Srikant Sastri joins forces with Crayon Data

Former chairperson of Vivaki India Srikant Sastri has turned entrepreneur again, as lead investor in Singapore-headquartered Crayon Data.

 

Sastri will be co-founder at Crayon Data, which has a development centre in Chennai. It was founded by Suresh V Shankar and commenced operations nine months ago. Shankar’s earlier analytics firm Red Pill Solutions was acquired by IBM.

 

According to a statement from the company, Crayon Data’s vision is to build a platform-based ‘Big Data’ company. Crayon’s platform is designed to ‘simplify choices’ with a stated ambition to democratise the world of ‘Big Data’.

 

On his new assignment, serial entrepreneur and digital evangelist Sastri said, “I am excited about the way Crayon brings together the world of enterprise analytics and digital and social media onto one ‘Big Data’ platform. As organisations cope with rapidly growing silos of data within and outside their business, Crayon provides some real answers. Working with Suresh and rest of the Crayon team is something that I really look forward to.”

 

Sastri and Shankar have known each other for three decades and collaborated previously on start-ups, the statement added.

 

Shankar said, “Over the past nine months, Crayon has brought together a great team of investors, advisors and experts across platform, delivery, data science, and UI/UX, at Singapore and Chennai. We are already seeing the impact in the form of real projects and revenues from global clients. Srikant is one of the smartest people I have met in my life and having him formally become a co-founder is truly exciting.”

 

Sastri co-founded Solutions Integrated Marketing Services in 1995 (Solutions Digitas), which was subsequently acquired by Publicis Groupe in 2007. Team4U, which he conceived in 2005, was acquired by Randstad. He has also worked at Unilever and McCann Erickson in professional assignments.