Confluent announces strategic hires to bolster India's momentum

Confluent, Inc., the data streaming pioneer, today announced strategic new hires in India to support the company's customer growth and momentum in the region. The company has onboarded Agastee Khante as Head of Marketing for India & Saarc, Jeevan Duggal as Head of Public Sector for India and Suman Karthik as Principal Engineer for Confluent Platform.

Confluent's momentum in India is driven by the country's digital-first outlook and growing customer demand for real-time information across industries. The company is seeing strong adoption especially among BFSI companies, public sector agencies, and digital natives. The new hires will play a critical role in supporting Confluent's continued growth in India and globally. Agastee will drive marketing campaigns and programs, while Jeevan will develop and execute go-to-market strategies for the public sector in the country. Suman will lead the continued development of Confluent Platform for global use. 

"Home to the biggest Kafka community outside of the US, India represents a strategic growth market for Confluent as more organizations adopt data streaming for their most critical systems," said Rubal Sahni, Area Vice President & Country Manager – India for Confluent. "Our remote-first model allows us to reach more talent from all over the country and also better positions us to support our global customer base. We are excited to welcome Agastee, Jeevan and Suman to the team to meet the rapidly growing customer demand."

Agastee joined Confluent as the India Marketing leader based in Gurgaon. With close to two decades of experience in marketing and product management, Agastee will focus on enhancing Confluent's brand presence and driving integrated marketing programs and campaigns in India. "I'm thrilled to be joining Confluent and look forward to helping drive awareness and demand for the leading data streaming platform in this high-growth market," said Agastee.

Based in Delhi, Jeevan has over 25 years of experience working with public sector organizations in sales and account management. Specializing in the areas of data security and data management, Jeevan worked closely with customers to design their IT infrastructure and digital transformation initiatives while keeping with regulatory requirements. Jeevan said, "Confluent's data streaming platform is revolutionizing how government bodies build mission-critical systems and enhance citizen services. I'm excited to bring my understanding of the space to help our public sector customers realize the benefits and true value of data streaming."

Suman joins Confluent as Principal Engineer for Confluent Platform from Hyderabad. Having spent his career building technology at startups and large organizations across a range of domains, Suman brings a broad spectrum of technological expertise to Confluent. As the lead for Confluent Platform, Suman will build on Confluent’s vision of developing a data streaming platform that is complete and everywhere, thereby enabling customers to achieve a central nervous system of data for their organization. “I’m thrilled to have the opportunity to shape the technology and engineering of Confluent Platform in a meaningful way”, Suman remarked.

India has become Confluent's biggest workforce based outside of the United States. To support the growing demand in India, Confluent plans to increase the local headcount by 25% in 2024.