Mr. Atul Narkhede is the Chief Technical Officer (CTO) and Joint-Managing Director of Great Software Laboratory Pvt. Ltd. (GS Lab) and leads the business and technology strategy for the product development services company. He is also a co-founder and CTO of kPoint Technologies Pvt. Ltd., a technology spin-off from GS Lab in the interactive search-able video space. Prior to joining GS Lab, Mr. Narkhede was a Fellow at Strand Genomics, Bangalore, architecting the flagship data-mining and scientific visualization product Avadis from Strand. Avadis is currently deployed with premier R&D pharmaceutical organizations throughout the world, as well as bioinformatics departments in universities and research labs. Earlier, he was the Chief Architect at Tessera Systems Pvt. Ltd, Hyderabad, where he led the definition and implementation of the declarative ‘Web Services Definition Framework’ product at Tessera. He was also a member of the high-end graphics group at Silicon Graphics Inc, Mountain View, CA where he worked on graphics microcode and compilers for vector programming for custom graphics-accelerator ASICs. He has two publications and seven patents to his credit.
Mr. Narkhede received his B.Tech. in Computer Science & Engineering from IIT Bombay in 1993 and he did his MS in Computer Science from the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill. Recalling his undergraduate days, he says, “We used to ignore security warnings about swimming in the Vihar lake and routinely went for swimming in the lake. One week it rained a lot, resulting into overflowing of the lake and imagine our surprise when we saw a large crocodile by the pipeline, near the railway track. A huge crowd gathered to view the reptile and drove it back into the water. We never went swimming in the lake again!”
As a part of his contributions to IIT Bombay as an alumni, Mr. Narkhede played a key role in organizing Innovations (an annual event organized by the Pune Chapter of IITBAA to foster innovation in the society) for five years, where he also served on the selection panel. He was the only contributor who was a part of the leadership team for all five years. He also served as the Secretary and Executive Committee member of Pune Chapter for six years. During this time, he established and managed the Pune Chapter’s website, mailing lists etc. and actively organized all events such as talks by Distinguished Alumni and others, picnics, fresher’s party and so on. Mr. Narkhede is credited for setting up and supporting an archival process for all Chapter talks and events (online video recordings). He continues to lead the Pune Chapter, which has carried out 10 events in the last twelve months making it one of the most active chapters!
“My tryst with IIT Bombay was one of the most stimulating, exciting and enriching experience of my life and I like to relive those moments by associating with folks who share this common legacy. Besides the networking opportunities offered by this activity, it helps me stay in touch with friends and fellow alumni. The Chapter also provides a platform for making a positive change in the society by bringing thoughts of leaders and innovators into public domain. Alumni activities also help me give back to the IITB in a small measure, it is my way to express my gratification and gives me immense satisfaction,” shares Mr. Narkhede.
An avid traveller, Mr. Narkhede enjoys jogging, cycling, trekking and spends weekends wandering around the Sahyadris and long Himalayan treks. He infact, took several months off to undertake an unplanned, solo trip, all across India to explore the country. “It was a great experience, which reaffirmed my faith in the Indian society,” he adds. Mr. Narkhede also takes keen interest in Hindustani Vocal music and Sanskrit, and have driven some of the earliest online Sanskrit documentation projects in the 90s.