) for a period. While working with LinkedIn, Neha Narkhede co-founded the open source software platform Apache Kafka. She is a board member of Confluence. In 2020, Forbes named her one of America’s Self-Made Women of the Year.
Wiki/Biography
Neha Narkhede was born in 1985 in Pune, Maharashtra (age 37 in 2022). From 2002 to 2006, she studied Bachelor of Engineering in Computer Science at Savitribai Phule Pune University, Maharashtra. From 2006 to 2007, she studied for a master’s degree in computer science at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, Georgia. According to Neha Narkhede, her parents gave her a computer when she was eight years old. From that point on, she fell in love with working with computers and dreamed of becoming a tech-savvy person one day. Neha Narkhede once said in an interview with media reporters that her parents were the biggest motivation in her life and they allowed her to absorb the value of education. Neha Narkhed said,
My parents did a lot of things that still impact my life today. First, they instilled in me the belief that I could do anything. Second, they taught me the value of education. Third, they made sure I was exposed to female role models. “
appearance
Height (approximately): 5′4″
Weight (approximately): 55kg
Hair color: black
Eye color: black
family
Parents and siblings
Her mother’s name is Kalpana Narkhed.
Neha Narkhede and her mother Kalpana Narkhede
husband and children
Neha Narkhede is married to Sachin Kulkarni.
Neha Narkhede and her husband Sachin Kulkarni
address
Neha Narkhede lives in Palo Alto, California, USA.
Profession
Software major
In February 2008, Neha Narkhede started working as a technical staff member at Oracle Corporation after completing her university studies. She worked at Oracle Corporation until February 2010. She is responsible for designing and implementing hierarchical faceted search from the ground up. She then began working as a software engineer at LinkedIn in February 2010, where she remained until April 2011. In April 2011, Neha Narkhede was promoted to Senior Software Engineer, a position she held until April 2012. Distributed systems such as LinkedIn’s OLAP engine, Zookeeper and Kafka. Neha Narkhede was appointed Principal Software Engineer at LinkedIn in June 2012. In June 2013, she was appointed to lead LinkedIn’s leadership, flow, and infrastructure groups, a role she held until September 2014.
Neha Narkhede talks about Apache Kafka at tech conference
Apache Kafka
In 2011, Neha Narkhede and two of her colleagues, Jun Rao and Jay Kreps, built a software platform called Apache Kafka. During this time, she worked at LinkedIn, the world’s largest professional network on the Internet. Neha Narkhede said that they came up with the idea of developing Kafka as an open source platform when they were working on a project in the company.
Neha Narkhede during Kafka Summit 2019
Converge
Neha Narkhede subsequently co-founded Confluence, a Palo Alto-based startup, in September 2014 with colleagues Jay Kreps and Jun Rao, and began serving as chief technology and product officer. She was appointed to the Confluence Board of Directors in January 2020. Later, Confluence began engaging in B2B infrastructure investments under their guidance. Neha Narkhede said she got the idea for the business when she and two colleagues encountered data access issues while working in the workplace and began researching the shortcomings of these technologies. In a media conversation, she talked about her insights into new technologies. Neha Narkhed said,
I talked to my colleague at the time, Jay Kreps, as he was thinking about the data access issue. I asked him if I could help create a solution, and that’s how we started. We didn’t start by building technology. Instead, we first examine existing technology to understand its shortcomings. We concluded that there was no solution. “
From left to right: Neha Narkhede, Jay Kreps and Jun Rao
According to some media sources, Confluence’s business revenue expanded to US$125 million in 2019, which brought the total financing amount for the year to US$206 million. The following year, under the leadership of Neha Narkhede and her team, Confluence increased profits to $250 million and total company funding to $456 million. Confluence is used by major companies such as Goldman Sachs, Netflix and Uber for data analysis and collection. At one point, Neha Narkhede revealed in a media interview that her company can aggregate data from other companies in milliseconds and act as their central nervous system. she says,
We think of our technology as the central nervous system of a company, aggregating data at scale and making sense of it in milliseconds. We think almost every company will benefit from this, and we plan to bring it to them. “
literature
Neha Narkhede is a successful businesswoman in the technology industry. In 2017, she co-authored a book called “Kafka: The Definitive Guide” with Gwen Shapira and Todd Palino, telling and describing the technology that created Kafka.
Cover of the book – “The Definitive Guide to Kafka” by Neha Narkhede
Startup investors and advisors
Neha Narkhede, besides being a businesswoman and tech-savvy, also works as a technology consultant. She started working as a startup investor and advisor in March 2020. She serves as a consultant to well-known software companies such as Gem, Block Party, Material Security, Abacus AI, Cortex Data, Yugabyte, Metaphor Data, Natalist and Common Room.
Neha Narkhede while attending a technical conference
Awards, Honors, Achievements
In 2017, Neha Narkhede was listed as one of the Innovators Under 35 by MIT Technology Review. In 2018, Forbes named her one of the top 50 women in technology in the United States and around the world. In 2018, she received the Oracle Groundbreaker Award at the Oracle Code One conference in San Francisco. In 2020, Forbes ranked her at No. 33 on its list of “America’s Self-Made Women.” In 2022, Neha Narkhede was named India’s youngest self-made woman entrepreneur by IIFL Wealth Hurun India Rich List 2022.
Facts/Trivia
- In her free time, Neha Narkhede enjoys scuba diving and traveling. In a media conversation, she said that she is an avid scuba diver and enjoys traveling around the world with her husband Sachin Kulkarni. Neha Narkhed said,
I love traveling and am an avid scuba diver. My husband and I made a list of the coolest dive sites around the world, like the Great Blue Hole in Belize. There were a lot of sharks around so it was a bit of an adrenaline rush. “
Neha Narkhede enjoys scuba diving with her husband
- Neha Narkhede said that successful Indian female entrepreneurs such as Padmashree Warrior and Indira Nooyi are her role models. In an interview with media reporters, Neha talked about the achievements of these female entrepreneurs. she says,
I have great respect for Padmashree Warrior, the former CTO of Cisco and now the CEO and founder of electric vehicle startup NIO. I also have great respect for PepsiCo Chairman and CEO Indira Nooyi. “
Categories: Biography
Source: HIS Education