It's rare to see a female CEO ring the Nasdaq stock opening market bell. It's rarer still when she is of Indian origin and does it minutes after cradling a 2.5 year old baby in her arms. So it wasn't surprising when Vimeo CEO Anjali Sud's picture with her son, moments before she took the video software & marketing platform public, went viral last month.
Anjali Sud, born to Punjabi parents who emigrated to the US, gave Vimeo a new lease of life by transforming it from an alternative of YouTube to a software platform that offers companies tools with which they can create, manage and share high-quality videos across platforms. The pandemic year gave Vimeo a shot in the arm, as video consumption went up, as the firm now has over 200 million users globally, with 1.6 million paying subscribers, as of March 2021. Vimeo listed on Nasdaq last month and currently has a market cap of over $7.2 Billion. Sud, who took charge as in 2017, spoke to Moneycontrol via Zoom from New York, on how her Indian roots influenced her leadership, if Vimeo will ever look at audio solutions, her plans to expand in India and how she strikes a fine balance as CEO and mom. Edited excerpts:
Tell us about your backstory- A CEO born to Indian immigrants, who grew up in Michigan. How did this influence you, shape you as a leader?
Both my parents are Punjabi from India. They came to the United States right before I was born. And I grew up in a town in Michigan where we had a tight knit Indian community. I was spending every weekend at dinner parties with aunties and uncles, I was doing Bal Vihar and dance classes, it was a very culturally supportive community. So I grew up with a strong feeling of identity of being Indian but also in the US going to school, being an American. A couple of things that I got from that experience. The fluidity of having to kind of move across cultures and fit in and also stay truly yourself. That helped me have a global perspective.
Vimeo is a global platform, a majority of our users are outside the US, we are growing our teams substantially outside the US and it helps me understand that we come from different backgrounds and how those things can come together in a positive way. The other thing I got is a lot of ambition. My parents left their family and friends to come to the US to pursue the American dream and I grew up always wanting to be a leader and a CEO, because I believe that business can have a positive impact on our communities. I was always working really hard to get good grades, trying to go to the best schools and I definitely got a lot of that from my upbringing.
Read More at https://www.moneycontrol.com/news/business/companies/from-daughter-of-punjabi-immigrants-to-vimeo-ceo-anjali-sud-wants-to-reimagine-the-future-of-video-7088041.html
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