Suranga Chandratillake

Last updated

Suranga Chandratillake
සුරංග චන්ද්‍රතිලක
Suranga Chandratillake.jpg
Born1977
Alma mater King's College, Cambridge
Occupation(s)Founder and CEO of blinkx.com

Suranga Chandratillake OBE FREng (born October 1977 [1] in Kandy, Sri Lanka [2] ) is the founder and former CEO of blinkx, [3] the San Francisco-based video search and advertising company [4] which later became RhythmOne. After eight years as CEO and taking blinkx public, Chandratillake became the company's Chief Strategy Officer and, in 2014, returned to Europe to join the UK-based venture capital firm, Balderton Capital, as a General Partner. [5] [6]

Career

Prior to founding blinkx, Chandratillake held a variety of roles in technology, sales and marketing at Morgan Stanley, netdecisions and anondesign. [7]

Chandratillake holds an MA in Computer Science from King's College, Cambridge; specializing in distributed processing architectures, he received a double first. [8] While at Cambridge, he was the first web editor of the University's student newspaper, Varsity. [9] Soon after graduating, Chandratillake joined Autonomy Corporation as lead R&D engineer on the company's core data analysis engine.

Chandratillake moved to California as Autonomy's Chief Technology Officer to set up an office in Silicon Valley, where he was responsible for growing the company's research and development division in the United States. Autonomy set up blinkx as a standalone business in 2005, with Chandratillake as CEO. The spinout followed an internal project that Chandratillake set up to develop software that would index and find information at a desktop level. [10] Chandratillake took blinkx public on the London Stock Exchange on May 22, 2007. [11]

Chandratillake has spoken at industry events including the Financial Times' Digital Media Conference, Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival and the Monaco Media Forum. Named a Young Global Leader Honoree in 2009 by the World Economic Forum, Chandratillake has also been recognized as a leader in Science and Innovation by The Observer's Future 500 list, and one of Digital Media Wire's "25 Executives to Watch in Digital Entertainment". [12] [13] [14]

Chandratillake holds patents in the area of video discovery and online video advertising, [15] [16] is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering and was a 2012 recipient of the Academy's Silver Medal. [17] In 2017, he was appointed a member of the Council of Science and Technology, a body that advises the UK Prime Minister on strategic science and technology policy issues. [18] [19]

In the 2018 New Year Honours, Chandratillake was awarded an OBE for services to engineering and technology. [20]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">École Centrale Paris</span> French university-level institution (grande école) of engineering

École Centrale Paris was a French grande école in engineering and science. It was also known by its official name École Centrale des Arts et Manufactures. In 2015, École Centrale Paris merged with Supélec to form CentraleSupélec, a constituent college of the University of Paris-Saclay.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cranfield University</span> British postgraduate public research university

Cranfield University is a British postgraduate-only public research university specialising in science, engineering, design, technology and management. Cranfield was founded as the College of Aeronautics (CoA) in 1946. Through the 1950s and 1960s, the development of aircraft research led to growth and diversification into other areas such as manufacturing and management, and in 1967, to the founding of the Cranfield School of Management. In 1969, the College of Aeronautics was renamed the Cranfield Institute of Technology, was incorporated by royal charter, gained degree awarding powers, and became a university. In 1993, it adopted its current name.

The Royal Academy of Engineering (RAEng) is the United Kingdom's national academy of engineering.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hermann Hauser</span> Austrian-born entrepreneur

Hermann Maria Hauser is an Austrian entrepreneur, venture capitalist and inventor who is primarily associated with the Cambridge technology community in England.

Brent Shawzin Hoberman is a British entrepreneur and investor. During the dot-com boom, he co-founded lastminute.com with Martha Lane Fox in 1998, where he was CEO from its inception, before selling the business to Sabre in 2005 for $1.1bn.

RhythmOne plc, a subsidiary of Nexxen, is an American digital advertising technology company that owns and operates the web properties AllMusic, AllMovie, and SideReel.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Samir Brikho</span> British-Lebanese businessman (born 1958)

Samir Yacoub Brikho FREng is a Lebanese-Swedish Chairman of the Board of Directors at global fertilizer producer EuroChem Group AG. Brikho has previously held senior positions in many leading companies such as Asea, ABB Group, Alstom and Amec Foster Wheeler.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Harren Jhoti</span>

Harren Jhoti is an Indian-born British structural biologist whose main interest has been rational drug design and discovery. He is president and chief executive officer (CEO) of biotechnology company Astex Pharmaceuticals ("Astex") which is located in Cambridge, United Kingdom.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ray O. Johnson</span> American businessman

Ray O. Johnson is an American business executive. Johnson is an operating partner at Bessemer Venture Partners, an American venture capital firm with over $20 billion under management and the oldest venture capital firm in the United States. He recently served as the chief executive officer of the Technology Innovation Institute and of ASPIRE, both based in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. Before that, he served as the Lockheed Martin Corporation's chief technology officer and corporate senior vice president for engineering, technology, and operations.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Shahrzad Rafati</span> Iranian Canadian entrepreneur

Shahrzad Rafati is an Iranian-Canadian chairwoman and CEO of RHEI, formerly BBTV, – a global media company headquartered in Vancouver, Canada, which provides services to content creators and media companies.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David Jones (advertising executive)</span> British businessman (born 1966)

David Robert Jones is a former CEO of Havas and Havas Worldwide, cofounder of global youth forum One Young World and founder of You & Mr Jones. He is author of Who Cares Wins: Why Good Business Is Better Business and the creator of the "Social Business Idea".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Prabhakar Raghavan</span> American computer scientist

Prabhakar Raghavan is a business executive and former researcher of web information retrieval. He currently holds the role of Chief Technologist at Google. His research spans algorithms, web search and databases. He is the co-author of the textbooks Randomized Algorithms with Rajeev Motwani and Introduction to Information Retrieval.

Balderton Capital is a venture capital firm based in London, UK, that invests in early-stage, technology and internet startup companies in Europe. It is considered to be among the four-biggest venture capital firms in the English capital.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Peter L. Corsell</span> American technology entrepreneur and investor

Peter L. Corsell is an American technology entrepreneur, leader, and investor. A repeat entrepreneur in the sustainable energy industry, Corsell founded GridPoint in 2003, and Twenty First Century Utilities in 2015.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rebecca Enonchong</span> Cameroonian technology entrepreneur

Rebecca Enonchong is a Cameroonian technology entrepreneur and also the founder and CEO of AppsTech. She is best known for her work promoting technology in Africa.

Shenzhen International BT Leadership Summit is a biology-focused business conference. It is held each year in September. It is arranged by the Shenzhen Municipal People's Government. It is held at the Shenzhen Convention and Exhibition Center.

The 2019 Powerlist rankings were released in October 2018 and saw Meghan, Duchess of Sussex. included in the list for the first time, and named Ric Lewis as the most influential individual

The 13th annual Powerlist was judged by a panel chaired by Dame Linda Dobbs and published in October 2019; sponsored by J.P. Morgan & Co., pwc, linklaters and The Executive Leadership Council.

Sarah Florence Wood is a British businesswoman. She is the co-founder of video advertising platform Unruly and received an OBE for services to innovation and technology.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mikaela Jade</span> Indigenous edu-tech entrepreneur

Mikaela Jade is an Australian entrepreneur, and founder and CEO of Indigital, a business that aims to help embed Indigenous stories and history into the mainstream, by using augmented reality technology. She has won multiple international awards, including the Veuve Clicquot New Generation award for digital technology 2018, as well as the Schwab Foundation's Social Innovators of the Year, 2022, and Indigenous Leader of the Year, 2021. Jade has also been nominated for ACT Australian of the Year 2023 and was awarded the ANU Indigenous Alumna of the Year.

References

  1. "Suranga CHANDRATILLAKE - Personal Appointments (free information from Companies House)". beta.companieshouse.gov.uk. Retrieved 11 June 2017.
  2. "Forty Under 40: Suranga Chandratillake". 24 February 2012.
  3. "Blinkx Reinvents Itself Again, Adapting to the Future of Video". 18 September 2012.
  4. "About - blinkx". Archived from the original on 21 May 2013.
  5. "Blinkx Founder to Join Venture Firm Balderton Capital".
  6. "Suranga Chandratillake, Balderton Capital UK LLP: Profile and Biography". Bloomberg News .
  7. "Executive Team - blinkx".
  8. "Entrepreneurship driven into classrooms | Business Weekly | Technology News | Business news | Cambridge and the East of England".
  9. "Natural born code writer", Ingenia, Issue 72, September 2017
  10. "Natural born code writer", Ingenia, Issue 72, September 2017
  11. "Blinkx IPO shares soar to near-record debut". 27 May 2007.
  12. "World Economic Forum Announces New Batch Of Young Global Leaders (Mark Zuckerberg, Chad Hurley, Kevin Rose And More)". TechCrunch. 25 February 2009.
  13. "Suranga Chandratillake, CEO of blinkx, Nominated Young Global Leader 2009 by The World Economic Forum". blinkx.com. 26 February 2009.
  14. "2009 "25 Digital Entertainment Executives to Watch"". Digital Media Insider. 11 December 2008.
  15. "Various methods and apparatuses for an engine that pairs advertisements with video files".
  16. "Various methods and apparatus for moving thumbnails with metadata".
  17. "The Royal Academy of Engineering Silver Medal".
  18. "Blinkx Founder Elected Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering".
  19. "New members of the Council for Science and Technology confirmed".
  20. "New Year's Honours list 2018"