Raghu Kakarala

Investor in early stage MarTech firms, employee owned blue collar small businesses, real estate, and Private Equity

After establishing a Mexico City office at FortyFour in 2018 and selling the firm to Mountaingate Capital at the end of 2020 to become part of Bounteous, there was a need to scale our LATAM presence to serve our new larger base of clients. Setup legal framework and employee benefits for employing a larger workforce. Built a Commerce practice in Mexico serving both local Mexico based enterprise clients as well as augmenting staffing for clients based in the USA.

Converge returned a positive return for its investors and converted to Bellwood Labs as a technology services firm. Badgy delivers "SEO for Social", helping marketers of consumer brands use Facebook and Twitter to increase sales by optimizing their posting and promotion strategy. Founded in 2011, the company is now increasing revenue for several high-profile brands. Badgy is a graduate of Georgia Tech's Flashpoint Startup Accelerator. Investors include the Flashpoint Fund, Mark Cuban, and key Atlanta angel investors.

In 2020 I led the transaction to sell FortyFour to Mountaingate Capital to become part of Bounteous. Key areas of responsibility included choosing and managing relationships with our financial and legal representatives at our investment bank, auditors, accountants, and transaction law team. Involved from the initial selection of potential go-to-market partners through due diligence and transaction completion. We have been engaged by some of the world’s largest brands and innovative startups, including Coca-Cola, Fiserv, Cox Communications, and Boehringer Ingelheim. Our work with these leading companies has brought impactful platforms and programs to life. As a leading Commerce, Customer Experience, and Marketing firm we are able to create meaningful value for our clients by building programs and platforms that run their business and drive results. Our Adobe Commerce practice achieved Specialized status from Adobe as a leading provider of Commerce engineers and strategists, becoming one of only 20 Specialized firms worldwide. Our team services commerce clients on 5 continents with expertise and empathy. We have brought together Atlanta’s top agency talent to create great work within a positive, challenging, and rewarding culture.

SocialQ is a market intelligence engine that harnesses the power of the social web. Our suite of products replaces age, sex and zip code with deeper and more relevant data points about activities, attitudes and preferences - from favorite TV shows and sources of news, to education and political affiliation. While this data typically required 100's of questions appended to traditional surveys, SocialQ collects this information effortlessly simply by asking panelists to connect via Facebook.

I led the Technology and User Experience groups at Engauge in order to deliver engaging solutions that make a difference to our clients and their customers through the creative use of technology. As a part of our core new business team at Engauge, we were able to pitch and win work with some of the worlds best brands. During my tenure at Engauge I had the pleasure of helping to build and grow one of the best concentrations of digital talent in the country. Engauge was sought after by Clients and Prospects as well as new hires. With a positive, supportive culture, and the ability to do great work, Engauge grew rapidly and became the leading digital agency in Atlanta, as well as one of the leading independent digital agencies in the United States. In 2013 the rest of the C-level team and I worked with our private equity firm, Halyard Capital, to take the agency to market. After choosing Petsky Prunier as our lead banker we did a road show and received offers from a full gamut of strategic buyers, including each of the leading ad industry holding companies, as well as financial buyers. We had built Engauge into one of the leading independent digital agencies in the world, and the leading social marketing agency in the country, with clients including Chick-fil-A, Coca-Cola, NIKE, IHG, Nestle, Nationwide, and Wells Fargo. After evaluating multiple offers we chose Publicis as the winning bidder and finalized the transaction in August 2013. Atlanta Business Chronicle reported in their August 2013 Book of Lists issue that Engauge was the leading digital agency in Atlanta.

Worked alongside the Chairman of Engauge to launch a joint venture between Engauge and WE Marketing Group in China to form WE Engauge in order to become one of the world's leading social marketing agencies. After its first full year of operation in 2012, WE Engauge has now established itself as a leading social media marketing agency in China with offices in Shanghai, Beijing, Atlanta, and Hong Kong. In the initial year of operations I focused on assisting in new business acquisition, social media training for western social networks, and formation of partnerships for social media analytics for China based social media networks. We rapidly grew WE Engauge into the leading social marketing agency in China, winning numerous industry awards, including Social Media Agency of the Year, Social Marketer of the Year, and Best Campaign of the Year for our work with Cisco Systems. In 2013 I and the rest of the C-Level team at Engauge worked with our private equity firm to take the agency to market. After choosing an Petsky Prunier as our lead banker we did a road show and received offers from a full gamut of strategic buyers including the leading ad industry holding companies as well as financial buyers. After evaluating multiple offers we chose Publicis as the winner bidder and finalized the transaction in August 2013. As part of the transaction WE Engauge was divested to became WE Digital and has continued as a leader in digital marketing in Greater China.

PlacePunch provides location-based marketing software for brands and agencies that make it easy to incorporate check-ins from Foursquare and Facebook into marketing campaigns. Clients included leading retail, hotel, and fast service restaurant brands. PlacePunch was acquired by Silverpop in October 2011

Brand development, web site traffic, acquisition, web site user experience and web advertising. Full service interactive agency. Co-led transaction to sell Spunlogic to Halyard Capital to become part of Engauge. Key areas of responsibility included choosing and managing relationship with our financial and legal representatives at our investment bank, auditors, accountants, and transaction law team. Involved from initial selection of potential go to market partners through due diligence and transaction completion.

SearchIgnite, through an on-demand software solution, enables large companies to more effectively manage their complex paid search campaigns across multiple search engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN, AOLSearch, etc) from a centralized location. Typically, the solution is geared towards companies that are managing thousands of keyword phrases in multiple campaigns and need help with automated bid management and bid strategy, tracking/reporting, and keyword management. SearchIgnite was acquired by 360i in 2006 and is currently in operation under the name IgnitionOne and remains a leader in the industry, managing over $1 Billion per year in spend.

One year accelerated track within the MBA program.

Numerical Computing concentration. Classical CS background included the design and development of Operating Systems, Compilers, Parsers, and algorithmic programming in C/C++, Pascal, and shell scripts primarily in a Unix environment.