• Send Us A Tip
  • Calling all Tech Writers
  • Advertise
Saturday, May 17, 2025
  • Login
  • Register
TechStory
  • News
  • Crypto
  • Gadgets
  • Memes
  • Gaming
  • Cars
  • AI
  • Startups
  • Markets
  • How to
No Result
View All Result
  • News
  • Crypto
  • Gadgets
  • Memes
  • Gaming
  • Cars
  • AI
  • Startups
  • Markets
  • How to
No Result
View All Result
TechStory
No Result
View All Result
Home Inspiration

A Story of Art and Science: The Success of Mu Sigma

by Shruti Jani
January 3, 2019
in Inspiration, Startups, Stories, Stories
Reading Time: 5 mins read
0
Mu Sigma

Credits: Creative Commons

TwitterWhatsappLinkedin
Mu Sigma

Mu Sigma – the symbols for the mean and the standard deviation of a probability distribution. This was a fitting name for the company that has become the gold standard for data analytics, not only in India but around the globe. So, how did Mu Sigma become a management consulting mammoth that most Indian startups don’t even dream to be? Let’s find out.

You might also like

Expert Help, Just a Pyng Away: Now in Bangalore & Available on the App Store and Play Store

Samsung’s Galaxy S25 Edge Leak Confirms May 13 Launch and a New Design Direction

Bohdan Babinskyi Leads TripleA’s Vision as CBDO

The Beginning

It all started with its founder, Dhiraj C. Rajaram and his unending ambition to strike gold. He believed that innovations in the business world would find success only through a little luck and an unending process of trial and error. And thus began Rajaram’s self-described cycle of ambition, experimentation, trials, errors, more trials and more errors, which would finally lead to success.

Rajaram initially was working for Booz Allen Hamilton when he realized that clients just didn’t have the right people to go to, who would be skilled in applied mathematics, data science, and computing together. He wanted to fill in this gap.

“You need to understand the business and the industry, but that mix of art and science was just not there. I recognized two big things — consulting firms just did not have the appreciation for applied math, and the costs would never scale. Four hundred dollars an hour at Booz was not scalable for anybody.”

With these beliefs in mind, Dhiraj Rajaram started off with Mu Sigma in 2004. It started off small with an office in Bangalore in a market that was robust. Other consultancy firms like IBM, Cognizant, and Accenture were already in the market, but Rajaram was set to do something different.

He didn’t want to isolate programming from numbers and analytics. He felt that both, i.e., a reliable programming backbone which was made to cater to a specific business and their outlook at analytics would make for a better company. And thus at Mu Sigma, he rolled all of these into one and called it decision sciences.

Growth

To start up the gears for Mu Sigma, Dhiraj Rajaram invested 80% of his personal savings, as revealed by him in an interview. He talks about how putting in his own money would reflect well on the company. It’s not just about equity anymore; it shows the founder’s own trust in his own idea.

“It was not easy, because it was all or nothing. When you put your own money, you have so much skin in the game. You will spend wisely and it teaches you a lot of things”, said Dhiraj.

After the money, there was the problem of manpower. Getting the right people to come and work for him at Mu Sigma was a difficulty Dhiraj Rajaram had faced since the beginning.

In the first four years of founding the company, he was alone, handling everything. However, during this time, he made sure that he networked with the right contacts in the industry to ensure the company’s future reputation.

“I think, once we started getting customers, people started seeing us in a different light. I also used to keep talking to my friends in Chicago and other people in the industry about the progress that we made, so that everyone knew what we were doing.”

As Mu Sigma grew, so did inquiries from potential employees. Rajaram personally hired every initial employee of the company, because he knew they would make the foundation of the company that is to come.

“Mu Sigma wouldn’t have worked if the initial set of people didn’t have a character that they had. All of them still continue to be great friends of mine. Some of them are still part of the company. And they are doing very well. Had I not listened to my gut when I was hiring them and had focused on aptitude only, we might have never made it here. It’s important to go with your gut in the early days.”

Funding

Finally, after four years, the first round of investment was run. Mu Sigma raised its first bout of funding of 30 million USD, credit to FTV Capital (which was FTV Ventures then). This happened in 2008.

The second round of funding came in 2011 through Sequoia Capital. This round brought in $25 million from Sequoia Capital. On the heels of this also came the third investment of $108 million through Sequoia and General Atlantic. The third round became a milestone since it was the highest ever investment made in a business analytics company.

Mu Sigma was now making leaps and bounds in the business analytics ecosystem. It showed that the strategy of building trust in the community and customers for 4 long years, was finally paying off.

In February of 2013, Mu Sigma received an investment of 45 million USD from MasterCards. This latest investment perched it in the big leagues and shot up the valuation of the company to unicorn status, as it became valued at $1 billion which is approximately Rs. 5400 crore at that point in time.

Dhiraj Rajaram
Dhiraj Rajaram, Founder of Mu Sigma

Development

As Mu Sigma grew as a company, the founder Dhiraj Rajaram started receiving his fair share of recognition. You can say that the company and the founder grew hand in hand.

It now has 140 out of the 500 Fortune 500 companies on its roster of clients. This includes clients from the healthcare industry, airlines, banks, retail chains, and fast food industries.

In 2012, Mu Sigma was ranked at #907 in Inc.’s list of 5000 fastest-growing, private companies in America. Rajaram, on the other hand, was ranked #37 on the Fortune’s 40 under 40 in 2013. He also won the Services Category of the Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award in 2012.

Mu Sigma is the often overlooked, yet true success story of an Indian startup. It now gains recognition worldwide and has surpassed every sort of expectation the industry experts had from this data analytics startup. The company is now counted in the ranks of McKinsey, Deloitte, and Ernst and Young, and looking at the way it is continuing to grow, we can say that it has only higher graphs to scale.

Image Credit: Creative Commons & Your Story

Tags: big dataData AnalyticsData Analytics firmDhiraj RajaramMu SigmaStartup Storiesstartup success stories
Tweet55SendShare15
Previous Post

Ola to Raise Rs 14 Cr Strategic Investment from China’s Scooter Maker

Next Post

Samsung foldable smartphone can have triple rear cameras

Shruti Jani

Recommended For You

Expert Help, Just a Pyng Away: Now in Bangalore & Available on the App Store and Play Store

by Rohan Mathawan
May 2, 2025 - Updated On May 3, 2025
0
Expert Help, Just a Pyng Away: Now in Bangalore & Available on the App Store and Play Store

Need a personalised diet? Or thinking of learning Kannada, or any local language to better blend into your new city? Are you confused about taxes or investments? We...

Read more

Samsung’s Galaxy S25 Edge Leak Confirms May 13 Launch and a New Design Direction

by Anochie Esther
May 2, 2025
0
Galaxy S25 Edge

Samsung's next big thing might just be its slimmest ever. A fresh leak has locked in the Galaxy S25 Edge’s release date for May 13, and it’s already...

Read more

Bohdan Babinskyi Leads TripleA’s Vision as CBDO

by Rohan Mathawan
April 25, 2025
0
Bohdan Babinskyi Leads TripleA’s Vision as CBDO

The fast-paced landscape of tech media has recently witnessed the rise of Bohdan Babinskyi, a seasoned professional whose bold credentials have made him a rising star in this...

Read more
Next Post
Samsung Folding logo

Samsung foldable smartphone can have triple rear cameras

Please login to join discussion

Techstory

Tech and Business News from around the world. Follow along for latest in the world of Tech, AI, Crypto, EVs, Business Personalities and more.
reach us at [email protected]

Advertise With Us

Reach out at - [email protected]

BROWSE BY TAG

#Crypto #howto 2024 acquisition AI amazon Apple bitcoin Business China cryptocurrency e-commerce electric vehicles Elon Musk Ethereum facebook flipkart funding Gaming Google India Instagram Investment ios iPhone IPO Market Markets Meta Microsoft News NFT samsung Social Media SpaceX startup startups tech technology Tesla TikTok trend trending twitter US

© 2024 Techstory.in

No Result
View All Result
  • News
  • Crypto
  • Gadgets
  • Memes
  • Gaming
  • Cars
  • AI
  • Startups
  • Markets
  • How to

© 2024 Techstory.in

Welcome Back!

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password? Sign Up

Create New Account!

Fill the forms bellow to register

All fields are required. Log In

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In
Are you sure want to unlock this post?
Unlock left : 0
Are you sure want to cancel subscription?