Neo4j ropes in ex-Google Cloud executive Chandra Rangan as CMO

Neo4j, a San Mateo, California-based graph data platform has hired Chandra Rangan as the company’s Chief Marketing Officer (CMO). Rangan joins Neo4j from Google, where he ran Google Cloud Platform product marketing and more recently, product-led growth, strategy, and operations for Google Maps Platform. 

Industry analyst firm Forrester has identified graph data platforms as a new and emerging technology that allows enterprises to generate the insights from their existing data to solve complex problems quickly. 

It is used for fraud detection in banking, e-commerce and other industries that allow real-time results like retail, logistics, recruitment, media, sentiment analysis, search and knowledge management. 

Commenting on Ranjan’s new role, Emil Eifrem, CEO & Co-Founder, Neo4j, said in the company blog, “This role is essential as we continue to evolve globally and expand across industries. With graph technology exploding — and Neo4j on the frontlines of that growth — an experienced leader in emerging technologies is exactly what we need to drive our marketing efforts forward. 

“Chandra is the ideal executive to take on this huge role and help shape the future of Neo4j. We’ve only scratched the surface of how graph technology can change the world,” he added. 

Ranjan’s career spans two decades of technology infrastructure experience across marketing leadership, strategy, and operations at Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Symantec, Gartner, McKinsey, and IBM. 

On what prompted Rangan to joined the company, he said, “Several things drew me to Neo4j, starting with the opportunity to fundamentally reshape the database market and the potential to advance data science by applying the richness of relationships for predictive accuracy and AI/ML data pipelines. I look forward to playing a part in continuing Neo4j’s leadership momentum in shaping the modern data stack.” 

Neo4j has more than 700 employees globally, and crossed $100 million in ARR (annual recurring revenue) last year. As per an April 2022 report, the company said, it has experienced more than 100% growth across Asia Pacific over the past year. Some of its notable customers globally include Levi Strauss & Co., PepsiCo, Inc., Volkswagen AG, Daimler AG, Cable News Network, Inc. (CNN), and BMW Group. 

The global graph database market size was valued at $651 million in 2018, and is projected to reach $3,731 million by 2026, growing at a CAGR of 24.5% from 2019 to 2026. Besides Neo4J, other companies leading this space include, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft, Oracle and Tiger Graph.