Shiju Radhakrishnan

Shiju Radhakrishnan
Shiju Radhakrishnan
Born	Shiju Radhakrishnan (1980-02-29)February 29, 1980 Kochi, Kerala, India
Residence	Bangalore, Karnataka, India
Alma mater	S P Jain Institute of Management and Research, Mahatma Gandhi University, Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya
Occupation	Founder and CEO of iTraveller
Years active	2002 - present
Board member of	iTraveller
Spouse(s)	Chitra S (Cofounder and COO, iTraveller)
Children	2

Shiju Radhakrishnan is the founder and CEO of iTraveller,^[1] a cloud based travel discovery, planning and booking platform that seeks to bring the entire process of planning and booking a holiday package online. Having completed his BTech from the Mahatma Gandhi University, he started off his career as a planning engineer in Ashok Leyland. He then shifted away from the manufacturing industry after doing his MBA from S P Jain Institute of Management and Research, working in various MNCs, such as Wipro and Cognizant before becoming the founder CEO of iTraveller in September, 2011.^[2]

Early life

Shiju was born on 29 February 1980, in Kochi, Kerala, to P Radhakrishnan Nair, a government employee and Santha Radhakrishnan, a home maker. He was the eldest child, having a younger brother Liju Radhakrishnan, who's in the software industry currently. He did his primary schooling in Mary Matha Primary School, Kochi, Kerala and joined Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya, Neriamangalam and earned his AISSE(10th) and AISSCE(12th) with distinction. He then joined Mar Athanasius College of Engineering to pursue a Bachelor of Technology degree in the field of Mechanical Engineering.^[3]

During his college years, he was the chairman of the college union for the year 2001 - 02 and received the twin honors of 'Best Outgoing Student, Engineering as well as the University gold medal in the field of Mechanical Engineering from the Mahatma Gandhi University for the year 2002. He then joined as senior planning engineer in Ashok Leyland.^[4]

2007 - 2012

After working in Ashok Leyland for four years, Shiju quit his job in order to pursue his master's degree in business administration from the S P Jain Institute of Management and Research. After earning his MBA, he did a summer internship in Hewlett Packard, after which he joined Cognizant as an associate consultant in the domain of supply chain management. After two years, he left to join Wipro as a consultant in the same domain.^[5]

iTraveller

The absence of a standalone service that aggregated the entire process of researching, planning and booking a holiday package struck Shiju while he was working at Cognizant. The idea slowly took a concrete form and the site iTraveller.com was launched on 9 November 2009.^[6]

Shortly after, Shiju joined Wipro and the day-to-day management of iTraveller was done by Chitra, his wife. The company opened its first office on 19 August 2010 in Kochi, Kerala, and in January 2012, Shiju resigned and started heading iTraveller full-time. Nisanthkumar joined iTraveller as the Chief Technology Officer in July 2012 and the entire business model underwent a revamp. In 2013, Shiju, along with his team relocated to Bangalore, making it as the headquarters. In the next three years, Shiju was able to add Amit Singh, Rachna Kalra and Pooja Pande as his co-founders and iTraveller has seen a considerable scale up since then.

In December 2014, iTraveller raised USD 1 Million in Series A funding from ah! Ventures, Mantra Ventures and Lets Ventures.^[7] iTraveller.com is planning to raise USD 10 million in Series B funding from new and existing investors to ramp up its technology platform and build brand presence.^[8][9]

Personal life

He got married to Chitra S on 4 September 2008. They have two children Ananya and Aditya. Chitra is currently the Chief Operating Officer at iTraveller.

References