Chennai, SRM College set to host Elon Musk's chosen man Sriram Krishnan

business-standard.com:

Sriram Krishnan, the Indian-origin investor handpicked by Elon Musk to revamp Twitter after the business magnate bought the microblogging platform for $44 billion, tweeted about homecoming on October 23. “…I will be back home in Chennai for a few days next month. If anyone here is interested in a meet up especially students!), let us know,” he wrote.

Since then, he has been getting hundreds of requests online for meetings.

His alma mater SRM Engineering College in Kattankulathur, a suburb of Chennai, is gearing up to host Krishnan. “We are very closely working with him and our management is planning something. We will be honouring him,” said an SRM official, who indicated that Krishnan will be visiting the campus. The dates are yet to be confirmed. Musk’s chosen man studied at the college between 2001 and 2005.

At present, Krishnan is a partner at venture capital firm Andreesen Horowitz (a16z) that invests in cryptocurrency and start-ups. On October 31, Krishnan made it public that he will be “helping out” Musk “temporarily” in Twitter with some others.

Krishnan, who is also a former Twitter employee, is expected to guide Musk in his ambitious plan to monetise the social media giant. According to Musk’s road map, the Twitter verification or blue tick will be made a paid feature, where customers may have to pay around $20 for the label. Krishnan’s prior experience with Twitter (between 2017 and 2019), when he claims to have driven its growth by 20 per cent year-on-year and launched several products including a redesigned events experience, is expected to be handy for the new stint.

In addition to Twitter, he has led product and engineering teams at Meta (2013-16) and Microsoft (2005-11). After completing studies,