Dr. Mayank Bawa is the CEO and Co-Founder of Aster Data Systems (2005-2010). He was the President of Teradata Aster R&D Labs, between 2011-2013 and also a Member of CTO Council, Teradata in 2013.
A true visionary, Dr. Bawa played a pivotal role in creating and establishing the ‘Big Data’ market that is projected by International Data Corporation (IDC) to be worth $16.9B in 2015. At the age of 29, Dr. Bawa co-founded Aster Data Systems in 2005 and the company grew into a leadership position in the Big Data market during his tenure as a CEO. Under his leadership, the Aster Data Systems team developed SQL-MR, the de-facto language of Big Data that combines SQL and Map Reduce for analyzing Big Data. Variants of SQL-MR language are now implemented across all Big Data platforms. In 2011, Teradata acquired Aster Data Systems for $325M. Dr. Bawa led the team as President of Teradata Aster R&D Labs and also served on Teradata’s CTO Council.
Dr. Bawa stood 4th in the IIT-JEE entrance exam in the year 1995, and pursued his B.Tech. in Computer Science from IIT Bombay. It was followed by an M.S. and Ph.D. in Computer Science from Stanford University, where he received the Sequoia Capital Stanford Graduate Fellowship. In his own words, his four years at IIT Bombay turned out to be formative years, where he gained a lot in terms of, values, knowledge, memories, friends and a lifetime of confidence. Whether it was wing-discussions, hostel elections, course projects, organizing student’s festival, writing articles for the campus newspaper and participating in the PAF (Performing Arts Festival), he recalls all with lot of passion and enthusiasm. “I was introduced to research and databases in 1998 by my seminar and thesis advisor Dr. S. Sudarshan and I immediately knew that I had found my career path. I can almost draw a straight line from my seminar topic in 1998 to starting a database company in 2005 and establishing a Big Data market in 2010. So thank you, IIT Bombay,” he added.
Under his leadership, Aster Data Systems was named as ‘Technology Pioneer in 2010’ by World Economic Forum; ranked #7 in Wall Street Journal’s Top 50 Venture Backed Companies; ‘Cool Vendor’ by Gartner in 2009 and as the ‘Visionary Leader’ by Gartner in 2010. Dr. Bawa is a recipient of the ‘Sequoia Capital Stanford Graduate Fellowship’ (1999-2003) and was featured among ‘Top 40 under 40’ in 2009 by Silicon Valley Business Journal. He has published a dozen academic papers in top database conferences, has been awarded two patents and has been affiliated with IBM Research and Microsoft Research. “I read books to learn and travel for fun,” he remarked.