Who is Rohit Prasad? the man behind Amazon's Alexa

New Delhi, July 23: Amazon's Alexa has become quite popular among the household for making everyone's life easier. Alexa was launched in 2014 alongside the smart speaker, Amazon Echo, which promised to be a dutiful virtual assistant. But who breathed life into Alexa? Here it is:

Rohit Prasad, the man from Jharkhand's Ranchi is the brain behind Amazon's Alexa. He currently works as as Vice President and is the head Scientist of Alexa Artificial Intelligence at Amazon.

India-born Prasad, together with his colleague Toni Reid who focuses on the consumer experience side, was No. 15 on Recode's list of 100 people in tech, business and media who mattered in 2017. Jeff Bezos, Susan Fowler, Mark Zuckerberg, Tim Cook, Sundar Pichai, Elon Musk and Satya Nadella were among the 14 people ahead of him.

Prasad has completed his schooling from DAV Public School in Ranchi. He then studied engineering from Birla Institute of Technology (BIT) Mesra, a village near the Jharkhand capital. He acquired his MS in Electrical Engineering from the Illinois Institute of Technology.

According to Prasad's LinkedIn profile, he joined Raytheon BBN Technologies in July 1999 as a staff scientist. In the same company, he went on to rise to the position of Deputy Manager and Senior Director of Speech, Language and Multimedia Business Unit.

Prasad joined Amazon in 2013. He worked with the e-commerce giant for three years as the Director of Machine Learning, Alexa, and was elevated in 2016 as the Vice President and Head Scientist of Alexa Artificial Intelligence.

Prasad was ranked at Number 9 in Fast Company's 100 Most Creative People in Business in 2017. Not only that, Rohit, along with his colleague, Ried made, it to the Recode List of 100 People in Technology, Business, and Media who mattered in 2017.

Earlier this year, Amazon has launched Alexa for Hospitality, developed specifically to act as a virtual hotel concierge. With Amazon Echo, guests can ask Alexa for information like hotel pool hours or the location of the fitness center and request room service or housekeeping.

The device can also be used to control room lights, temperature, the blinds and the TV. Aside from the hotel experience, guests can call on Alexa for Hospitality to check airport wait times, play games, or play white noise to help them fall asleep.