Prashanth, or “PV”, brings over 20 years of operational and executive management experience to Novak Biddle Venture Partners. PV is currently on the boards of Approva, Appfluent, Appian and Centrifuge Systems through investments as a partner at Novak Biddle Venture Partners. He was most recently an investor and co-founder of ClearStandards that was sold to SAP AG in May 2009.
PV was the founder and CEO (2001-2008) of Approva Corporation and helped to make it the gold-standard for how large global companies and their external auditors ensure the strength of their company’s internal controls. Approva is backed by marquee venture capital firms including Novak Biddle, New Enterprise Associates (NEA), Columbia Capital, and Sierra Ventures with strategic investment from Hyperion/Oracle.
Before founding Approva, PV was co-founder and president (1996-2000) of Entevo, Corp., which was sold to Bindview (now part of Symantec) for $125 million in January 2000. Entevo raised over $25M dollars in venture capital was backed by marquee investors including NEA, Oak Investment Partners, Draper International, FBR Ventures, SAP Ventures and Novak Biddle Venture Partners. Prior to founding Entevo, PV spent several years managing enterprise-class products at Microsoft’s Systems Division, and later as a Director in its worldwide consulting services group (MCS).
PV was selected as a finalist for the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year for three consecutive years (2006, 2007, and 2008) for the Greater Washington region. He has also been recognized for building one of the Hottest Management Teams in the Washington DC area by the Northern Virginia Technology Council (NVTC), the nation’s largest technology think tank. PV is as an active board member of TiE-DC, Washington’s largest business networking organization, which provides area entrepreneurs with mentorship and support. PV is also the Chairperson of Pratham-DC, India’s largest non-governmental educational non-profit group. PV is an investor and advisor in Communikids — Washington DC Metro area’s one and only premier bilingual pre-school for children.
PV holds advanced degrees in Computer Science from the University of Pune (India) and the University of Cincinnati, and is a graduate of the Executive Management Program at MIT’s Sloan School. PV is also a Fellow at University of Maryland Smith Business School.
