Former Microsoft GM, Chandra Shekaran, Appointed as Senior Vice President of Engineering at Velocify

LOS ANGELES, Jan. 15, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Velocify, the market-leader in cloud-based intelligent sales automation solutions, today announced the appointment of Chandra Shekaran as senior vice president of Engineering. In this role, Shekaran will oversee the company's product development efforts and technology infrastructure.

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"We are excited to have Chandra join our team," said Nick Hedges, president and CEO at Velocify. "Chandra has a proven track record in the software industry and is recognized for his unique vision. We continue to see accelerating demand for our offerings across several markets and believe Chandra is well-poised to help us achieve the next stage of growth through continued innovation."

Shekaran brings more than 25 years of software engineering experience to Velocify, including holding numerous senior-level positions at leading technology companies, including Microsoft and Verizon GTE Laboratories. Prior to joining Velocify, Shekaran served as general manager of Microsoft's Search Technology Center, where his team focused on applying big data techniques to improving Bing's search efficacy. In a prior role, he served as general manager of Microsoft's Remote Desktop Virtualization business, growing the Remote Desktop Services' usage and revenue by more than 400 percent, and generating the highest earnings per team member amongst all Microsoft products.  He also led the $100 million plus strategic acquisition of Calista, a GPU virtualization company. Shekaran's team integrated that company's technology into Microsoft's Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) and Hyper-V and shipped RemoteFX.  Altogether, Shekaran spent more than a decade at Microsoft, working on a wide range of products and cloud services focused on business and consumer markets. Prior to Microsoft, Shekaran worked at Verizon labs building network management, call processing and voice over internet protocol (VOIP) software.

Velocify delivers two core offerings to the market, LeadManager™ and Dial-IQ™, which enable sales organizations across industries to effectively manage sales opportunities from initial inquiry to close, with systematic phone, email, and SMS follow-up that is guided by proven-to-convert industry best practices. In November of this year, Velocify also released LeadManager for Saleforce on Salesforce.com's AppExchange, combining the familiar Salesforce platform with key features of LeadManager, including Velocify's Activity Prioritization, which provides a single, consolidated and continuously updated view into new and existing leads, scheduled tasks, and events.

Underscoring Velocify's growth, the company was recently recognized on the Deloitte Technology Fast 500 list for a third consecutive year and named as one of the fastest-growing private companies on the distinguished Inc. 5000 list. In addition, Velocify was named on Los Angeles Business Journal's Top Places to Work list for a fourth consecutive year.

"This is a great opportunity to lead a very talented engineering team and deliver new, transformative products to the market," Shekaran said. "Velocify has proven itself to be a true innovator in the intelligent sales automation sector, and as a result has experienced tremendous growth in the last three years. I am excited and honored to join Velocify and I look forward to helping the company achieve its next stage of growth."

For more information on the company, visit the Velocify website and blog, or follow them on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube.

About Velocify

Velocify is a market-leading provider of cloud-based intelligent sales software, designed for high-velocity sales environments. Velocify helps sales teams keep pace with the speed of opportunity and increase revenue by driving rapid lead response, increased selling discipline, improved productivity, and actionable selling insights. The company has helped more than 1,500 companies across a variety of industries improve customer acquisition practices and sales performance. Velocify was recently recognized as one of the fastest growing companies in North America by Deloitte and a Best Place to Work by the Los Angeles Business Journal. For more information please visit Velocify.com or follow the company on Twitter @Velocify.

SOURCE Velocify