Lakshmi Pratury

Lakshmi Pratury is a business leader, entrepreneur, curator, speaker and former venture capitalist. Her riveting personality and penchant for technological innovation and community building has led her to her current avatar as founder and CEO of INK. INK is known for events like the INK Conference, INK Asia, INK Salons, and impact-oriented programs like the INK Fellows and INK Makers.

Pratury addresses large corporates and organizations where she instills cutting-edge insights and INK's moonshot style of thinking, to bring innovative business practices into the company. She also curates keynote sessions with global leaders to communicate compelling stories of technology and innovation to a larger audience. Finally, she curates Salon style events and panels, to leadership groups across the world.

Pratury has served as director and co-host of the SingularityU India Summit in association with INK. In 2009, she co-hosted TEDIndia in Mysore alongside Chris Anderson, the curator of the TED conference.

Pratury speaks widely on the topic of storytelling, specifically, the vital role that stories play in our families, businesses, and institutions. Her long experience in this area dates back to her time at Intel, where she harnessed the power of storytelling to help the IT giant transform from a chip company to a leader in the computing industry.

She has tremendous stage presence, built over years of practice speaking at conferences such as TED, DLD, WIRED and C2MTL, in addition to hosting eight major INK events in Asia. Pratury has published articles in the San Jose Mercury, San Francisco Chronicle, Mint (leading business dai-ly in India), interviewed celebrities, contributed to radio shows, including National Public Radio, and acted in local (US) theatre.

Prior to INK and TED, Pratury spent over two decades in the US in leading roles in the technology (Intel), venture capital (Global Catalyst Partners), and non-profit organizations (American India Foundation). She holds MBAs from Portland State University and the Bajaj Institute, attended IIT Mumbai, and was gold medalist in undergraduate mathematics at Osmania University, Hyderabad.

She is the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including being named “Inspirational Icon” at the Audi Ritz Icon Awards in 2015 and was named in Forbes’ list of “Women to Watch in Asia”.

Pratury currently splits her time between Bangalore, India and San Francisco, USA.