ThoughtSpot has appointed Ketan Karkhanis as its new Chief Executive Officer. Karkhanis replaces Sudheesh Nair, who left the company in March after nearly six years as CEO. Nair chose to step away after leading the company through a period of significant growth.
In a LinkedIn post, he commented, “It became clear that it was time for me to take a break and do something else while the board looked for a new CEO.
“My decision was feasible because of two things: the business momentum, supported by pioneering customers worldwide, and a superb leadership team that can keep the business growing as we search for a new leader.”
Finding the right CEO
ThoughtSpot has now found the leader that it believes will take them through its next stage of growth.
Ajeet Singh, Co-Founder and Executive Chairman of ThoughtSpot, commented, “During this time of accelerated transformation driven by the advent of generative AI, there is no better person to lead ThoughtSpot than Ketan.
“He is a customer-obsessed, employee-focused business leader with a deep experience in analytics and has built and led world-class SaaS businesses of significant scale. The ThoughtSpot Board believes that Ketan is the right leader to help ThoughtSpot capitalize on its foundational innovation and capture the massive market opportunity that lies ahead in AI-powered analytics.
“Over the last six months, ThoughtSpot has made significant progress in accelerating its product roadmap, delivering genAI-driven value to customers that are migrating away from legacy visualization platforms, and centering its focus on durable growth at scale, all setting the table for our next CEO.”
Ravi Mhatre, Founder and Managing Director of Lightspeed Venture Partners and the founding investor on ThoughtSpot’s Board of Directors said, “Ketan has the passion and experience to lead ThoughtSpot in its next chapter. This appointment comes at a perfect time for the market as analytics is redefined by genAI and ensures that ThoughtSpot is best positioned to scale rapidly.”
Who is Ketan Karkhanis
Karkhanis joins from Salesforce, where he was EVP & GM Sales Cloud during his second stint at the SaaS giant. The Sales Cloud division generated more than $7 billion last year. He had returned to Salesforce after a period as Chief Operating Officer of Turvo, where he led the product, engineering & customer success teams, but left after Lineage Logistics and Bay Grove acquired it.
At Turvo he spent nearly ten years in leadership roles that included GM & SVP Product Management Einstein Analytics. He helped develop the platform and launched it, growing its revenue base to over $300 million and a 30,000-strong community.
That experience in leading an analytics business unit helped prepare him for this new role at ThoughtSpot. Karkhanis also spent time at Cisco, Network Appliance and Zensar Technologies.
He has an MBA from Santa Clara University Leavey School of Business and a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from PICT (Pune Institute of Computer Technology).
Karkhanis commented, “ThoughtSpot has built a fundamentally different approach to analytics since its inception, squarely focused on democratizing data and empowering everyone to make data-driven decisions with its AI and search-driven analytics platform.
“ThoughtSpot has a significant head start in innovation that is required for truly delivering on the expectations that genAI has created, with a proven solution that is delivering value to some of the largest and most complex enterprises in the world.
“I am extremely honored to have the opportunity to lead the company that finds itself intersecting with the genAI tailwinds at a perfect time, and is in a strong position to capitalize on this market opportunity by bringing unparalleled value to over a thousand customers across the globe.”
Enterprise Times: What does this mean
This is the first CEO role that Karkhanis has had, but his experience in leading both the Sales Cloud and Einstein Analytics units at Salesforce will have prepared him for this role. This is a new chapter of growth for ThoughtSpot; with Nair departing a few months ago, it will be interesting to see how he works with the founder and investors to shape the company going forward.
He joins a high-performing team that has achieved 40% growth over the last year for its analytics solution. And more than doubles its monthly users. The product team is also churning out new products and upgrades. It is often easier for an incoming CEO to join when there are apparent issues.
For Karkhanis, he has to keep the business running smoothly and then look to improve it to meet the high expectations of the board. That includes founder an former CEO, Singh.
