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Gumroad appoints Ershad Kunnakkadan as CEO
Kunnakkadan’s appointment has renewed interest in his unconventional career trajectory, detailed in a widely shared post by US-based tech founder Deedy Das.
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Malvika Choudhary - Fri, 21, Nov 2025
- 12:35 EST
- 5
Ershad Kunnakkadan / LinkedIn (Ershad Kunnakkadan)
Kerala-born software engineer, Ershad Kunnakkadan has been appointed CEO of San Francisco–based e-commerce platform Gumroad.
The announcement comes months after his move to New York City earlier this year on an O-1 visa and follows founder Sahil Lavingia’s decision to step down after 14 years.
Also Read: Indian-origin student builds autonomous forklift at U.S. firm
Kunnakkadan, 33, has been with Gumroad since 2020, joining first as a senior software engineer before becoming a staff engineer.
During his time at the company, he worked on core backend systems including infrastructure, security, scalability and payouts — areas that support millions of users and creator earnings exceeding $1 billion. Before relocating to the US, he worked remotely from Kochi and Abu Dhabi.
This man dropped out of a no-name college in India to be a software engineer and by 33, worked his way up to being CEO of a $100M+ company in New York.
— Deedy (@deedydas) November 21, 2025
Here's the never-before-shared incredibly inspirational story of Ershad Kunnakkadan:
> be middle class kid in random state… pic.twitter.com/iPZjwjtJYX
Lavingia confirmed the leadership transition on X, writing, “Exciting news: after 14 years, I’m stepping down as CEO of Gumroad. I’ve found the perfect leader to take over for me: Ershad Kunnakkadan. (While he just moved to NYC this year, he’s been with Gumroad remotely for 8 of those 14 years).
”Responding to the announcement, Kunnakkadan wrote, “Thank you, Sahil Lavingia, for the foundation, the guidance, the example, and for trusting me with this new role. I'm super excited and honoured. So proud of the team and ready to serve our creators even more!”
Kunnakkadan’s appointment has renewed interest in his unconventional career trajectory, detailed in a widely shared post by US-based tech founder Deedy Das.
According to the post, Kunnakkadangrew up in a middle-class household in Kerala, became active in the state’s free-software community through the Malayalam computing collective SMC, and attended a small private engineering college before dropping out in his second year. He later completed a degree remotely from Bharathiar University.
He began his career in 2012 as a developer intern at a small software company. His later roles included positions as software engineer and architect in India and the UAE, contributions to open-source projects, participation in Google Summer of Code and identifying security vulnerabilities in platforms such as GitHub and Prezi. He joined Gumroad initially as a consultant before moving into a full-time role.
According to his LinkedIn profile, Kunnakkadan has more than a decade of experience across developer, engineering and architectural roles, including a stint at BigBinary.
His elevation to chief executive of a company reporting over $100 million in gross merchandise value places him among a growing cohort of Indian-origin technologists now leading major firms in the global technology ecosystem.
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