Meet Sudheer Koneru: IITian Who Left Microsoft Job, Retired At 40, Set Up Company Worth Rs 12,000 Cr

Often people think that by retiring early, they can spend the rest of their life peacefully and fulfil their wishes like travel, philanthropy and so on. However, not everyone is able to make themselves financially enough to retire by 45-50 and lead a life without financial constraints. Sudheer Koneru is an exception in this case. Despite having a job in Microsoft, one of the world’s largest tech companies, he decided to retire in 2008, at the age of 40 years only.

Usually, at 40, many people in their professions progress in their careers and take up senior roles.

Sudheer Koneru Education

Sudheer Koneru obtained his engineering degree in computer science from IIT Madras. After this, he moved to America and got a master’s degree from the University of Texas. He started his career with Microsoft. His talent and dedication led him to reach the post of director in the company. However, he decided to quit the job and start his own company.

Sudheer Koneru Entrepreneur

Sudheer Koneru has founded three companies so far. He sold 2 of these firms a long time ago. After leaving Microsoft in 2000, where he worked for aroung 7 years, he formed the first company Intelliprep Technologies. He was also the CEO of this company for some time. Later this company was merged with Click2learn.

Click2Learn was the company of Paul Allen who was also the co-founder of Microsoft. After this he formed a company named Sumtotal. This company had started generating revenue of around $100 million that in 2007, he left it too. In 2008, he decided that he would retire.

Sudheer Koneru returned once again after almost 2 years and this time his business proved to be much better than the previous two. Keeping in mind the wellness, spa and salon, he created a software called ManageMySpa in 2010. In 2015, the company’s name was changed to Zenoti. In 2020, this company became a unicorn. Significantly, a startup with a valuation of more than $ 1 billion is called a unicorn. Their software is used in 50 countries. According to VentureIntelligence, the valuation of his company today is around Rs 12,000 crore.

In an interview to Moneycontrol in 2020, Sudheer Koneru had said, “I finished my previous startup, also in enterprise, after running it for eight years and took a break for a couple of years. I spent a lot of time on yoga, meditation, and general wellness. I wasn’t planning to go back to work but I invested in a chain of fitness chains, spas and salon centres called Latitudes. I was just an investor. But after two years of them being operational, I realised that if you want to run a multi-store outlet, it is very challenging. There was no software system for that.”

“And before I knew it, a lot of people wanted to join me in doing this. So that made me take it seriously and actually start this, although I hadn’t planned to do so.”

Read all the Latest Business News, Tax News and Stock Market Updates here