Who Is Anand Varadarajan? Starbucks Appoints Ex-Amazon Executive As New Chief Technology Officer

Starbucks has named Indian-origin technology leader Anand Varadarajan as its new Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer (CTO). The company said Varadarajan will start his new role on January 19. He will be part of Starbucks’ top leadership team and will report directly to CEO Brian Niccol. He takes over from Deb Hall Lefevre, who retired in September.

Varadarajan brings nearly 20 years of experience from Amazon, where he worked on building large and customer-focused technology systems. Most recently, he led technology and supply chain operations for Amazon’s Worldwide Grocery Stores business.

Before joining Amazon, he worked as a software engineer at Oracle and was also associated with several startups.