Meet Yamini Rangan, started career serving food at restaurant, now CEO of Rs 2,11,000 crore company

Yamini Rangan is one of the most respected CEOs in the tech world and one with an inspiring rise. A small-town girl from India, Yamini Rangan broke the glass ceiling to become one of the few women leading a multi-billion dollar tech company. Rangan is the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of HubSpot, the US-based developer and software giant with a market cap of $25.66 billion (over Rs 2.11 lakh crore).

At just 21 years of age, Yamini left her small-town home in India and landed in the land of opportunities “terrified” and excited. Soon she realised that life was not going to be easy. In a month of trying to survive in the US, Yamini was left with just $150 in her pocket after paying the rent. She knew that getting work was the only option. She had come on a one-way ticket to the US.

Her first job was serving food and drinks at a football stadium restaurant in Atlanta. Yamini once revealed in an interview that she had always wanted to be independent and she did not want to go back to parents and ask for money. Yamini did her graduation in Computer Engineering from Coimbatore’s Bharathiar University before doing her masters and then an MBA from Berkeley.

In a long and successful career, she worked for IT giants like SAP, Lucent, Workday and Dropbox before joining billionaire Dharmesh Shah co-founded HubSpot as Chief Customer Officer in 2020. In 2021, she was elevated to CEO which put her in an esteemed company with the likes of Oravle’s Safra Catz, Arista’s Jayshree Ullal and HCL’s Roshni Nadar. She has won several accolades including the Most Influential Women in Business in San Francisco in 2019.