Big deal, bigger risk

IIT GRADUATE-TURNED-ENTREPRENEUR CAN DEPEND ON MIX OF AMBITION AND CALCULATED RISK WITH ONE OF THE BOLDEST BIDS IN RECENT TIMES

- AYANTI BERA

WHILE UNSOLICITED BUYOUT bids are not rare in corporate M&A, San Francisco-based Perplexity AI's offer to buy Google's Chrome browser is as rare as it is audacious. The $18-billion startup, led by Aravind Srinivas, has launched a surprise $34.5 billion offer for the tech giant's web browser, hoping to capitalize on the looming uncertainty of its antitrust ruling.

For Srinivas, making a play for a deal twice the size of his startup wasn't something he had planned. His journey in the tech world started far from Silicon Valley, in the city of Chennai, where his parents still live. "Whenever I come to India, I always go to Chennai first, before traveling to other cities," Srinivas had said in a March podcast with Zerodha's Nikhil Kamath.

Growing up, he was "just like any other student in Chennai", Srinivas admits, highlighting a culture where studying hard was the norm. "I got an intuitive sense of numbers early on, and I was pretty good at maths."