IIITH Alumnus Sugandh Rakha – Master of Code, Mentor of Startups and Full-Time Friendship Builder

It takes a lifetime to grow a friend. None represents this better than Sugandh Rakha, a pillar of IIIT Hyderabad’s vibrant Alumni Association and winner of the IIITH Outstanding Service Award.   

The IIITH Outstanding Service Award acknowledges his unique contribution to the Institute’s entrepreneurial ecosystem, building financial pipelines for incubating startups and strengthening the alumni network.

With 15 years of robust work experience spanning India, USA and Canada, in companies like Amazon, Microsoft and ServiceNow, the go-getter has racked up numerous awards and accolades in his professional career and volunteering dimensions. Those tracking notifications for your Amazon package, from warehouse to home, was the code that Sugandh built during his time in Amazon. At Microsoft, Sugandh worked on the popular Bing Map Search for local search indexes and rankers for UK, India and Australia.  Sugandh Rakha is the product leader for ServiceNow’s AI agent initiative. His current role is Sr Principal Product Manager.

“In the tech world, IIIT Hyderabad has a very strong brand presence and I am super proud of my roots”, observes Sugandh who as Principal Product Manager at ServiceNow, leads a cross-functional team of designers, developers and external contractors and leads the Integration Hub.

“Remedo was our first alum-incubated startup in 2019”.  Funding-mentoring for CIE incubated startups in the AI domain is a key role he plays, especially in helping them to grow in the US and Canada markets, with guidance in strategy, marketing, partnerships and connecting them to the right resources. Apart from time and energy, he contributes regularly to the Annual Giving program, donating around 1% of his salary.

Sugandh completed his B.Tech in computer science (honors) in 2007 from IIIT Hyderabad with a major in AI. He wore his many hats with aplomb; as election commissioner for the first student body elections, building the election portal, PG admissions and the Institute’s internal portals and refurbishment of the website. He was active in the e-Cell that was set up by Prof. Kavita Vemuri. “For three years, I was the IT admin and earned a nice pay”, he grins.

After graduation, he frequently returned to campus to meet friends who were pursuing their masters and Ph.D. Thanks to a comfortable equation with faculty, he gave a few guest lectures and soon plugged into the alumni group. Today, Sugandh has a close connection with alumni across the world and even with current students. Over the years, he has not only helped to strengthen the bonds within the alumni network but also with the Institute.

From his college days, he has always been the go-to guy for a lot of things; whether it was talking to prospective students or in his role as mentor, judge or jury at the IIITH R&D Showcase 2019. “I recall organizing my first alumni meet when Prof. PJ Narayanan was in Vancouver for a CVPR conference. It was a revelation to know so many alumni there, including a junior who is now my closest friend. Many of these technical conferences resemble Alumni meets because there are several publications and poster-presentations from the IIITH stable”, he remarks.

For IIIT Hyderabad’s 20^th anniversary celebration, Sugandh was part of the Alumni team that organized events in multiple cities – Hyderabad, Bangalore, Seattle and the Bay Area. “He was the one who pulled everyone into the alumni roster and helped establish the alumni database for the IIITH alumni committee”, recalls Meenakshi Vishwanathan, Head of Alumni Affairs. “It was good to be that international conduit, bringing together old friends, faculty and forging new relationships as alumni”, he comments humbly.  

Sugandh and his wife run India’s largest career portal and many times, when he walks into campus, it creates quite a flutter. My whole philosophy of life is based on a course that I took at IIITH called The Making of the Modern Mind, on history, philosophy and Gandhian thought. Among his several volunteer roles, one impactful one is at Vancouver’s North Shore Emergency Management, where Sugandh is part of a disaster response group, that was set up to create peripheral communication systems when traditional networks fail in the event of major earthquakes.

“I could have lived happily in my own cocoon. But networking is important. That is something that I learnt in IIITH which I use in daily life and at work in sales. I made my mark in it. I help to sell a product which does upwards of $300 million in revenue every year. I got those organizational skills, while being an IT admin in Hyderabad, organizing people and events; giving them the right thing while being diplomatic”.

“Don’t be afraid to ask questions. That is something I learnt here. Coming from a government school that actively discouraged asking questions, the switch happened at IIITH. I was a speaker at multiple events, and even gave the alumni address at the Convocation”, says Sugandh who was born with a speech impediment. Early in life, his mother recognized his strength in STEM subjects and encouraged those faculties. In thanksgiving, Sugandh now runs a school for autistic children to help them use their weakness as a stepping stone to rise above everything.  “I believe that when you need to build a network, the faster way to do it, is to become a giver, rather than a taker”.

Deepa Shailendra

Deepa Shailendra is a freelance writer for interior design publications; an irreverent blogger, consultant editor and author of two coffee table books. A social entrepreneur who believes that we are the harbingers of the transformation and can bring the change to better our world.