Who Is Anand Varadarajan? Starbucks Names Indian-Origin Veteran As CTO
Starbucks has appointed Amazon veteran Anand Varadarajan as its new Chief Technology Officer to lead global technology operations.
Starbucks has appointed Indian-origin technology executive Anand Varadarajan as its executive vice president and chief technology officer (CTO).
He will be part of the executive leadership team and lead the Starbucks Technology organisation, the company announced on Friday. Varadarajan will report directly to Chief Executive Officer Brian Niccol, according to a CNBC report. He succeeds Deb Hall Lefevre, who retired in September.
Who Is Anand Varadarajan?
Anand Varadarajan has spent close to 19 years at Amazon, where he built large-scale, customer-focused technology platforms. Most recently, he oversaw the worldwide grocery technology and supply chain organisations, including Amazon Fresh and Whole Foods Market, according to CNBC.
According to his LinkedIn profile, Varadarajan has led global product, technology and supply chain teams for Amazon Fresh and Whole Foods Market. He has also guided executive decision-making during periods of rapid growth and complexity and built and mentored senior leadership teams, including succession planning and organisational design.
Before this role, he led technology, science, product and marketing teams for Amazon Private Brands and served as technical advisor to Doug Herrington, then SVP of Amazon North America Consumer Business. He also managed technology and product teams focused on brand protection, software engineering and machine learning.
Career In Technology
Prior to joining Amazon, Varadarajan held senior engineering and leadership positions in various organisations, his LinkedIn profile states.
He worked at Motorola as a software lead. He joined the organisation’s software division, which developed “push” technology to deliver rich carrier-created content from servers to mobile phones.
Before that, he worked in Openwave, where he served as principal software engineer and software development manager. He also worked as a senior software engineer at Viquity.
Varadarajan began his career in June 1998 at Oracle as a member of technical staff, contributing to Oracle Advanced Replication for mobile and distributed databases.
Education And Personal Interests
Varadarajan earned his undergraduate degree from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, followed by master’s degrees in civil engineering from Purdue University and in computer science from the University of Washington. Outside of work, he is an avid runner aiming to complete all seven World Marathon Majors and is also a coffee enthusiast, according to Starbucks.
