Venture capital (VC) firm Accel India’s founding partner Prashanth Prakash and Indian-American entrepreneur and investor Vinod Dham have been named among the Padma awardees for the year 2025.

While Prakash has been awarded the country’s fourth-highest civilian honour Padma Shri, Dham has been bestowed the third-highest civilian award, Padma Bhushan. Prakash has been honoured for his “distinguished service” in the field of “trade and industry”.

Meanwhile, Dham, who is the developer of Intel’s Pentium microprocessor and is on the advisory panel of the government’s India Semiconductor Mission, has been awarded for his contributions in the area of “science and engineering”.

As the tradition goes, the awardees named today will be conferred the award by the President of India.

In total, the President approved the conferment of 139 Padma Awards, including Padma Vibhushan, Padma Bhushan and Padma Shri.

An alumni of Bangalore University and the University of Delaware, Prakash is one of the biggest names in the Indian venture capital ecosystem. He founded one of India’s first animation companies, Visual Reality, in 1995, and followed it up by cofounding IT services company NetKraft in 1997.

Subsequently, he cofounded one of India’s first seed-stage funds, Erasmic Ventures, which would go on to pave the way for Accel India. Under his leadership, Accel India has raised funds worth $3 Bn and has invested in some of the biggest names in the Indian startup ecosystem, including Flipkart, BookMyShow, Infra.Market, Curefoods, among others. He is also a member of the National Startup Advisory Council.

On the other hand, Vinod Dham graduated from the Delhi College of Engineering (now Delhi Technological University) and then moved to the US to study at the University of Cincinnati.

He briefly worked at the Banaras Hindu University (BHU) as a researcher after returning to India in 1971 but returned back to the US to join chipmaker Intel in 1979. There, he played a key role in developing the Pentium processor, which earned him the moniker “Father of the Pentium Chip”.

He also founded cross-border early-stage VC fund IndoUS Venture Partners, which would go on to invest in startups such as Snapdeal and Myntra, in the mid-2000s. In his personal capacity, .

It is pertinent to note that Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Microsoft chief executive , Padma Bhushan, in 2022. Zoho founder Prakash’s peer and Info Edge founder .

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