The Desi VC with Akash Bhat

Updated: 22 Jun 2025 • 151 episodes
thedesivc.com/the-desi-vc-podcast

The Desi VC, hosted by Akash Bhat, is an award-winning podcast featuring conversations with top investors & founders on trends, insights, and personal/success stories in the India-US startup ecosystem. Our purpose: As an immigrant in the US with deep roots in India, Akash explores the parallels & contrasts between Indian & US VC/tech landscapes. The podcast bridges knowledge gaps, fosters cross-cultural collaboration & celebrates 'desis' making a mark in the US.

Categories:

Show episodes

In 2016, Russian hackers broke into John Podesta’s Gmail during the US election. That single breach exposed how vulnerable email really is – and it directly inspired a billion-dollar cybersecurity startup. At the time, even the most powerful people in the world couldn’t fully secure their inboxes. Once hackers got acce

91 min
00:00
01:31:44
No file found

Kevin Carter is the Founder & Chief Investment Officer of EMQQ Global, a San Francisco based investment management and research firm focused on providing investors access to the fast growing Emerging and Frontier Markets technology sector. EMQQ Global invests in publicly traded internet and ecommerce companies operatin

75 min
00:00
01:15:20
No file found

Arun Penmetsa is a Partner at Storm Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm focused on Enterprise software companies. He invests primarily in SaaS, Security, and Digital Health startups. Before joining Storm, Arun held product and engineering roles at Oracle and Google, where he built enterprise software solution

66 min
00:00
01:06:58
No file found

Rohan Nayak is the Co-founder & CEO of Pocket FM, a company redefining audio storytelling for the world. While we’ve recently been publishing video episodes, this one’s a throwback to pure audio. Rohan had to travel unexpectedly, but we didn’t want to miss the chance to capture his insights on building one of India's f

74 min
00:00
01:14:31
No file found

Brij Bhasin is a longtime investor turned founder and the co-founder & CEO of Snow Mountain AI, a company focused on automating business processes in finance, compliance, and legal through AI. Before founding Snow Mountain, Brij was a General Partner at Rebright Partners, and earlier helped launch GSF Accelerator, one

76 min
00:00
01:16:45
No file found

Pramod is a Senior Principal at Blumberg Capital, an early-stage venture capital firm specializing in leading Seed and Series A rounds. The firm is based in Tel Aviv (Israel) and San Francisco. Before joining Blumberg Capital, Pramod was a Principal at 11.2 Capital, where he focused on investing in early-stage cybersec

84 min
00:00
01:24:06
No file found