Chairman Vision Group for Startups, Govt of Karnataka
Member National Startup Advisory Council, Govt. of India
Chairman Sikshana Foundation
Chairman United Way Bengaluru
Chairman Krishi Kalpa Foundation

Investor and Serial Entrepreneur
Deeply involved in the startup world, Prashanth Prakash is a founding partner of the US venture capital firm Accel Partners in India. A graduate of the University of Delaware in the US – where he did his Master’s in Computer Science – he moved back to India in the mid-1990s thanks to the nudging by his inventor father PM Prakash and his educationist wife Amitha. Always ahead of the curve, his first startup Visual Reality was one of India’s first animation companies. His second startup Netkraft was one of India’s first internet-based companies.

Since 2004, he has played a key role as a venture capitalist in nurturing Karnataka’s – and India’s – startup landscape. A pioneer in the venture capital world, he co-founded Erasmic Ventures in 2004, one of the earliest seed-funds that invested in technology startups. Later, Erasmic morphed into Accel India which was one of the earliest global venture funds that entered India.At Accel his primary focus is on Digital first consumer brands, B2B, Agritech and SaaS. He has led investments in 30 Indian technology start-ups and serves as a board member in 16 companies. Accel has lead seed or early stage investments in category-defining companies like Flipkart, Ola, Swiggy, Urban Company, BookMyShow, Cult, Freshworks and Bounce.

Chairman Vision Group for Startups, Govt of Karnataka
As the chairman of Karnataka’s Vision Group for startups, he has been an important bridge between the two worlds – of startups, entrepreneurs, investors and the state government – in helping evolve enabling policy framework to build Karnataka as a robust startup ecosystem. The Vision Group has rolled out initiatives such as Beyond Bengaluru, KDEM – Karnataka Digital Economy Mission, Innovation Hub and Talent Accelerator.

More importantly, looking beyond the startup world, Prakash has been a passionate social sector evangelist. Keen to give back to the society, he has generously borrowed lessons and learnings from the startup world to bring disruption, efficiency and large scale impact in the society.

Chairman, Sikshana Foundation
Sikshana Foundation is a social enterprise (NGO) that has pioneered a “motivational model” to improve the learning levels of Govt. School Students in India through its child-centric program – Prerana. Over the last ten years,Sikshana has expanded to 50,000 plus Government schools, reaching out to 3Million children. Working in collaboration with the Central and State Governments through an MOU that enables the adoption of any Government school, Sikshana has significantly improved the quality of outcomes in the adopted schools.

Co-Founder, ACT Grants Fund
Responding to the Covid Pandemic along with other Venture Capitalists, formed the 500 Cr ACT Grants fund to provide financial support to start-ups working on ready to deploy disruptive scalable solutions to combat Covid. Major initiatives included the mission to create a model that enables successful vaccination of marginalized at-risk populations at an accelerated pace for over 10 Lakh people across Bengaluru,

Chairman, United Way of Bengaluru
United Way is a unique social organization that brings together corporates, government bodies, and community members to address societal challenges in the community. UWBe contributes more than 50 Crore through its Partners every year to the Urban & Rural regions of Bengaluru.

‘Wake the Lake’which has helped rejuvenate and protectmore than 30 of Bengaluru’s Lakes and Born Learning Campaign (BLC) aimed at holistic development of over 1 Lakh children attending Anganwadis by focusing on health and nutrition; proper psychological, physical, and social development of the child are some examples of large scale impact.

Chairman Krishi Kalpa Foundation:

Prashanth has founded and provided the seed money for the formation of Krishi Kalpa Foundation, a section-8 registered non-profit organisation, which aims to increase incomes and livelihood opportunities for smallholder farmers& FPO’s by providing them access to better technologies, inputs and market linkages. By leveraging Agri tech startups, Krishi Kalpa has begun making a positive difference in many districts of Karnataka.

Educational Qualification:
Master’s in Computer Science University of Delaware; B.E Computer Science from Bangalore Institute of Technology.