Asha Vellaikal

About Asha Vellaikal

Asha Vellaikal is the Head of Digital Labs for Marsh, part of Marsh & McLennan companies. In this newly created role, she reports to the Chief Digital Officer with responsibilities for building the Labs and leading the innovation strategy to enable the next-generation of Insurance products. Her primary focus areas include emerging technologies such as Blockchain, Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, Robotics and IoT. Previously, Asha was at Orange Silicon Valley as Director of Strategy and Innovation. At Orange, she built and led a cross-functional team focusing on developing novel B2C and B2B2C products across mobile, web, smart-home and big-data analytics space. She also led extensive Silicon Valley ecosystem outreach to identify companies for partnership and co-development. She also advised corporate strategy at the CxO level especially on emerging technologies and business trends. Prior to that, Asha was research program manager at Orange/France Telecom managing worldwide projects in the areas of web2.0 and social computing. She has also worked in research, system architecture and engineering management positions at various other startup and Fortune 500 companies. Asha holds a B.Tech from IIT Bombay and a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from USC, where she was a Howard Hughes Doctoral Fellow. Her thesis focused on machine learning techniques to aid media search and classification. She is the author of nine issued USPTO patents and has authored more than fifteen refereed publications.Specialties: New product development, innovation management, corporate strategy & development, strategic planning, Silicon Valley ecosystem development, strategic partnerships, software architecture and development.Technology areas: Deep Learning, Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain, Machine Learning, IoT, Mobile, Web, SaaS, Big Data, Social Media.

Experience

1. Head of Marsh Digital Labs

   Marsh Risk

   Jan 2017 — Present · San Francisco, CA, US

   Responsibilities:Build Marsh Digital Labs to enable next-gen product strategy and disruptive ideas to power growth for Marsh. Incubate cutting-edge technologies and novel product ideas to open new business opportunities in the insurance ecosystem.Liaison with Insurtech communities in Silicon Valley Engagement with emerging digital markets around the globe as well as academic and standards organizations.

Education

• University of Southern California

  Ph.D., Electrical Engineering

• Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay

  B.Tech