Karl Mehta
Founder & CEO of EdCast Inc.
Silicon Valley, USA
Karl Mehta is a serial entrepreneur, author, investor, engineer, and civil servant with over 20 years of experience in founding, building, and funding technology companies in the U.S. and international markets. He is currently Founder & CEO of EdCast Inc., an AI-powered knowledge-cloud platform company backed by Stanford University & Softbank Capital. He is former venture partner at Menlo Ventures, a leading VC firm of Silicon Valley with over $4B under management.
Previously, he was the Founder & CEO of PlaySpan Inc., acquired by Visa Inc. (NYSE:V), the world’s largest payment network. Karl also served as a White House Presidential Innovation Fellow, selected by the Obama Administration during the inaugural 2012-13 term. In 2014 he was appointed by Governor Brown to the Workforce Investment Board of the State of California. In 2010, Karl won the “Entrepreneur of the Year” award from Ernst & Young for Northern California. Karl is on the boards of Simpa Networks and on the advisory board of Intel Capital and Chapman University’s Center of Entrepreneurship.
Karl is founder of several non-profit's including Code For India (http://CodeforINDIA.org) and Grassroots Innovation (http://grassrootsinnovation.org ). He is author of 'Financial Inclusion at the Bottom of the Pyramid”(http://www.openfininc.org) -http://www.amazon.com/dp/14602...
Murali Bukkapatnam
Chairman & CEO, Volksy Technologies
Hyderabad, India
Chairman & CEO of Volksy Technologies, operates as a company builder, where vetted ideas get activated. Between 2017 & 2019, we had 5 operating ventures, Veekli.com, Prowidor.com, HouzKare.com, getdomestichelp.com & TheSkillingcompany.com. In 2016, I acquired a home services market place company, Indikrew.com to be part of our group. I am a multiple times founder & angel investor, come with more than 25 years of rich and diverse experience of working with the private & government sectors and 15 years of that as an Entrepreneur.
I am a good orator gifted with the skills to effectively communicate and keep the audience fully engaged, I get invited to speak on entrepreneurship and related subjects by various forums throughout the country. I am an avid golf and cricket player, sports enthusiast, extensive traveler, and connoisseur of food and wine. I love reading books, especially autobiographies of great and successful people and inspirational books.
I was widely known in the Indian-American community of Greater Washington for my philanthropic, social, cultural, and political activities before I moved to India in 2008. I was a Founder Trustee of the Capitol Area Telugu Society (CATS), an organization that was founded to promote the cultural and social activities of the Indian Diaspora from the states of Andhra Pradesh & Telangana (India) living in the Greater Washington metro area. I was also an active member of the U.S. India Political Action Committee (USINPAC), and the Northern Virginia Technology Council (NVTC).
I was an active member of TiE, erstwhile known as The Indus Entrepreneurs, a 25-plus-year-old organization founded in Silicon Valley (www.TiE.org). I was the President of the Hyderabad Chapter, and the youngest one to become so in the known history of TiE. Later I was also elected to the Global board of trustees, the first-ever one from Hyderabad chapter. I also help and invests in startups, have invested in about 13 companies, and volunteered more than 800 hours of my personal time to mentor young start-ups at the nascent stages of the Hyderabad entrepreneurial ecosystem. Helped establish Hyderabad Angel Network, now a 100-member strong angel investors group out of Hyderabad, India.
Teaching is a passion of mine, a hereditary gift from my father, I teach entrepreneurship every other semester at Indian Institute of Hyderabad, part of premier IIT institutions.
I graduated from Southeastern University, Washington DC, from which I received an MS in Computer Science in 1995. I graduated with honors and received the Dean’s Award.