Neha Narkhede is an Indian American technology entrepreneur. He also worked as a technology investor and advisor for many well-known international software companies. The streaming data technology company, Confluent was co-founded by him in 2014 where he worked as the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) for some time. While working with LinkedIn, Neha Narkhede founded Apache Kafka, an open source software platform. He is a board member of Confluent. In 2020, Forbes listed her as one of America’s Self-Made Women of the year.
Wiki/Biography
Neha Narkhede was born in 1985 (age 37 years; in 2022) in Pune, Maharashtra. From 2002 to 2006, he studied a bachelor of engineering degree in computer science at Savitribai Phule University Pune, Maharashtra. From 2006 to 2007, he pursued a master’s degree in computer science at the Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia. According to Neha Narkhede, she was gifted a computer by her parents at the age of eight. Since then, he loves working on computers and dreams about becoming tech savvy one day. Once, in a conversation with a media reporter, Neha Narkhede stated that her parents were the biggest motivation in her life, and they imbibed the value of education in her. Neha Narkhede says,
My parents did some 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.”
Physical appearance
Height (approx): 5′ 4″
Weight (approx): 55 kg
Hair Color: Black
Eye Color: Black
Family
Parents & Siblings
His mother’s name is Kalpana Narkhede.
Neha Narkhede with her mother, Kalpana Narkhede
Husband & Son
Neha Narkhede is married to Sachin Kulkarni.
Neha Narkhede with her husband, Sachin Kulkarni
Address
Neha Narkhede lives in Palo Alto, California, USA.
Career
Software Professional
In February 2008, Neha Narkhede started working as a Technical Staff Member at Oracle Corporation after completing her college studies. He worked with Oracle Corporation until February 2010. He was responsible for designing and implementing from scratch hierarchical search. She then started working as a Software Engineer at LinkedIn in February 2010 and served till April 2011. In April 2011, Neha Narkhede was promoted to the position of Senior Software Engineer and she worked in that position till April 2012. She held that responsibility. distributed systems such as LinkedIn’s OLAP engine, Zookeeper and Kafka. Neha Narkhede was appointed as Lead Software Engineer at LinkedIn in June 2012. In June 2013, she was appointed to look after LinkedIn’s Leads, Streams and Infrastructure departments, a position she held until September 2014.
Neha Narkhede while talking about Apache Kafka at a technology conference
Apache Kafka
In 2011, Neha Narkhede and her two friends Jun Rao and Jay Kreps founded a software platform called Apache Kafka. Currently, he works with LinkedIn, the world’s largest professional network on the internet. According to Neha Narkhede, they got the idea to develop Kafka as an open source platform when they were working on a project at the company.
Neha Narkhede during the Kafka Summit in 2019
confluent
Neha Narkhede then co-founded Confluent (a Palo Alto-based startup) in September 2014 with her colleagues Jay Kreps and Jun Rao and started working as its Chief Technology and Product Officer. He was appointed as a board member of Confluent in January 2020. Later, Confluent started working as a B2B infrastructure venture under their guidance. According to Neha Narkhede, she, along with two of her colleagues, came up with the initial idea when they faced data access problems while working at work and started investigating the technology’s vulnerabilities. In a media conversation, he talked about his enlightenment about the new technology. Neha Narkhede says,
I spoke with my colleague at the time, Jay Kreps, because he was thinking about data access problems. I asked him if I could help find a solution and that’s how we started. We don’t start by building technology. Instead we start by investigating existing technologies to understand their weaknesses. We conclude that a solution does not exist.”
From left to right – Neha Narkhede, Jay Kreps and Jun Rao
According to several media sources, in 2019, Confluent extended its business earning up to $125 million, which increased its total funding to $206 million for the year. The following year, Confluent increased its profits to $250 million under the leadership of Neha Narkhede and her team, and this increased the company’s total funding to $456 million. Confluent is used for analyzing and collecting data by giant companies including Goldman Sachs, Netflix and Uber. Once, in a media interview, Neha Narkhede revealed that her company aggregates data of other companies in milliseconds and acts as a central nervous system for them. He said,
We see our technology as the central nervous system for companies that aggregate data and make sense of it in milliseconds, at scale. We think almost every company will benefit from that and we plan to bring it to them.”
Literary Works
Neha Narkhede is a successful businesswoman in the world of technology. He co-authored a book titled Kafka: The Definitive Guide with Gwen Shapira and Todd Palino in 2017 to recount and explain the technology created by Kafka.
Book cover – Kafka The Definitive Guide by Neha Narkhede
Startup Investors & Advisors
Apart from being a businessman and tech savvy, Neha Narkhede also works as a technology advisor. He started working as a startup investor and advisor in March 2020. He worked as an advisor for 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 technology conference
Awards, Honors, Achievements
In 2017, Neha Narkhede was listed as one of the innovators under 35 by MIT Technology Review. In 2018, Forbes listed her as one of America’s and the world’s top 50 Women in Technology. In 2018, he was the winner of the Oracle Groundbreaker Award at the Oracle Code One conference in San Francisco. In 2020, Forbes listed her #33 on the list of “America’s Self-Made Women.” In 2022, Neha Narkhede was listed as India’s youngest self-made woman entrepreneur by IIFL Wealth Hurun India Rich List 2022.
Facts/Trivia
- Neha Narkhede likes to scuba dive and travel in her spare time. In a media conversation, she stated that she is an avid scuba diver and loves to travel around the world with her husband, Sachin Kulkarni. Neha Narkhede says,
I love to travel and I am an avid scuba diver. My husband and I made a list of interesting places to dive around the world such as the Great Blue Hole in Belize. There were a lot of sharks around so it was quite an adrenaline rush.”
Neha Narkhede enjoys scuba diving with her husband
- According to Neha Narkhede, successful Indian women entrepreneurs like Padmashree Warrior and Indira Nooyi are her role models. While talking to media reporters in an interview, Neha recounted the achievements of this business woman. He said,
I admire Padmashree Warrior, the former CTO at Cisco who is now the CEO and founder of NIO, an electric car startup. I also appreciate Indira Nooyi, Chairman and CEO of PepsiCo.”
Categories: Biography
Source: SCHOOL TRANG DAI
