About Desh Deshpande

Gururaj “Desh” Deshpande is a Trustee of Deshpande Foundation along with his wife Jaishree. Desh is also the President and Chairman of Sparta Group LLC, a family investment office.

Dr. Deshpande has pursued an entrepreneurial career and built several companies including Cascade Communications and Sycamore Networks.

Dr. Deshpande lives in Boston and serves as a life-member of the MIT Corporation.

Deshpande Foundation set up MIT’s Deshpande Center for Technological Innovation, Deshpande Center for Social Entrepreneurship in India, Entrepreneurship for All (EforAll) in Lowell/Lawrence Massachusetts and Pond- Deshpande Center at the University of New Brunswick in Canada. They were founding funders of UPOP at MIT, I-Corp at NSF and MassChallenge.

Dr. Deshpande holds a B. Tech. in Electrical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology – Madras, an M.E. from the University of New Brunswick in Canada, and Ph.D from Queen’s University in Canada.

Deshpande co-chaired a National Council to support President Obama’s innovation and entrepreneurship strategy.

You can read more about Desh here.