Facebook India's First Employee: "How I Scaled To 100M Users In India" | Kirthiga Reddy

In 2010, Facebook opened its first office in India, four years after it went online.

They needed someone bold to lead their journey in India which had a major customer base potential.

That someone was Kirthiga Reddy.

Under Kirthiga’s leadership, Facebook not only grew its user base but also planted deep roots in a complex and rapidly evolving digital ecosystem.

Today, India has the most Facebook users with over 448 million, followed by the US (258 million).

After six years of phenomenal growth at Facebook, Kirthiga decided it was time for a new challenge.

In 2018, she became the first female partner at SoftBank Vision Fund, managing over $5 billion in investments.

Today, Kirthiga leads her own venture, Verix, focusing on trust, transparency, and community-driven solutions.

In this episode of the NEON Show, Kirthiga Reddy shares her inspiring journey. From a small-town upbringing in India to building Facebook in India, Kirthiga takes us through the challenges of scaling operations, transforming workplace culture, and driving growth. She also opens up about her transition to SoftBank. From leading the fund’s first investments in quantum computing and additive manufacturing, Kirthiga shares how she worked closely with founders to shape strategies and scale businesses.

Timestamps
00:00 - Trailer 
01:51 - Intro
02:09 - Kirthiga’s career from Facebook India to SoftBank
03:17 - Childhood in Nanded shaping values
04:46 - Early career programming for Let Us C
06:20 - Masters in the US and arranged marriage
08:33 - Syracuse University and joining its Board
09:30 - Silicon Graphics high-tech projects
12:20 - Stanford MBA and transition to business
17:58 - Startup role in product management
21:20 - Motorola acquisition and return to India
23:08 - Meeting Sheryl Sandberg
27:32 - Joining Facebook as its first Indian employee
28:50 - Facebook’s 100-100-100 strategy
30:40 - Building a Facebook culture
35:30 - Personally hiring Facebook India’s first 100 employees
36:45 - Success stories of early hires
37:50 - Leaving Facebook to balance family and career
45:20 - Joining SoftBank & managing $5B in investments
47:19 - Key investments in IonQ and 8fold.ai
52:38 - Transition from SoftBank to new ventures
56:14 - Founding Verix and Virtualness
57:00 - AI-first companies and tech vision
01:00:28 - India’s thriving tech ecosystem
01:03:51 - Vision for Verix, Virtualness, and social impact

Hi, I am your host Siddhartha! I have been an entrepreneur from 2012-2017 building two products AddoDoc and Babygogo. After selling my company to SHEROES, I and my partner Nansi decided to start up again. But we felt unequipped in our skillset in 2018 to build a large company. We had known 0-1 journeys from our startups but lacked the experience of building 1-10 journeys. 

Hence was born The Neon Show (Earlier 100x Entrepreneur) to learn from founders and investors, the mindset to scale yourself and your company. This quest still keeps us excited even after 5 years and doing 200+ episodes.

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