Signifyd is accelerating the pace and widening the scope of its innovation with the hiring of two of technology’s bright minds — Prasad Gune and Swami Vaithianathasamy
Gune, most recently senior vice president for product at OpenTable, was appointed Signifyd’s senior vice president in charge of product. Vaithianathasamy, who arrives from Google, where he headed up payments data science and payments risk quality, was named vice president of data science.
The two join Signifyd as the company bolsters its expanding product organization by opening an R&D Lab in Europe to support the company’s innovation worldwide while expanding its global footprint to better counter the variety of fraud challenges that different regions of the world present.
“Signifyd’s immense growth has enabled us to expand our teams in a very dynamic way,” Signifyd Co-Founder and CEO Raj Ramanand said in the news release announcing the hires, adding that the company’s number of customers and protected orders have doubled every year since 2014. “Prasad and Swami are two of the most experienced technology veterans in the business. Their expertise will help drive innovative products that are necessary to help our merchants protect their ecommerce experiences.”
Signifyd maintains it market leader status with new hires
Ramanand went on to say in the release that by the beginning of the year, it was clear that ecommerce’s momentum meant that it was time for Signifyd to increase its investment in product innovation in order to maintain its position as market leader — more than 250 million consumers transacting within the Signifyd Commerce Network across the globe, projected to exceed $100 billion in annual GMV processed in 2019.
“That growth, while attesting to the accelerating market adoption of our technology, creates a continuous challenge for engineering to ensure not only the reliability but also the continuation of innovating in our industry. We’re not satisfied with the status quo,” Ramanand said in the news release.
Prasad Gune
Gune — before heading up OpenTable’s global product vision, strategy and development for all consumer and restaurant products and experiences — spent seven years at LinkedIn, serving as product lead for LinkedIn Recruiter, building it from its infancy into LinkedIn’s flagship monetization product within the Talent Solutions business. Prior to LinkedIn, Gune held senior product management roles at Oracle and Siebel Systems as well as various consulting roles at Bain & Company.
At Signifyd, he is planning to rely on his experience developing products for enterprise companies to further Signifyd’s ability to help customers receive memorable buying experiences while avoiding false declines or having their orders delayed by fraud reviews.
True innovation serves retailers’ needs
“True innovation isn’t doing something cool for the sake of it; rather it’s using technology to serve our users’ needs,” Gune said in the news release. “We have already started extending the guaranteed fraud protection category out to meet the needs of our mid-market and enterprise customers. And in the next few years, we are going to continue pushing the boundaries of what is possible.”
Swami Vaithianathasamy
Before working for Google, Vaithianathasamy was a key leader at PayPal, where he was responsible for managing all payments risk and credit models after serving as PayPal’s senior manager of risk detection, manager of decision management and senior risk modeler.
He said that at Signifyd, he intends to increase the use of advanced machine learning and other technologies to further advance the company’s technical arsenal aimed at fraud.
“Fraudsters are very smart and motivated, so we need great tools to remain ahead of them,” Vaithianathasamy said. “That’s why I found so much inspiration when I looked at what Signifyd is doing — and where it can go. We have an enormous amount of data and it’s something we can use not only to reduce fraud but also to protect the buying experience our merchants provide, while improving their conversion rates.”
Feature photo by iStock. Portraits by Sarah Kinkade, Signifyd.
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