Samidha Garud is a cofounder and the CEO of Kanerika, the Austin, Texas, AI and data consulting firm, and a software engineering leader who moved from running development teams at large Indian IT firms to building her own company (The Brand Hopper; Kanerika).
Leading Software Teams at TCS and Polaris
Garud spent more than 20 years leading software development teams, with leadership roles at Tata Consultancy Services and Polaris Consulting (The Brand Hopper). Before Kanerika she cofounded Doc N Me, a health technology startup (The Brand Hopper). Later she completed the Advanced Management Program at the Wharton School, where she said personal coaching helped her refine her leadership style and a cohort from 19 countries became a network of advisors she still leans on (CEO Insights).
Building Kanerika with Bhupendra Chopra
Garud and Bhupendra Chopra founded Kanerika in 2015, first as a healthcare software startup, before turning to IT and data consulting (The Brand Hopper). Chopra was the founding CEO; in 2023 Garud took over as CEO and he became chief revenue officer (The Brand Hopper). Under her the firm has leaned into its own software, led by FLIP, a platform that automates most of a move from legacy data warehouses and BI tools to platforms such as Microsoft Fabric (Intellyx).
“Success isn’t shipping software. It’s creating impact,” she says on Kanerika’s website, adding that the firm measures its work by the outcomes its clients achieve (Kanerika).
Dream, Believe, Achieve
In an interview with CEO Insights, Garud described success as a long-term journey built on commitment, hard work, and resilience, and said she treats failures as lessons. “My personal motto is quite straight forward: ‘Dream, Believe, Achieve,’” she said (CEO Insights). She calls herself an adaptive leader who leads by example and uses an empower-and-delegate model so team members take ownership of their work (CEO Insights).