Name Pradeep Kar Role Executive | Organizations founded Microland | |
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Always an Entrepreneur - Pradeep Kar
Pradeep Kar (born March 11, 1958) is the Founder, Chairman and Managing Director of Microland, recognized as a key player in the Remote Infrastructure Management services space in India. A serial entrepreneur, Pradeep founded and sold 3 technology companies, notable amongst them was Indya.com, which he sold to Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation; Planetasia.com, India’s first Internet Professional Services Company and Net Brahma Technologies.
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Early life and career
After graduating from Visvesvaraya National Institute of Technology in 1981, Kar attended S.P. Jain Institute of Management & Research for a master's degree in business administration. After completing MBA, he joined Wipro and soon relocated to US to run Sonata Software for three years. Kar saw an opportunity in India and founded Microland, where he serves as the Chairman until now. The company successfully raised 25 lakh Indian rupees from SBI Capital Markets in October, 1990 and became Compaq’s distributor in India and were also able to sign a major deal with Cisco under his leadership.
Alongside Microland, he also started a few companies including PlanetAsia.com, ITspace.com, Media2India.com, and Indya.com which were sold to take advantage of the dotcom bubble.
Kar has been recognized with the Indian Express ‘India Young Business Achiever Award’ as well as being selected by the World Economic Forum as a ‘Global Leader for Tomorrow’. He speaks frequently at conferences and industry events on the topics of remote infrastructure management, Information Technology and disruptive convergence. He has been featured in ‘Newsweek International’ as ‘Stars of Asia’ and in ‘Business India’ as ‘Stars of India’.
Boards and affiliations
Pradeep served as a Non-Executive Director of UBM plc., a global events-led marketing and communications services business listed on the London Stock Exchange for 10 years from 2006 to 2016, and is on the Board of Telstra Telecommunications India. He is a member of the Provost's Council of Trinity College, Dublin, and serves as Chairman of the Governing Council of Srishti Institute of Art, Design & Technology, Bangalore. He is also former President of The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE), Bangalore Chapter and Founding Member of the Bangalore Chapter of the Young Presidents Organization. Pradeep also chairs the Infrastructure Management Services Forum of NASSCOM, the apex body of the Indian Software & Services industry. He is also a founding member of the Beer Drinkers Association of Information Technology (BAIT), along with Bikram Dasgupta and Pravin Gandhi.