Aarthi Ramamurthy
Twenty years ago, life was simple, if very boring. There was the simple boxy computer on the desk and that was it. Then came the mobile phone. The smartphone. The tablet. And now everything is a gadget and everything is smart. Fitness bands. Smart watches. Smart cameras. It is getting difficult to keep up with the changes, let alone buy them. That is where Aarthi Ramamurthy comes in. You have seen the Apple Watch. You have seen the ads. You have seen the reviews. But you are not sure if you need one. Are you ready to spend a lot of money on something that you don’t know if you need? Aarthi will help you with her startup Lumoid, which will have scores of people on April 24 camping outside Apple stores across the US to snag some of the first units to be sold, and then it will rent them out to you so you can try out the watch for a week for just $25. If you are happy, then you have the option to buy the watch outright, else return it with no questions asked. Aarthi has a masters in software engineering from the PSG College of Technology, Coimbatore, and started out as a programme manager at Microsoft. After six years there and after a short stint at Netflix, she founded her first company, True&Co, which rented out bras for women to try out. Now as the founder and CEO of Lumoid she is changing how cameras and wearables are sold.