Salil Pradhan

Salil is a Venture Partner and early stage investor with Draper Nexus Ventures. An advisor to corporate LPs on product strategy, partnerships with startups, and M&A, his current focus in on seed/early stage startups in verticals including retail, healthcare and agriculture with an emphasis on IoT (Internet of things).

Previously, Salil spent 10 years at Hewlett Packard in a variety of roles, including CTO of HP’s Enterprise RFID/IoT business where he helped create and grow the nascent IoT solutions business to $100m in revenue.

He serves on the Board of Momentfeed Inc., is a mentor at the Plug & Play Tech center and Cincinnati based Brandery and an advisor to a number of tech startups. Salil is also an advisor to Washington DC based Govonomy, which helps technology startups growth into government markets. He has also served on the advisory boards of UCLA’s WINMEC and UCSD’s Center for Wireless Communications.

A founder of two startups, Salil’s all round experience as a entrepreneur, venture capitalist, product executive and corporate strategist makes him a sought after panelist and judge at venture pitch events. He has been frequently quoted by leading publications. Salil has been issued 54 US patents, in areas related to sensors, IoT and computer systems. He has an MS in Computer Science from Northeastern University in Boston and a B.E. (Computer Engineering) from the University of Pune, India.