Bhargav Sri Prakash


Bhargav Sri Prakash is an Indian entrepreneur and engineer based in silicon valley.
Sri Prakash has worked in gamification and is the inventor of Digital Vaccine technology to reduce the risk of lifestyle diseases. He is the founder and CEO of FriendsLearn, and is the Chief of Product for Fooya, which is a mobile app designed to improve health.
He is a former professional tennis player and junior national champion from India.

Early life

Bhargav Sri Prakash was born in Chennai, India. He is the son of architect, urban designer and artist Sheila Sri Prakash and M. V. Sri Prakash. He was the top ranked junior tennis player in the nation in the early 1990s. He also played in international tournaments representing India and had a career best International Tennis Federation world ranking of 761. He enrolled in the Birla Institute of Technology and Science but dropped out in his first semester and returned to Chennai because "the tennis courts on campus at BITS were tarred and the net appeared to be a hammock", as he described in an interview. He gained an undergraduate degree in Mechanical Engineering from the College of Engineering, Guindy and went on to attend graduate school on a research fellowship at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where he graduated with a master's degree in Automotive Engineering.

Career

He started his first company, CADcorporation, when he was enrolled as a graduate student at the University of Michigan to commercialise his graduate research in math-based simulations for design optimisation of automotive powertrain systems. After selling CADcorporation, he founded Vmerse in 2005, which was the first to market with a gamified 3D simulation platform for college recruiting and alumni relations. He sold Vmerse in 2009. In 2008 he started an investment fund and asset management company – Nirmana Investments – and served as a managing director.
Based on his experience with Vmerse, he was appointed an entrepreneur fellow of the Kauffman Foundation in 2011, to address education and health issues, which is when he founded FriendsLearn.