Senior Advisor, Social Venture Capital Fund (SVCF) Project, POA Educational Foundation
Chairman, Ekagrata Inc.
Chairman, PARTS iD, Inc. (NYSE:ID)
Chairman, Kingsbridge Centre
Prashant Pathak is a senior advisor of the POA Educational Foundation on issues pertaining to social venture capital and entrepreneurship. Currently, he is leading the Social Venture Capital Fund (SVCF) initiative. The SVCF initiative is a result of POA’s flagship initiatives – ‘Project Beyshick’ and ‘Project Beyshick Business Plan Competition’. Project Beyshick nurtures prosperity and financial independence amongst First Nations communities and individuals by encouraging and mentoring entrepreneurial efforts. The Business Plan competition was a successful pilot for the SVCF project. Prashant has been working with several institutions and corporations in Canada to launch the project on full scale. He has been an active mentor for Project Beyshick since its inception in 2005.
Prashant brings to the SVCF and Project Beyshick initiatives his expertise and knowledge as a private equity investor, and advisor to Fortune 500 corporations and general management experience gained in operating roles.
Mr. Prashant Pathak is CEO of Ekagrata Inc. a business-building-oriented diversified family company and a Principal of In Colour Capital Inc. As an active owner, he spends time in Board and oversight roles at private and public companies. Outside of Canada and US, he has significant experience in, and exposure to issues in Asia, South America, and Eastern Europe. He serves on the Board of several public and community institutions including as Chairman of Parts iD Inc. (NYSE:ID). He has been an appointee of the Government of Canada on the Board of BDC for nearly a decade (Business Development Bank of Canada, a $30+ Billion institution). During that time he served as Chairman of the BDC Venture Capital and Investments Committee, Canada’s largest VC program. He also served extensively on the Credit & Risk Committees. While a member of the Pension Committee he proposed and expedited the initiative to adopt LDI to better address pension investment planning.
Previously, Mr. Pathak has been a Partner of McKinsey & Company Inc. At McKinsey, he was a leader of the North American Telecom Practice, the Financial Services Practices and a leader in the Strategy & Corporate Finance Practice. He has advised several global corporations on a range of general management, strategy, M&A and operations issues across North America, Asia, Europe and South America. At McKinsey he led several initiatives for the Firm focused on industry innovation, like Decapitalization – “Creating capital efficient business models”, “Unlocking the Value of a Board” – Governance as a competitive advantage, IP-Transformation – “Creating the Telco of the Future”, and Lean Six sigma – “Creating the Lean Telco”. He has also been part of the startup team and the Managing Partner of ReichmannHauer Capital Partners a successful Canadian investment firm.
Prior to McKinsey, Mr. Pathak spent several years in the industry in management and field operations roles at Schlumberger and Halliburton. At Schlumberger Geco-Prakla, he started in the field and rapidly progressed to eventually supervise the seismic navigation operations for Asia Pacific. Before Schlumberger he worked with Halliburton’s JV in India (HLSI) in upstream exploration business and also led the special projects team. Mr. Pathak has extensive international experience and built strong trusted relationships with several corporations, conglomerates and family-holding companies from his work in Europe, Middle East Asia, and South East Asia. In addition to operations, he has experience in leading product and technology platform development.
Outside of professional interests, Mr. Pathak actively contributes to several community and non-profit institutions and causes. He was an Executive-in-Residence with the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada (APF), created by an Act of Parliament in 1984, APF is an independent, not-for-profit think tank on Canada’s relations with Asia. Mr. Pathak is an executive sponsor of Project Beyshick a program focused on career orientation and entrepreneurship development in First Nations Youth in partnership with the Nishnawbe Aski Nation.
He is a member of the Young Presidents’ Organization (YPO) and a Member of Chatham House – The Royal Institute of International Affairs – where he has spoken on matters related to food security and long term investing. He is a Governor on Board of University of Guelph, a global leader in agricultural, plant and natural sciences; he also serves on the Board of MaRS Discovery District, North America’s largest urban innovation hub and on the Board of The Fields Institute – for research in Mathematical Sciences, an internationally leading centre for mathematical and applied research. He was recognized as Canada’s Top 40 Under 40TM for exceptional achievement across five dimensions – vision and leadership; innovation and achievement; impact; growth and development strategy; community involvement and contribution – and the capacity to encourage and foster growth. He is an inductee to the “30 most influential Indo-Canadians Power List” of Rediff’s India Abroad (2009), adjudged South Asian Professional of the Year 2010 by MidWeek Magazine, and amongst 100 Most Influential Global Indians by Diaspora World in 2014. Previously he served on the Board of the North York General Hospital in Toronto. He is an alumnus of the core team of Vartana, a new type of bank in Canada – a bank that is not only a charity, but is also owned by and dedicated to serving others engaged in charitable activities. He was a Charter Member of TiE (The Indus Entrepreneurs). Founded in 1992, in Silicon Valley TiE, is a global, non-profit network dedicated to the advancement of entrepreneurship.
Recently during the Great Recession crisis, as a member of the Credit Risk and Investment Committee of the BDC Mr. Pathak contributed to the Canadian government’s Economic Action Plan through the launch of the CSCF (Canadian Secured Credit Facility) and BCAP (Business Credit Availability Program) ~$17 Billion programs that were meant to provide increased credit support in Canada.
Mr. Pathak migrated to Canada in 1998. He now lives in Toronto. Mr. Pathak has an MBA from INSEAD with Distinction and a B.Tech
degree in Electrical Engineering from The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), where he was adjudged the Best All-round Graduating
Student of his class. He also has a Diploma in Fuzzy Logic from IIT.