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Ravi Agarwal, CEO
Mr. Agarwal has been working with small businesses for
the last eight years, most recently with a provider of
outsourced IT support for SMB's. It is from this experience
– working with small businesses owners face-to-face and
discussing their needs – that Mr. Agarwal recognized
the need in the market for enterprise level e-mail & collaboration
services - at a small business price. Realizing this
crucial customer need and combining it with his experience
creating BizLand, Inc., he founded groupSPARK.
Prior to Argus Care, the outsourced provider of IT departments
for businesses, Mr. Agarwal founded BizLand, Inc., a website
hosting company with over 85,000 small business customers
today. After founding BizLand in January 1997, he served
as CEO and Chairman, guiding the company through its initial
round of angel and venture investments. He subsequently
served in a variety of positions, such as Vice President
of Marketing, Business Development, Product Marketing,
and Corporate Development. As Vice President of Corporate
Development, he evaluated several companies for mergers
and acquisitions and led the acquisition of two companies
with strategic product fit. During his tenure at BizLand,
the company raised over $21 Million in total through a
combination of equity and debt financing. Mr. Agarwal is
currently the Chairman Emeritus of BizLand.
Prior to launching BizLand, Mr. Agarwal spent two years
in General Electric's plastics division, where he completed
its acclaimed management-training program. He earned a
B.S. degree in plastics engineering, with a minor in mathematics,
from the University of Massachusetts at Lowell.
Mr. Agarwal has spoken at numerous
business and technology conferences as well as guest
lectured at business schools at Boston University, Boston
College, and Babson College. He worked with professors
at Bentley College and Boston University to write three
case studies on BizLand, which have since been taught
internationally. In 2001, he was chosen by Entreprenur
Magazine in their "3rd Annual
10 under 30" - top 10 business people under the age
of 30 years old.
Mr. Agarwal is very passionate about life and loves activities
such as rock climbing, hiking, rollerblading, skiing, sailing,
racquetball, soccer, dancing, traveling, and photography.
During the summer of 2001, he spent six weeks in East Africa,
hiking Mt. Kilimanjaro and volunteering at a schools teaching
AIDS awareness and prevention programs, teaching basic
computer skills, and teaching sports at a home for street
children. Mr. Agarwal stays active in the community, volunteering
his time with organizations such as SAMTA, an organization
that mentors high school students, and TiE, an organization
that helps entrepreneurs.
Gagan Prakash, VP of Engineering
Mr. Prakash is a results oriented, hands on technology
leader who is experienced in applying Information Technology
to diverse and complex situations. He has held key positions
in a number of entrepreneurial ventures as well as leadership
and technology development positions at IBM and GE Fanuc
Automation. In these positions he has been responsible for
designing and leading the development of large scale, software
products for a variety of industries.
At GroupSpark, Mr. Prakash is responsible for leading
the design and development of GroupSpark's Private Label
Application Delivery (PLAD) platform as well developing
new technology solutions for the SMB market.
Prior to GroupSpark, Mr. Prakash was the Product Director
at LifetecNet, Inc, where he led the design and development
of StrataSync; a scaleable, enterprise level software solution
for Collaborative Supply Chain Management for the Pharmaceutical
Industries. Mr. Prakash led a team of Product Development,
SQA and IT professionals for designing and developing StrataSync
utilizing Industry standard technology. Additionally, he
played a key role in establishing and implementing structured
software development practices for developing StrataSync
according to FDA validation guidelines.
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