CommNexus San Diego

Prashant Kantak
Board Advisor

Prashant Kantak is an early-stage venture advisor and investor. He plays an active role in helping determine business and product strategy, organization and go-to-market strategy and takes operational roles as needed in early stage companies. Prashant Kantak started and led QUALCOMM Ventures, a $500M strategic venture capital fund of QUALCOMM, with operations in North America and Asia including Korea ($60M), Japan ($30M) and China ($100M) for 6 years from 1999 through 2005. He was actively involved with investing in and managing over 24 portfolio companies in the US and led investments in several startup companies including Paypal (acquired by EBAY), Air Prime (acquired by SWIR), GTRAN Wireless (acquired by FLEX), PacketVideo, Iridigm (acquired by QCOM), Airvana (IPO), Discera and JAMDAT (IPO). Aside from his active involvement with the portfolio companies of the fund, he created strategic linkages, co-development and business partnerships between the startup companies and QUALCOMM operating units as well as with QUALCOMM’s partners in the wireless value chain. He was also responsible for various corporate development efforts including technology and business strategy, strategic alliances, partnerships and acquisitions.

Prashant has over 20 years of business and technical experience in the field of telecommunications. He was with QUALCOMM since 1990 and held various technical and business management positions within QUALCOMM. He participated in the early definition and development of CDMA 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 and also has a MS and BS in Electrical Engineering.

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