# Manu Bansal

> Manu Bansal is co-founder and CEO of Lightup, an AI-powered data quality and observability platform for the enterprise data stack. A Stanford EE PhD and IIT Kanpur alum, he first co-founded Uhana, a machine-learning analytics company for mobile carriers that VMware acquired in 2019. The grind of debugging bad data at Uhana became the seed for Lightup, which now runs hundreds of thousands of daily data-quality checks across petabytes of customer data and is backed by Andreessen Horowitz.

- **Role:** Co-Founder & CEO at Lightup
- **Organizations:** Lightup Data, Uhana (acquired by VMware), VMware
- **Nationality:** Indian
- **Education:** Ph.D., Electrical Engineering, Stanford University, M.S., Computer Science, University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), B.Tech and M.Tech, Computer Science and Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur
- **Known for:** Co-founded Uhana, an AI analytics platform for mobile operators acquired by VMware in 2019., Founded and leads Lightup, an a16z-backed data quality and observability platform., Earned a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University.

## Career timeline

- **2016** — Co-founds Uhana with Stanford professor Sachin Katti to commercialize ML research on optimizing carrier networks.
- **2019** — VMware acquires Uhana to strengthen its telco/carrier portfolio.
- **2019** — Founds Lightup Data to tackle enterprise data quality and observability.
- **2023** — Lightup raises a reported $9M (Series A), part of roughly $20.7M total funding; backed by Andreessen Horowitz.
- **2024** — Reflects on 5 years of Lightup: 500,000+ daily checks, 12+ petabytes covered, 90%+ reduction in bad-data incidents for customers.

## Achievements

- Co-founded Uhana, an AI analytics platform for mobile operators acquired by VMware in 2019.
- Founded and leads Lightup, an a16z-backed data quality and observability platform.
- Earned a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University.
- Scaled Lightup to 500,000+ daily data-quality checks across 12+ petabytes and 2,500+ monitored tables.
- Helped enterprise customers achieve a reported 90%+ reduction in business incidents caused by bad data.

## Latest updates

- **2024** — Published reflections on 5 years of building Lightup, framing the milestones as 'just the start' for the company.
- **2023** — Lightup raised a reported $9M round (Series A), with total funding around $20.7M.

## Links

- Website: https://lightup.ai
- LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/manukmrbansal
- Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/lightupdata

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/manu-bansal
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-06-11