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NORTH AMERICAN Newsline APRIL 12, 2024 | The Indian Eye 30

NISHA GANATRA PRAGASH PILLAI

Filmmaker to direct ‘Freaky Executive appointed to Board of

Friday’ sequel Directors of VCTI

ndian- American director Nisha CTI, the broadband and net-
Ganatra will tackle the sequel to work technology experts, an-
Ithe 2003 hit “Freaky Friday” for Vnounced the appointment of
Disney. Lindsay Lohan and Jamie visionary executive Pragash Pillai to
Lee Curtis, who starred in the first the company’s Board of Directors.
part directed by Mark Waters, are Pillai is a member of the Cable TV
officially returning for the follow-up, Pioneers, Class of 2023 and most re-
according to entertainment news out- cently served as CTIO at Altice USA.
let Deadline. Before Altice, he was Senior Vice
Ganatra most recently direct- President of Infrastructure Engineer-
ed episodes of Hulu’s “Welcome to ing at Cablevision Systems. He joined
Chippendale’s.” Her other credits include the 2020 film “The High Note” with Cablevision after the successful sale of Bresnan Communications to Cablevision.
Dakota Johnson and Tracee Ellis Ross, along with 2019’s “Late Night,” star- He brings extensive experience in the broadband sector, with a deep un-
ring Mindy Kaling and Emma Thompson. Nisha Ganatra is a Canadian-Amer- derstanding of market forces and the need to plan strategically to capture
ican film director, screenwriter, producer, and actress of Indian descent. opportunity. VCTI will benefit from his extensive experience operationaliz-
Released in 2003, Freaky Friday revolves around Tess Coleman (Curtis), ing and improving efficiencies around the deployment of new technologies
a single mother and uptight psychiatrist, and her rebellious teenage daughter, across large, dispersed networks.
Anna (Lohan). Constantly at odds with each other due to their differing per- “Pragash has a proven track record of driving dramatic results across
spectives on life, they find themselves magically swapping bodies after a mys- large enterprise teams, and his experience in both telecom and cable will be
terious fortune cookie incident at a Chinese restaurant. As Tess wakes up in critical for us as we support service providers and their construction partners
Anna’s body and vice versa, they are forced to live each other’s lives for a day. to build more accurate expansion plans,” said VCTI CEO Raj Singh.
Disney released “Freaky Friday” in 2003, grossing $160 million at the Pillai has successfully improved operations and expanded market oppor-
worldwide box office. Andrew Gunn, who produced the first film, is producing tunity at various Telecommunication companies across a number of differ-
the sequel, along with former Disney exec Kristin Burr. Disney’s release plan ent roles. During his tenure at Cablevision and Bresnan he led management
remains to be announced, including a date and a streaming or theatrical debut. roles in engineering and operations.
PAVAN DAVULURI AMITABH MISRA

Techie named Windows and Sprinklr names executive as chief

Surface head technology officer

avan Davuluri, an IIT-Madras prinklr, a New York-headquartered leading enterprise software company
alumnus, has been named the
for all customer-facing functions, has appointed Indian American execu-
Pnew head of Microsoft Win- Stive Amitabh Misra as Chief Technology Officer (CTO), with effect from
dows and Surface. He will succeed April 1. Misra will lead all R&D teams across the globe including product and
long-time product chief Panos Panay engineering at Sprinklr.
who quit and joined Amazon last year. He joins the Executive Leadership Team to share his passion for inno-
Davluluri is the latest Indian to
take on a leadership role at a Big vative technology to help the company grow and scale, according to a media
release. He will report directly to Sprinklr Founder and CEO Ragy Thomas.
Tech company. Davuluri, who has Misra brings over 25 years of experience in building large-scale platforms
worked for 23 long years with Mic- for companies of various sizes, most recently, serving as Vice President of
rosoft, earlier oversaw the Surface Engineering at Adobe. There he led a global R&D organization for Adobe’s
group while Mikhail Parakhin head- Experience Cloud Platform including engineers, product leaders, and AI/ML
ed the Windows department. Now both Windows and Surface will be Davulu- researchers across India, Europe, and the US. Before joining Adobe, Misra
ri’s responsibility. was the Founder and CEO of GOFro.com and CTO, chief architect, and
An internal memo from Rajesh Jha, Microsoft’s head of experiences and
devices, said the decision will help the organisation to take a “holistic approach” head of engineering at Snapdeal.com. He holds an MBA degree from the
University of California at Berkeley and a BTech degree from IIT Kanpur.
to build its devices and experiences in the AI era. Davuluri was earlier involved “As a technology enthusiast, I am passionate about building large-scale
in Microsoft work with Qualcomm and AMD to create processors for Surface. technology platforms, powered by the latest in AI research, that are uniquely
In a recent post on X, he expressed pride in the team’s efforts, announcing
the launch of the first-ever #Surface AI PCs designed exclusively for business: capable of delivering exceptional value for customers,” said Misra. “It is a very
exciting time to join Sprinklr to contribute to advancing the Unified-CXM
Surface Pro 10 for Business and Surface Laptop 6 for Business. He commend- platform vision and leverage Sprinklr’s cutting-edge AI to support brands who
ed the team for their work in bringing these devices and experiences to fruition are exceptional at delighting their customers. I am eager to join this amaz-
for customers. ing team of technology experts, build innovative solutions for our customers,
Davuluri, now joins the ranks of prominent Indian-origin leaders in major
tech companies worldwide. Notable figures include Sundar Pichai, the CEO help scale the company, and accelerate new opportunities in the industry.”
of Alphabet and Google, Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, Arvind Krishna,
CEO of IBM, Nikesh Arora of Palo Alto Networks, Neal Mohan from You- To read more about Indian diaspora and Global Indians, log on to and follow
Tube, and Shantanu Narayen of Adobe. our website www.TheIndianEYE.com

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