Pankaj Parashar is the co-founder of Purple Ant, which is the only device-agnostic predictive property monitoring platform that helps ambitious leaders in Insurance companies to look beyond the curve in an era in which data is currency.

Pankaj has more than twenty years’ experience working at the intersection of technology and insurance. As an IT service provider executive, he has seen at close hand the business problems faced by the insurance industry and has led teams to provide solutions using technology. He strongly believes that it is easier for startups today to be an enabler for insurers rather than traditional service providers because clients want to buy solutions for their problems rather than commodity FTEs from service providers with no skin in the game.

With InsurTech now becoming mainstream, Pankaj uses his rich experience to accelerate the adoption and implementation of emerging technologies in solving real-world challenges for the insurance industry. Specifically, Pankaj ensures Purple Ant is constantly fulfilling the mission to make insurers more effective in acquiring and retaining policyholders by using new technologies, such as the Internet of Things (IoT) and artificial intelligence (AI). Through partnerships and integrations with leading home sensor companies, Purple Ant is helping insurers move toward prevention instead of the recovery model of customer engagement and making it possible for homeowners to think differently about insurance.

Prior to launching Purple Ant as an entrepreneur, Pankaj held sales, business development, and leadership roles at companies such as Cognizant Technology Solutions (Head of Sales – Global Insurance), Capgemini (Business Leader), and Syntel Inc (Director – Business Development). He has managed insurance practices worth more than $2 billion, established relationships with numerous executives at top 20 U.S. P&C insurance companies and spearheaded the first SaaS sale in the insurance vertical while at Cognizant in 2017.

Pankaj holds an M.B.A. from XLRI Jamshedpur: Xavier School of Management and B.E(Electronics) from Delhi College of Engineering.

In this session, Pankaj will cover:

• Startup journey from 22 years of the corporate world to startup

• Cultural differences – Growing up in India vs Opportunities in India/US

• Look back to Advising myself if I was 21 years old?

• Learnings as a first-time founder

• Perspective on how tech is impacting the world/enterprises especially

• The Freedom to Fail and Other Startup Advantages

• Taking the leap from corporate job to startup

Startup Grind is a global startup community designed to educate, inspire, and connect entrepreneurs. We host monthly events in more than 400 cities and 115 countries featuring successful local founders, innovators, educators, and investors who share personal stories and lessons learned on the road to building great companies. 

The event will be broadcast by video conference. The link will be sent to all registered participants.

Event content:

Brief introduction of Startup Grind (5 min)

Conversation between Pankaj and Àyush Jain (45min)

Question Time (10 mins)