Peeyush Ranjan, former Flipkart CTO and a Google veteran, has joined Mukesh Bansal’s startup incubator Meraki Labs as a partner.
Based in San Francisco, he will help expand Meraki’s presence in Silicon Valley as it sharpens its focus on artificial intelligence (AI) and work closely with entrepreneurs at the incubator to shape their tech and product strategies, Ranjan told ET in an interaction.
“Meraki’s focus is to be a moonshot factory for amazing projects, and in today’s day, AI is a key component of that,” he said. “A big part of my role will be to guide the AI vision for Meraki… What kind of companies we should start, what are the problems that we will be great at solving?... Not just applying AI for the sake of it.”
Ranjan said his presence in Silicon Valley—while Bansal is based out of Bengaluru—gives Meraki an opportunity to “connect with global networks and talent.”
“With his deep product mindset and engineering leadership, he (Ranjan) will play a key role in building new companies, leading our AI vision, and helping Meraki establish a strong presence in Silicon Valley," Bansal said.
“Peeyush has built many large-scale products from scratch used by hundreds of millions of people around the world and has a very strong pulse on emerging tech trends,” he added.
AI focus
As a partner, Ranjan will participate in ongoing investments for Meraki Labs’ portfolio companies.
He will also join the board of Nurix AI, Bansal's own AI startup incubated at Meraki Labs. Nurix, which raised $27.5 million in seed funding from Accel and General Catalyst in September last year, builds custom AI agents for enterprise services like sales and customer support in initial use cases.
Ranjan said he would help Nurix design a technical architecture as well as make key leadership hires.
“Nurix itself is going after a very clear problem – and it is looking to solve for these tasks which are very tedious for humans, error-prone, and subject to churn. The whole opportunity for Nurix is to get deep into business operations and see how AI can be applied,” he said.
However, Meraki Labs’ focus on AI may extend beyond enterprise use-cases. “For Meraki, it wouldn’t be surprising if the next thing we do is focused on consumers,” Ranjan said.
Prior to joining Meraki Labs, Ranjan was engaged with Google as its general manager and vice president of engineering, where he led teams shaping AI-driven products including Google Assistant and parts of the Gemini app.
Bansal, cofounder of leading fashion portal Myntra, has also backed companies such as Groww, Skyroot Aerospace and former Zomato executive Mohit Gupta’s fashion startup Lyskraft through Meraki Labs. He used his personal capital to make these investments.
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“Meraki’s focus is to be a moonshot factory for amazing projects, and in today’s day, AI is a key component of that,” he said. “A big part of my role will be to guide the AI vision for Meraki… What kind of companies we should start, what are the problems that we will be great at solving?... Not just applying AI for the sake of it.”
Ranjan said his presence in Silicon Valley—while Bansal is based out of Bengaluru—gives Meraki an opportunity to “connect with global networks and talent.”
“With his deep product mindset and engineering leadership, he (Ranjan) will play a key role in building new companies, leading our AI vision, and helping Meraki establish a strong presence in Silicon Valley," Bansal said.
“Peeyush has built many large-scale products from scratch used by hundreds of millions of people around the world and has a very strong pulse on emerging tech trends,” he added.
AI focus
As a partner, Ranjan will participate in ongoing investments for Meraki Labs’ portfolio companies.
He will also join the board of Nurix AI, Bansal's own AI startup incubated at Meraki Labs. Nurix, which raised $27.5 million in seed funding from Accel and General Catalyst in September last year, builds custom AI agents for enterprise services like sales and customer support in initial use cases.
Ranjan said he would help Nurix design a technical architecture as well as make key leadership hires.
“Nurix itself is going after a very clear problem – and it is looking to solve for these tasks which are very tedious for humans, error-prone, and subject to churn. The whole opportunity for Nurix is to get deep into business operations and see how AI can be applied,” he said.
However, Meraki Labs’ focus on AI may extend beyond enterprise use-cases. “For Meraki, it wouldn’t be surprising if the next thing we do is focused on consumers,” Ranjan said.
Prior to joining Meraki Labs, Ranjan was engaged with Google as its general manager and vice president of engineering, where he led teams shaping AI-driven products including Google Assistant and parts of the Gemini app.
Bansal, cofounder of leading fashion portal Myntra, has also backed companies such as Groww, Skyroot Aerospace and former Zomato executive Mohit Gupta’s fashion startup Lyskraft through Meraki Labs. He used his personal capital to make these investments.
