Alok Nandan, PhD

Alok Nandan, PhD has a diverse and extensive work experience history. Alok is currently the Co-Founder and Managing Partner at First Rays Venture Partners, where they are involved in the development of revenue intelligence for B2B sales engineers through FunnelStory.ai, marketing attribution in the post-cookie world through Blotout.io, and Wiremock.

Prior to this, Alok worked at Emergent Ventures as a Partner from 2016 to 2020. During their time there, they focused on pre-seed investments and was involved in the success of startups such as Arcion.io and Acceldata.io.

From 2014 to 2016, Alok served as the Director of Product Management at Tempo AI, a company incubated at SRI. There, they oversaw the development and integration of design, data science, and AI into the Tempo Smart Calendar.

Before joining Tempo AI, Alok held the position of Group Product Manager at YuMe from 2012 to 2014. In this role, they were responsible for the strategy and execution of various products, including the Video Ad Platform and YuMe's Programmatic Solution.

Alok began their career at Microsoft in 2005 as a Senior PM and was involved in the early stages of the Windows Azure group. Alok played a crucial role in the development of the core deployment engine of Azure and led the onboarding of partner teams across Microsoft to utilize the Azure cloud.

Prior to Microsoft, Alok worked as a Graduate Student Researcher at UCLA from 2001 to 2005, where they received recognition for their thesis work. Alok also co-founded ToneThis Inc. in 2003 and was part of the core team that developed the idea into a successful product with over a million downloads.

Alok has also gained experience as a Software Engineer at Entomo and Intel, where they worked on projects related to cloud-based channel management and networking ASICs.

Overall, Alok Nandan, PhD has demonstrated expertise in product management, entrepreneurship, and venture investments throughout their career.

Alok Nandan, PhD has a diverse educational background. Alok completed their PhD in Computer Science at UCLA. Alok also attended the Northwestern University - Kellogg School of Management, where they completed an Executive Education Program in Marketing. Prior to that, Alok earned their B.Tech in Computer Science and Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur. In addition, they attended St Xavier's from 1985 to 1997, although specific details about their degree and field of study during that time period are not provided.