Satya Prabhakar

Satya Prabhakar
Born	Machilipatnam, Andhra Pradesh, India
Residence	India
Alma mater	University of Florida - Warrington School Of Business National Institute of Technology, Tiruchirappalli Hindu College, Machilipatnam Nirmala High School, Machilipatnam
Occupation	CEO, Sulekha.com
Spouse(s)	Sangeeta Kshettry (in 1989)
Children	Divya and Priya

Satya Prabhakar is an Indian/American entrepreneur, engineer, writer and the Founder/CEO of Sulekha.com,^[1] one of the leading Indian online companies known for its local digital commerce platform that uniquely integrates local search, classifieds, ecommerce enhanced by member blogs, answers, reviews and ratings. He grew Sulekha from two employees to over 1000 employees in 15 offices across India and in US.

Born and brought up in Machilipatnam in Andhra Pradesh, India, Prabhakar has a Masters in Computer Science and an MBA; he worked at Philips, TCS, Honeywell, AT&T before founding Sulekha.com.

Education and Career

Satya Prabhakar was born in Machilipatnam, a small seaside town in Andhra Pradesh, India. He studied in Nirmala High School, a Roman Catholic institution and in Hindu College, one of the oldest colleges in India. He then got his Bachelors in Electronics and Communications Engineering from National Institute of Technology (previously Regional Engineering College), Tiruchirapalli, graduating in 1984. He worked at Philips in Chennai for a year as an acoustical engineer.

Prabhakar gained admission into all the four Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs in Calcutta, Ahmedabad, Bangalore and Lucknow) but enrolled at the University of Florida, Gainesville to get his Masters in Computer Science. He did research in the areas of federated database systems and design and got his Masters degree in 1987.

Prabhakar consulted with Tata Research, Design and Development Center, a subsidiary of Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), in Pune in the areas of knowledge systems design.

He returned to Gainesville to get his MBA from the Warrington School of Business at University of Florida with a full scholarship.

Prabhakar joined Honeywell in Minneapolis as a Research Engineer in 1989. In the five years at Honeywell, Prabhakar did research in the areas of real-time operating systems, multimedia systems, federated database integration and published several technical papers in peer-reviewed journals and conferences. Prabhakar managed several multi-million dollar R&D projects for US Air Force and Electrical Power Research Institute (EPRI) and collaborated with Georgia Tech and University of Minnesota for technical research. He was the co-founder of the Presto multimedia lab at Honeywell Technology Research as a platform to develop real-time video and audio technologies.

Prabhakar joined AT&T in Austin, Texas in 1995 to lead several business and product development efforts in the areas of Internet hosting, ecommerce and interactive TV. He represented AT&T (then SBC) in the Americast interactive TV alliance that comprised Walt Disney, Bell South, Ameritech, GTE and Pacific Bell. He led the launch of AT&T’s Internet hosting and ecommerce platforms for SMEs.

Sulekha.com

In late 1990s, Prabhakar was an honorary member of Dakghar, an email list of IIM Calcutta Alumni. The members of this list, professional from multiple walks of life, periodically sent out to Dakghar subscribers well-written articles on whatever subject that attracted their fancy. Such great pieces of writing had a limited audience to Dakghar and there too enjoyed no persistence of access. Prabhakar, realizing that such talent is not limited to the alumni of IIM Calcutta, registered the website Sulekha.com (good writing, in Sanskrit) and wrote the software for the site in Perl/CGI on Solaris hosting platform. Sangeeta Kshettry, a University of Pennsylvania (Penn) grad, managed the content of Sulekha.com while Prabhakar, a writer himself, managed the community and continued developing the site.

Contributors to Sulekha.com and its audience grew exponentially and quickly became one of the most popular Indian destinations on the web, attracting vast media coverage (Times of India, Indian Express, Femina, Rediff, India Today).

Both Prabhakar and Kshettry quit their full-time jobs in 2000 to develop Sulekha.com full-time. Sulekha turned down acquisition offers from Rediff and Sify but instead took an investment from Indigo Monsoon Group (IMG), led by Param Parameswaran (who joined the Board as Chairman) and Harish Raghavan. The company that pioneered blogging before the word Blog was invented, evolved into India’s leading digital commerce platform and one of the most popular websites. Chosen by Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) in 2012 as India’s best multi-utility website, Sulekha.com uniquely integrates Local Search, Classifieds and Ecommerce services, enhanced by member blogs, answers, reviews and ratings in these key marketplaces: Property, Cars, Home Needs, Office Needs, Education/Training, Lifestyle, Movies, Gadgets, Travel, Eatouts, Buy/Sell, Deals.

Sulekha.com today employs 1000+ employees in 15 offices: Mumbai, Delhi, Navi Mumbai, Noida, Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Pune, Kolkata, Coimbatore, New York, Toronto, Austin. Sulekha.com’s investors include Norwest Venture Partners, Palo Alto (NVP), a top tier Silicon Valley venture capital firm and Mitsui & Co., Tokyo, a global Fortune 200 company.

Recognition and Publications

Prabhakar was recognized in 2010 by Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) with an entrepreneurship award. He won the Cabinet Award at AT&T and the Spirit Award at Honeywell for business and technical excellence. Prabhakar was named in "India's Digital Power 100 - 2013" by Impact magazine.

Prabhakar was featured in 500+ media stories and was invited to speak in various forums, including at Wharton India Economic Forum, INSEAD, Nanyang Technological University, IIT Bombay, IIM Calcutta, ISB Hyderabad and Nokia Developer Forum.

Prabhakar has published over 50 technical, business and general interest articles and opinion pieces, some of which were published by Harvard Business Review, The Wall Street Journal (Mint, Indian edition), Business Line. His wrote in the “Black, White and Various Shades of Brown,” published by Penguin India.

He is a Charter Member of the TiE.

References