Prashant Kantak

Advisor

Prashant Kantak is an early-stage venture advisor and investor. He consults with early-stage companies in determining business and product strategy, organization and go-to-market strategy, makes selective investments and takes operational roles as needed. He was with Qualcomm since early 1990 and held various technical and business management positions within Qualcomm. He started and led Qualcomm Ventures, a $500M strategic venture capital fund of Qualcomm, and built operations in North America, Europe and Asia including Korea ($60M), Japan ($30M) and China ($100M). He led investments in and actively managed over 26 portfolio companies in the US and many more worldwide, many of which were either acquired or taken public, including Paypal (acquired by EBAY), Air Prime (acquired by Sierra Wireless), GTRAN Wireless (acquired by FLEX), PacketVideo, Iridigm (acquired by QCOM), Airvana (IPO), Discera, A123 (IPO) and JAMDAT (IPO). As a key member of Qualcomm's corporate development team, he was responsible for various efforts including technology and business strategy, strategic alliances, partnerships and mergers and acquisitions. He also led the creation of and managed strategic alliances, co-development and business partnerships between startup companies and Qualcomm operating units. This activity resulted in expanding markets for and augmenting Qualcomm’s existing technologies, products and services as well as driving innovations through enabling new technologies and business models internally and in the industry.

Prashant has over 25 years of business management and technical experience in the field of telecommunications. At Qualcomm, he participated in the early definition, design and development of the first CDMA standards and systems and thereafter developed key ASICs for their implementations both on the infrastructure and mobile side. He also designed and implemented innovative DSP architectures for mobile communications that form the core platform for Qualcomm’s commercial ASICs. Prashant has an MBA from Cornell University. He also has a MS and BS in Electrical Engineering.

He served on the Board of San Diego Software Industry Council and currently serves on the advisory board of the SoCal incubator, EvoNexus, and has been on its selection and management committee since its founding.