Just six months ago, Ershad Kunakkadan took to his LinkedIn profile to announce that he was beginning a new professional journey as a Staff Software Engineer at Gumroad’s New York office. And then, the 33-year-old again turned to the SNS platform four days ago to proudly reveal that he was now starting his new role as the e-commerce company’s CEO.

Undoubtedly, 2025 has a been a big year for the Indian-origin techie at a company he has been associated with for over five years now. Notably, the top professional at the company moved to New York City just this year, having originally started out with the firm on a remote basis. Ershad Kunakkadan first set foot on the Gumroad path in July 2020 as a Senior Software Engineer, as per his LinkedIn profile.

Gumroad’s new Indian CEO Ersha Kunnakkadan

Kunnakkadan’s rank-rising trajectory at Gumroad soared to even higher heights as the company’s founder, Sahil Lavingia, announced the big shift in power on the leadership board recently. “Exciting news: after 15 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),” he wrote on X.

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Lavingia, who remains on the Gumroad board, firmly believes that Ershad will run the company differently. With a new leader helming the operations, the e-commerce establishment plans to resume its quarterly public board meeting in the new year.

Kunnakkadan swiftly responded to the heartwarming introduction, saying, “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!”

Social media has been raving about “Mallu and Kerala power” ever since the glorious news hit the Internet. It has inevitably amplified the buzz factor and intrigue surrounding the new Indian-origin Gumroad CEO and how he got his start in the tech industry in the first place.

Who is Ershad Kunnakkadan?

Before going international, the Indian techie found his start in Kerala. Deedy Das, a partner at Menlo Ventures, who is particularly famous as an influencer in the tech world, took to X to share the word about Kunnakkadan’s meteoric rise in the professional world.

“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,” he wrote on the Elon Musk-led platform a few days ago.

Detailing the “never-before-shared incredibly inspirational story of Ershad Kunnakkadan,” Deedy revealed that new Gumroad CEO got into computers at a young age after getting studying in a little-known government school classroom in Kerala. Some other key-defining identifiers in his story were a Ubuntu 8.04 CD gifted by a senior and his initial contributions to Swathanthra Malayalam Computing (SMC), which is “a free software collective engaged in the development, localisation, standardisation and popularisation,” as per its website.

Kunnakkadan went to a “no-name small private college in Kerala,” only to drop out after his second year. Promising his family that he would find the means to earn money somehow, he ultimately landed an internship at a small software company. He went on to earn a degree remotely from Bharathiar University, while doubling down on practical knowledge by finding security bugs in Github and Prezi. The Kerala native even nagged a Google Summer of Code selection at one point.

Following his distant-learning graduation, he moved back to Kochi to be around his family. He ultimately got involved in local free software circles and workshops, as he continued to build a “quiet dense body of work.”

He first got linked to Gumroad in a consultant capacity, only to join the e-commerce platform as a senior engineer later. After his marriage, he moved to Abu Dhabi, while keeping his head down and doing the boring hard work. His growing portfolio granted him a full-time staff software engineer job at Gumroad.

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Jump to 2025, he moved to New York City on an O-1 visa, which is the nonimmigrant visa for “Individuals with Extraordinary Ability or Achievement.” As Gumroad started eyeing candidate for a new CEO, board already known who was the “best fit for the job.”

Deedy couldn’t help rave about Ershad life story alongside many others. “No brands, no pedigree, no MBA, no loudness,” he said, adding that in their first-hand interactions the Kerala native confirmed “reliability” got him so far.

Kunnakkadan’s inspiring case emerges as an exception you can’t help but root for, especially since “dropping out when you’re rich is trendy in America, but to see someone Indian drop out and work their way up into the top role is pure inspiration,” Deedy added. He noted that the new Gumroad CEO’s journey is proof that sometimes being a good person and reliable was enough.

Ershad Kunnakkadan’s previous jobs

Before his Gumroad journey, he served as a Senior Software Engineer at BigBinary (remote) from July 2015 to June 2020. Back in March 2012, he came into the Bang the Table team as a developer intern. Within months, he rose higher on the ladder as a software engineer, becoming a software architect in January 2013 at Bang the Table’s Bengaluru office. He stayed in that role for a little over 2.5 years.