Lakshmi Shankar
General Partner
Lakshmi believes that great founders — like great leaders — aren’t born but built, through a mix of hunger, hard work, and humility. Hunger to be world-class, hard work to push boundaries, and humility to keep learning. That mindset has guided his journey across continents and companies.
Before joining Together, Lakshmi was VP of Product Strategy at Google Search, where he led the launch of Generative AI in Search. Earlier, he worked directly with Jack Dorsey as an executive at Twitter, and began his career at IBM building enterprise SaaS products before the term ‘cloud’ even existed. He later moved to EY in the UK as a management consultant in M&A. Beyond Together, Lakshmi is a visiting lecturer at IIT Madras, where he teaches AI and Entrepreneurship at the Wadhwani School of AI & Data Science.
Outside work, Lakshmi is happiest on a tennis court or in the kitchen. He’s been to Wimbledon’s Centre Court every year for the last 18 years and makes a mean Thai green curry and papaya salad. His guiding belief: “Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success.”
