TheFind Appoints Stanford Computer Scientist and Company Veteran as CTO

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., March 30 /PRNewswire/ -- TheFind, whose mission is to make the world a better place to shop, today announced that Shashikant Khandelwal has been appointed as the company's chief technology officer. Khandelwal, an internationally acclaimed computer scientist and author of most of the company's issued and pending patents, has been with TheFind since its founding in 2005.

While earning his masters in computer science from Stanford University, Khandelwal constructed the original prototype for TheFind's award winning search engine, which today puts the world's largest shopping center in the palm of your hand. Available as a website, mobile site and iPhone app, TheFind attracts 17 million unique monthly shoppers, sends quality traffic to 150,000 stores, and boasts an index of more than 400 million products from half-a-million online and local merchants.

"Shashi's vision has already helped TheFind build a technology platform that makes the world a better place to shop," said Siva Kumar, Co-founder and CEO of TheFind. "As technology continues to re-shape the retail landscape, Shashi's leadership will enable TheFind to bring ever more creative and elegant solutions to market."

Khandelwal is the recipient of several awards for technological innovation in his native India, where he received his bachelor's degree in computer science from BITS Pilani. Prior to beginning his post graduate work at Stanford, Khandelwal worked at Microsoft, France's INSEAD Business School, as well as the Bhabha Atomic Research Center.

Sixth Patent Grant

Separately TheFind today disclosed that the US Patent and Trade Office has awarded the company a sixth patent for its "method for document fingerprinting," a  key enabler of TheFind's process for crawling the web in search for products for sale anywhere, online or off. Previously awarded patents cover the company's methods and processes for information extraction, machine learning, and search and retrieval of product information. Along with additional methods and processes in various stages of approval from both the US Patent and Trade Office and European Patent Office, these patents form the basis of TheFind's defensible intellectual property, which has allowed to company to grow rapidly and credibly stake-a-claim to the moniker "World's Largest Shopping Center".

About TheFind

TheFind is the world's largest shopping center where more than 500,000 online and local stores can be found selling over 400 million products to more than 17 million unique monthly shoppers. With a mission to make the world a better place to shop, TheFind opened to the public in 2007 and has been profitable since late 2008. TheFind has received multiple patents for its innovative shopping aggregation and search technology that combines an unsurpassed array of stores, products, coupons, reviews and other information relevant to all shoppers. Headquartered in Mountain View, Calif., TheFind's investors include Bain Capital Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners and Redpoint Ventures.

SOURCE TheFind