I was born on 9th September 1981 in the city of Bangalore, Karnataka, India. My father, Sri. V. Narayana Udupa, is a development officer in Life Insurance Corporation of India. My mother Smt. Savithri is a teacher at VVHNS Girls High School. I have a older brother, Praveen Udupa, who works as Director of Business Analysis practice at Keane. His wife, my sister-in-law, Mythili is a carnatic music enthusiast. She has finished her senior level exam in music, and needless to say that she is awesome. Their kid and my nephew, Avyay, is about 5 years old. He is amazingly cute. I have a younger brother, Karthik Narayan, who works as software developer at Ubona. Checkout my family album here.I got married on November 6, 2008 to Nandini. She currently works as a software developer at SAP Labs, Bangalore. After I got to know Nandini, I realized that she and I studied in the same college. When I was in my final year of BE, she was in her first year of MCA. It is really unfortunate that we did not get to meet during our university days. Nandini and I are born only 8-9 months apart, which puts us both in the same age group. A direct result of that is that we both have more or less the same wisdom – that goes to say that we are both equally mature and equally crazy. I love my wife a lot, she makes my life worthwhile.
I did most of my schooling in SKCH – Sri Kumarans Children’s Home (http://www.kumarans.org/). The only year I had to skip SKCH was when I was in my 8th standard. That year I studied at Jana Seva Vidhya Kendra or JSVK. I am a Computer Science Engineer from Jawaharlal Nehru National College of Engineering, which is affiliated to Visveswariah Technological University.
After completing my graduation in 2003; I worked for about 7 months with Linux Learning Centre as a trainer for their Qt and Linux Device Driver Programming courses. I then joined Matrix Technologies – Kolkata in 2004 as a software developer, working on a Qt and OpenGL based visualization application. In 2005, I moved back to Bangalore and began the process of incorporating VCreate Logic (VCL) in Bangalore. Since then I have been working at VCL as Managing Director.
My passion is software development. I love developing visualization software. What started as a hobby in late 2004 has now become a profession. I began working on VTK Designer in my free-time in 2004. Version 1.0 of VTK Designer was released in November of 2004 and since then the product has gathered users steadily. Today my company makes use of VTK Designer as a showcase product to enroll companies into buying our products and services.
I am an avid reader of books. I like everything from Fiction to Self-Help to Philosophy. Some of my all time favorites are: A New Earth from Eckhart Tolle, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People from Stephen R. Covey, The Lost Symbol from Dan Brown.
One of my hobbies is to attend training programs and talks given by eminent persons and groups. I personally loved the WINNERS workshop from Dr. Bharath Chandra. I have reaped a lot of benefits from that workshop. If I can take up bold decisions and face people with confidence, it is largely because of Dr. Bharath’s WINNERS workshop. I also liked the Landmark Curriculum for Living. The program was very deep and helped drop a lot of baggage from my past.
Of late I have started a personal-project of sorts. Having reaped the benefits of Entrepreneurship myself; I am inspired to create the opportunity of Entrepreneurship as a career option for students. We should have students graduating from universities as Entrepreneurs; not as employees. My belief is that it will happen only if we change the relationship we have with the word ‘Entrepreneurship’. Most of us make entrepreneurship mean – “starting a company”; or worse yet “starting a software company”. We are all so smitten by the great examples like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and Narayana Murthy that we fail to recognize entrepreneurship that exist in other forms. Like Wikipedia defines it – “Entrepreneurship is the act of being an entrepreneur; which means translating innovations into economic goods.” That can be done in a lot of ways and when we look at it closely – starting a company is just one way. My aim is to create a new relationship with the word Entrepreneurship for students so that they can choose enterprising careers for themselves.
I can be contacted on any of the following
EMail: prashanth.udupa@gmail.com
Skype: prashanthudupa
