Vitthal has spent a lot of his life studying - he holds Masters Degrees in Math and Electrical Engineering from Stanford, an MBA from INSEAD, and a Bachelors Degree in Computer Engineering from Mumbai. He has also spent a lot of his life working - as a derivatives quant at Credit Suisse in New York, then as a quant trader, first with a hedge fund in Greenwich and then on his own, and finally at Google in Singapore and Flipkart in Bangalore. In all these roles, he has written a lot of code, and built a lot of models.