Background and career
Vivek Yeshwant Ranadivé ( vee-VEK RUN-ə-DIV-ay; born 7 October 1957) is an American business executive, engineer, author, speaker and philanthropist Ranadivé is the founder and former chief executive officer (CEO) of TIBCO Software, a business intelligence software company, and of Teknekron Software Systems. Ranadivé is also a co-owner and chairman of the National Basketball Association's Sacramento Kings. In 2022, Ranadivé purchased a Minor League Baseball franchise, the Sacramento River Cats.
Ranadivé grew up in the Juhu area of Mumbai, India, and was the youngest of three children. He studied at the Bombay International School, located at Babulnath, Mumbai. He is the great-nephew of the Indian Communist leaders Balkrishna Trimbak Ranadive and Ahilya Rangnekar. At 16, Ranadivé was admitted by MIT, but in the 1970s the Indian government did not financially support Indians who wanted to study abroad. Ranadivé talked his way into the office of the Reserve Bank of India and got the required currency to cover one quarter of the tuition. After earning bachelor's and master's degrees in electrical engineering from MIT, he obtained an MBA from Harvard Business School in 1983. While at MIT, Ranadivé started his first company, a UNIX consulting company. He also held management and engineering positions with Ford Motor Company, M/A-Com Linkabit and Fortune Systems.
Teknekron Corp., a technology incubator, provided $250,000 in seed capital to Ranadivé in 1985 to found Teknekron Software Systems.
In 1997, Ranadivé founded TIBCO Software Inc. with funding from Cisco and Reuters.
In 2016, Ranadivé founded Bow Capital, an early-stage startup investment firm in partnership with the University of California Regents. Among their investments are Skillit (platform), Eversight, Workramp, Jerry.ai, and Flex.
In 2010, Ranadivé became the co-owner and vice chairman of the Golden State Warriors, making him the first person of Indian descent to co-own an NBA franchise.
