Rajiv Prakash

Background

About Rajiv Prakash

Entrepreneurship is a spiritual journey - a founder friend once remarked. An adventure within while trying to build something great outside. Next In is a journey partner to founders in their early stages. We work with founders to help them discover their potential for greatness and realise it. My area of interest and expertise is the founder's journey from the idea of starting up to them becoming enterprise builders. In startup terms, this could be from the idea/prototype stage to product market fit. In venture capital funding terms. from bootstrapping to series A. Over the past ten years, I have had the opportunity to have deep, personal engagements as a journey partner to some remarkable founders from the for-profit and not-for-profit worlds. These include the founders of Jeevitam, Reverie, Mosambee, Boonbox, Reap Benefit, Online Becho, Project Sitara, Goli Vada Pav, Gumlet, Presto, Qube Health, Leadstart, iPay, SimpleCRM and Sun King. Many have gone to become category creators, business model innovators or market leaders in their domains. These founders have collectively built enterprise value in excess of US$1 billion with significant associated social impact. In my role as a journey partner, I often act as a sounding board on key decisions relating to direction, co-founders and organisation, customer development and product, go to market and funding. We also have a lot of conversations on the founder's reflections on themselves and the journey of venture building. Where possible, one may introduce opportunities, resources and talent. I am passionate about discovering and developing entrepreneurship from small town India, informally know as Bharat. I serve on the board of Deshpande Startups which is India's leading ecosystem for founders from Bharat and founders building for Bharat. Through Deshpande Startups have had the experience of investing in early stage startups. Our portfolio comprises innovative and growing ventures such as Rapture, Nebeskie, Kosha, PublicNext, Nautilus and Wide Mobility. Am also curious about possibilities of open innovation and have done some work in this area. Prior to Next In, have developed, built and scaled successful and pioneering businesses in eCommerce, retail technology, business consulting and investment banking. Have worked at Cisco, Arthur Andersen, KPMG and Future Group. I have had my share of startup failures too. I have taught entrepreneurship and internet business courses at B Schools such as SP Jain, Symbiosis and Welingkar. Am an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad.