By INE Wire
BOSTON—Two Indian-American entrepreneurs and executives have made to the list the Boston Business Journal’s 50 Most Powerful Businesspeople in 2016. They are Niraj Shah, co-founder, Co-Chairman and CEO of Wayfair, and Murugesan “Raj” Shanmugaraj, President and CEO of Acacia Communications, Inc.
Both Shah and Shanmugaraj, along with 48 other powerful business people will be honored by the Boston Business Journal on Nov. 17 at the Ritz-Carlton at Boston Common in Boston.
Shah co-founded Wayfair with Steve Conine in 2002. The firm today is the largest online retailer of home furnishings and home items in the U.S., surpassing $2.25 billion in annual sales in 2015 and $786.9 million in net revenues for second quarter 2016.
Before founding Wayfair, Shah was CEO and co-founder of Simplify Mobile, an enterprise software company which was sold in 2001, according to his official bio on Wayfair website. Prior to that, he served as Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Greylock Partners, COO and a member of the Board of Directors at iXL, a publicly traded global technology consulting firm, and the CEO and co-founder of Spinners, which was sold to iXL in 1998.
Shah serves on the board of MITX, The Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce, the Cornell University Council, and the Entrepreneurship @ Cornell Advisory Council. He holds a B.S. in engineering from Cornell University.
Shanmugaraj serves as President and CEO of Acacia Communications, which deliver high-speed optical interconnect products. He has more than 25 years of experience in telecom and communications. Prior to joining Acacia, Shanmugaraj was the vice president of business development in the optical networking division of Alcatel-Lucent USA.
Shanmugaraj also founded and served as the chief executive officer of Astral Point Communications, and held various senior executive level positions at PictureTel, Multilink and Motorola. Shanmugaraj holds an M.S. in electrical and computer engineering from the University of Iowa and a B.E. in electronics and communications from the National Institute of Technology.
