Pacvue Appoints New CEO
Pacvue, a commerce and retail media platform owned by Assembly, has appointed Rahul Choraria as CEO. Choraria, who joined the company two years ago as chief operating officer, succeeds Sandeep Kella, co-founder and CEO since 2019.
Kella has been appointed executive chairman of the board of directors and will oversee the overall strategic direction of Pacvue, alongside two new high-profile board appointees, Harry Shum and David Karnstedt, the company revealed in a statement.
“Two years ago, I hired [Choraria] as our COO, and I’ve been deeply impressed by his steady leadership and his ability to execute on our company vision,” Kella said. “I am incredibly proud of what we’ve accomplished at Pacvue. With the increasing complexity of commerce and retail media, Pacvue is in a prime position to capitalize on an incredible market opportunity. With [Choraria] at the helm, we will be in an even better position to capture the market demand for a unified commerce operating system.”
Choraria joined Pacvue in 2022 to work with Kella on integrating all business lines of Pacvue into a unified suite underpinned by an AI-powered infrastructure. Prior to Pacvue, Choraria worked at Advent International and Vista Equity Partners, two private equity firms, where he worked closely with management teams of technology companies to help scale and build category leaders.
“I am honored to step into the role of CEO at Pacvue and build on the incredible foundation laid by [Kella] and the team,” Choraria added. “We have a unique opportunity to connect and unify the thriving, but fragmented, retail media ecosystem, and will continue to invest heavily into product innovation and global partnerships. Our vision remains the same — to help our customers win in commerce through our innovative and connected software suite.”
Pacvue’s new board members include:
- Harry Shum, Ph.D., is a computer scientist and business executive who helped lead Microsoft's overall AI strategy. In 2016, he was appointed as executive vice president of Microsoft and tasked with leading AI and research. He oversaw more than 5,000 computer scientists and engineers focused on the company’s AI product offerings, including the Cortana virtual assistant and search engine Bing.com. Dr. Shum was elected to the National Academy of Engineering of the U.S. in 2017.
- David Karnstedt is a seasoned executive in the marketing technology ecosystem. He is currently the CEO of Branch with previous experience at Adobe, Efficient Frontier, Yahoo! and Overture. Karnstedt has also served on numerous boards including Demandbase, Vantiv (VNTV), Quantifind and JumpTap.