Ramu Sunkara

Ramu Sunkara has worked in various roles since 1987. Ramu began their career as a Software Engineer at Digital Equipment Corporation, where they designed and built the Relational Database products (RdbAccess family) that provided SQL Access to Non-Relational data. Ramu then moved up to Project Leader/ Architect, 64Bit UNIX Relational Database, and authored and rewrote the SQL DML and DDL layers, resulting in two patents on Query Optimization.

In 1994, Ramu was recruited by Oracle as Vice President, Real-Time Collaboration (RTC) Products and Member of Architecture Board. Ramu championed the idea and started the product division to establish Oracle as a player in the Real-Time Data and Voice communications (RTC) market using the web as the platform. Ramu then led the Business Applications Technology & Architecture to evolve the JAVA + HTML Technology stack for Business Applications.

In 2006, Ramu co-founded Qik with two of the best minds they worked with at Oracle. Ramu bootstrapped Qik out of their garage for the first year, then assembled the starting team in US and Russia. Ramu envisioned and built the world’s first cloud-assisted live streaming (to augment peer-to-peer) technology for mobile phones. In 2011, Skype acquired Qik, and later Skype was sold to Microsoft.

Also in 2011, Ramu began working at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where they were a Board of Visitors; School of Computing, Data and Information Sciences. Ramu helped set up a Development Director office for the Department of Computer Science, the first in 50 years of the department. Ramu also served as a Board of Advisors for Genies, EatStreet, Scanalytics, AppTheGame (The Score), Lemon (LifeLock), PacketZoom (Roblox).

In 2015, Ramu co-founded Synqq, a Voice Assistant for Meetings. Ramu then pivoted to build Alan AI, an in-app assistant to deliver multimodal conversational UX for existing applications. Alan AI is deployed in Maintenance Repair and Operations (MRO), Healthcare, Food Operations, and HRTech Platforms to deliver immediate cost savings. The platform has gained significant traction from developers because it integrates multiple complex AI/ ML technologies.

Ramu Sunkara completed their B.Tech in Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras in 1985. Ramu then went on to pursue a Master of Science in Computer Science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison between 1985-1987. Ramu subsequently obtained a Master of Business Administration from Questrom School of Business, Boston University in 1993. Prior to this, Ramu Sunkara attended AP Residential Junior College, Nagarjuna Sagar from 1979-1981.