The revelation was made by the Perplexity CEO during a podcast with Zerodha co-founder Nikhil Kamath.

“My mom works in the central government, and my dad was an accountant. He was a financial accountant. So I am actually the first engineer in the extended family,” Aravind Srinivas replied, when he was asked about his family.

The answer came as a shock to Zerodha co-founder, who sought to know about Aravind Srinivas’ Tamil roots.

“Really? You’re a Tamilian, right?” Nikhil Kamath asked.

To this, the Perplexity CEO explained that his family has a background in accounts. “Yeah, but our family had more of an accounting background. So engineering was still a new thing at the time for us,” he said.

During the podcast, Srinivas said that his mother had always envisioned him studying at IIT Madras.

“Every time we would go on a bus and pass by the IIT Madras campus, my mom would point to the campus and say, ‘This is where you’re going to study.’ It’s not even like you should study; this is where you’re going to study. So that was the expectation,” he recalled.

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Srinivas’ interest in artificial intelligence was sparked by a Kaggle competition. “That was my entry into AI. It wasn’t just about winning—it was about figuring out how machines learn from data,” he explained.

He also emphasised his work ethic, stating, “I’m really proud of that.” When asked why he pushes himself so hard, he responded, “I enjoy it. It’s not about chasing some goal to scale; it’s about what I love doing.”

Aravind Srinivas did his engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Madras, earning his bachelor and master of technology degrees in electrical engineering. He then went on to earn a doctorate degree, a PhD in Computer Science from the reputed University of California, Berkeley.