BOSTON—TiE Boston board member and a seasoned technology executive Neeraj Chandra died of a massive heart attack in Mexico last week, and his body will be flown to Boston on Wednesday.
Syed Ali Rizvi, a resident of Lexington, MA, and a close family friend, said the cause of Mr. Chandra’s death is now known and it was a massive heart attack.
“After a medical examination in Mexico, his body has been handed over to authorities for transportation to Boston,” Mr. Rizvi said. “His body is scheduled to arrive in Boston Wednesday and his cremation will be held on Friday.”
Mr. Rizvi said a last rituals/pooja ceremony will be held on Saturday. On the request of his two sons, these ceremonies will be private.
Mr. Rizvi said that condolences and words of sympathy for the family is pouring from all over the world. Unfortunately because of travel restrictions and health guidelines due to COVID, family members will not be able to travel to Boston to attend the last rites. His both sons, Ankit and Arnav, who are based on the West Coast, will be in Boston, added Mr. Rizvi.
Mr. Chandra passed away while visiting one of his sons in Mexico last Wednesday. He was few days short of completing 65the birthday.
Mr. Chandra was the leader of TiE Boston’s ScaleUp Accelerator program, an angel investor and a seasoned technology executive with a long career in the corporate world across the world.
TiE Boston President Anu Chitrapu said that Mr. Chandra played a pivotal role at TiE Boston and served two terms on its board.
“Neeraj truly embodied TiE Boston’s mission of fostering entrepreneurship. He served 2 terms on the Board and led the ScaleUp program, taking a personal interest in making it successful and mentoring many ScaleUp founders,” said Ms. Chitrapu. “His leadership brought us a grant from the state in 2021, and took the program to new heights. Losing Neeraj is a big loss for TiE Boston and the many founders who Neeraj was mentoring and advising.”
Earlier, Mr. Rizvi had told INDIA New England News that Mr. Chandra’s death has sent a shock wave in his family, friend and professional circles.
“It is very very shocking. He was at our home just a few days ago for dinner,” said family friend Syed Ali Rizvi, a resident of Lexington, MA. “He was very happy with what he was doing both professionally and personally. He was giving back to the society through non-profits and he was full of enthusiasm.”
Mr. Chandra was the founder and CEO of Arkit Consultants LLC, a business and strategy consulting firm focused on scaling up of early stage and high growth companies, in Cloud, Blockchain, AI and Internet of Things (IoT) domains.
Earlier, he served as Vice President of Worldwide Strategy for IBM in the Software Group. He was a seasoned Angel Investor and served on the Advisory Board of ConnectM Technology Solutions, Blustream Corporation, Elemental Labs, and Alivia Analytics.
Mr. Chandra was a game changer who was dedicated to growing revenue and scaling business operations. He had a track record of success across a range of company sizes from early stage venture backed (I-Logix) through medium size public companies (Telelogic) to $1 billion+ division of multinational corporation ( IBM).
He served as the Chair of the TiE Boston ScaleUp Accelerator and had served as a mentor for a number of companies in the program.
According to his profile at TiE Boston, Mr. Chandra was born, raised and went to school in Northern India. After he received his B.Com (Hons) degree from Sri Ram College of Commerce and LL.B degree from Delhi University he qualified for Tata Administrative Service (TAS) and joined Tata Burroughs Ltd.
After working with them for a few years, he was asked to relocate to Paris as the marketing manager for the European and African region. He opened two additional marketing offices in France and Germany to grow the business. After he returned to India, developed two major new businesses for Tata Burroughs; one with Computervision in the CAD/CAM market and the other with Microsoft in the PC software market.
Later, he joined Prime Computers Ltd, in England. After some time, Prime Computers UK asked him to move to the Corporate Headquarters in Boston. After playing a key part in the successful debut of Prime Computers under the name of Computervision as a publicly listed company, Mr. Chandra was sponsored to attend the Advanced Management Program at Harvard Business School.
After HBS, he joined a venture-backed start-up I-Logix and helped grow their revenues 6X during his tenure. At this point, a Swedish company Telelogic A.B. acquired the firm for a significant all-cash deal that made its investors and employees very happy. The CEO of Telelogic A.B. reached out and asked Mr. Chandra to stay back, post-acquisition, and help grow their company. He agreed and stayed with Telelogic A.B. for another two years until IBM acquired it for $750 million.
