Meet Ershad Kunnakkadan: Malayali engineer turned CEO of $100M+ US e-commerce firm

Kerala native Ershad Kunnakkadan has taken over as CEO of San Francisco-based e-commerce company Gumroad at the age of 33.

An employee of the company since 2020, Kunnakkadan rose through the ranks to assume the role after founder Sahil Lavingia stepped down.

Announcing the leadership change on Twitter, Lavingia said, "Exciting news: after 14 years, I’m stepping down as CEO of Gumroad. I’ve found the perfect leader to take over for me: Ershad Kunnakkadan. (While he just moved to NYC this year, he’s been with Gumroad remotely for 8 of those 14 years)."

He added, "He’ll run Gumroad differently, and we’ll restart our quarterly public board meetings in Jan 2026 (I remain the board) so everyone can learn alongside us as we make this transition."

Responding to the announcement, Kunnakkadan tweeted, "Thank you, Sahil Lavingia, for the foundation, the guidance, the example, and for trusting me with this new role. I'm super excited and honoured. So proud of the team and ready to serve our creators even more!"

According to his LinkedIn profile, he started as a developer intern in 2012 and moved into a software engineer role in 2013. Along the way, he earned a degree remotely from Bharathiar University, participated in Google Summer of Code, and joined Gumroad as a senior engineer. After initially working remotely and later full-time in the UAE, he eventually joined Gumroad as a full-time employee. 

Before joining Gumroad, Kunnakkadan worked with BigBinary and Bang the Table. He is also a volunteer at Swathanthra Malayalam Computing, according to his website.