EP #386 - Ansuya Ahluwalia: From India, to Silicon Valley, to Swisspreneur
Timestamps: 3:08 - Studying in India and the US 20:54 - Starting Anamii 34:00 - The exit coming as a surprise 43:58 - How Ansuya joined Swisspreneur 55:50 - What thirty3 does About Ansuya Ahluwalia: Ansuya Ahluwalia is a co-founder of the wellness and inner transformation app Anamii and the CTO and Business Partner of thirty3, which helps companies with innovative product development by building AI-first applications. She holds a MSc in Computer Science from UCLA and previously worked for companies like Amazon Lab126 and Vicara Infotech Group AG before starting Anamii in 2020. Her parents are both engineers who worked for a period of time in Silicon Valley, which is why Ansuya was born there, even though their family originally hails from India. They then moved back to India where she continued her studies and pursued a bachelor’s degree. Ansuya then decided to do her master’s in Computer Science at UCLA, in California, specializing in Machine Learning. She went on to work for Amazon as a software developer, where she was successful, and promoted quickly, but where career perspectives looked far too predictable and cookie-cutter for her taste. So in 2017 Ansuya moved to Switzerland, taking a job at Vicara Infotech Group AG, where she worked first as Technical Lead and then as CTO. 3 years on, she decided to quit her job and build Anamii, a platform to help people looking for improved mental wellbeing and spiritual growth be matched with the adequate professionals. Ansuya herself has benefited greatly in the past from meditation and yoga, and still does today. Two years later, in 2022, the business had really started seeing some traction, and Ansuya found it really fulfilling to be helping people in such a tangible way, but unfortunately the Swiss government had other plans: thinking that Ansuya had quit her tech job to become a spiritual coach herself, they mailed her a letter informing her that she was no longer working in a field that aligned with her skillset, and that if she did not return to the tech field within 1 year, she would be asked to leave the country. So Ansuya had no choice but to look for a day job, and the right opportunity came from friends over at thirty3. That same year, she joined Swisspreneur as a co-host, after having connected previously with our main host, Silvan. In 2023, Ansuya sold Anamii to HereNow, and remains active there only as a technical advisor. Nowadays she is the CTO at thirty3, which helps its customers validate their business ideas, build their products/services in a way that leverages all the available open source code online, and integrate AI into their business wherever beneficial. Don’t forget to give us a follow on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and Linkedin, so you can always stay up to date with our latest initiatives. That way, there’s no excuse for missing out on live shows, weekly giveaways or founders' dinners