Two techies in their late 20s, working at a not very well known IT company in Hyderabad, got an idea in 2011 to create a big data platform for developers. Both of them were from different backgrounds —one from Aurangabad, Maharashtra, while the other from Hyderabad.
Rohit Brijmohan Rai and Venkat Sai Satya Prakash Buddhavarapu had one thing common – the passion for technology, which led to the establishment of TupleJump Software Private Limited with the aim “to simplify data engineering” on May 29, 2013.
Over three years of its existence, TupleJump had been relatively quiet — doing its business without seeking publicity — until it was acquired by Apple.
Rohit and Satya were architects at Pramati dealing in big data. They both came together to set up a company which would make it easier for other companies dealing with Internet of Things and big data. “TupleJump platform provides ready to use, out-of-the box, all integrated end-to-end data pipeline components to bring an idea to life fast,” Rohit had said two years ago in a presentation.
According to Tuplejump founders, “most startups spend a lot of time studying and integrating various OSS. Tuplejump assembled a system incorporating best of the breed systems. It presents all data in a familiar format. This lets the user to mix and mash and analyse as one wants without worrying about the technology.”
Despite its success, the company didn’t have a great beginning. It was set up with Rs 1 lakh capital with its office at Satya’s home in Vivekanandanagar, Kukatpally. Rohit stays at Kundanbagh Begumpet. Within a couple of months, they got their first order from a manufacturing company. Later, they shifted their operations to a modest flat at Kavuri Hills in Jubilee Hills.
“Satya was a quiet guy and Rohit was more outgoing,” Ramesh Loganathan, managing director of Progress Software, told this newspaper. In tune with their nature, Rohit took care of business development as the CEO, Satya was chief technology officer (CTO) working more at the backend.
They focused more on using the combination of Apache Spark and Cassandra to build their platform. Spark is an open source data analytics cluster computing framework. Cassandra is an open-source distributed database management system designed to handle large amounts of data across many commodity servers. Interestingly, Cassandra was also developed by two Indians — Avinash Lakshman and Prashant Malik — at Facebook to power the Facebook inbox search feature. Facebook released Cassandra as an open-source project on Google code in July 2008. And now it benefited another set of Indian duo.
To target business in the United States, Tuplejump set up its foreign subsidiary Tuplejump Inc. in October 2013 in Fremont, California. This brought them in touch with Deepak Alur, who has been mentioned as a registered agent in the company’s filings in the US.
While Tuplejump’s records show Rohit and Satya as partners with equal shareholding, Deepak says he is the company’s chairman and co-founder in his LinkedIn account. Deepak is a veteran as he was with the IT industry since 1989 and appears to have helped the young founders with contacts and business. He joined Tuplejump in August 2013. A couple of months after his entry, Tuplejump had set up his US subsidiary.
After the acquisition of Tuplejump by Apple, 34-year-old Rohit has been inducted into its US campus and 33-year-old Satya is working at Apple’s Hyderabad facility.
