Quick Facts
Biography
Gagan Biyani is an Indian American serial entrepreneur, marketer, and journalist. He is CEO and co-founder of the mobile meals on demand service Sprig. He is also the co-founder of the online learning platform Udemy, the Growth Hackers Conference, and was formerly a growth advisor at Lyft.
Career
In 2009, Biyani co-founded Udemy, one of the first MOOC platforms. At Udemy, Biyani leads investor relations, finance, business development, public relations, operations and user acquisition. He was responsible for raising the company's first $4 million in venture capital, hiring 10 of Udemy's first 20 employees and managing the team that created over $2 million in sales in the platform's first 18 months. Prior to Udemy, Biyani held positions at Accenture and Microsoft.
After Udemy, Biyani spent six months as the interim head of marketing at Lyft. At Lyft, Biyani led supply and demand acquisition for the company's launch in Los Angeles. During the same time Biyani founded the "Growth Hackers Conference" which has featured speakers including Stan Chudnovsky, Simon Tisminezky, Ivan Kirigin, Elliot Shmukler, and others.
Biyani was a journalist at TechCrunch where one of his articles resulted in an FTC investigation and lawsuit, as reported by The New York Times. He has also written for The Next Web, Quora, Medium, and Mashable.
Sprig
In 2013, Biyani co-founded Sprig, a food delivery service which has raised $1.2 million in seed funding from Battery Ventures and notable angel investors such as Andrew McCollum, co-founder of Facebook, and Justin Waldron, co-founder of Zynga. He got the idea while working at Lyft, when a friend suggested he applied the model to food. He left Lyft in April 2013 to execute the idea. The startup allows users to order a balanced meal, which is then prepared in Sprig’s industrial kitchen and get it delivered in 15–20 minutes. Sprig's chef is Nate Keller, Google’s former executive chef.
In March 2014, Sprig raised $10 million in Series A funding from Greylock Partners with Battery Ventures and Accel participating. As part of the funding, Greylock partner Simon Rothman is joining Sprig’s board.