Karl Mehta

Mehta grew up in Bombay and graduated from Bombay University in electronics engineering. In a 2015 interview with Inc42 he recalled that the U.S. Consulate in Mumbai rejected his student visa application three times, costing him his admission, and that he reached the United States by applying for a visitor visa in Singapore.⁠[1]

He said he then spent six years on graduate education, paying for it himself by selling gadgets and tutoring, and founded his first company soon after graduating.⁠[1]

Mehta founded and led PlaySpan, a Santa Clara, California, company that monetizes digital content, until its acquisition by Visa. He described it as having “built a bitcoin style virtual currency platform even before bitcoin.”⁠[2][1]

On February 9, 2011, Visa announced it would acquire PlaySpan for approximately $190 million in cash plus additional consideration tied to performance milestones, expecting to complete the deal in its fiscal second quarter of 2011. The acquisition was completed in March 2011.⁠[3][4]

In 2012 Mehta was selected for the Obama administration’s inaugural 2012–13 class of White House Presidential Innovation Fellows.⁠[1][2]

He said his White House work led him to see that India needed a similar organization, and he founded the nonprofit Code for India in the United States and India.⁠[1]

In April 2013 the venture capital firm Menlo Ventures named Mehta a venture partner to source investments and advise in financial services, mobile payments, e-commerce and gaming.⁠[2]

He said he went to the venture firm thinking he could be a “force multiplier.”⁠[1]

On July 15, 2015, FriesenPress published Financial Inclusion at the Bottom of the Pyramid, co-written by Mehta and Carol Realini, on using communications technology to deliver financial services to the unbanked.⁠[5][4]

By 2015 Mehta was founder and chief executive of EdCast, a social learning network company with an offshore development center in Mumbai. He said at the time: “EdCast is revolutionary because it is changing the way how people learn.”⁠[1]

On May 16, 2022, Cornerstone OnDemand, a talent management software provider backed by Clearlake Capital, announced it had completed its acquisition of EdCast; terms were not disclosed. Mehta, EdCast’s former CEO, joined Cornerstone to lead the new EdCast business unit.⁠[6]

He said in the announcement: “Innovation has always been at the heart of our vision at EdCast.”⁠[6]

In November 2022 the nonprofit investment fund America’s Frontier Fund announced that Mehta had become chairman of the Quad Investors Network, an independent group welcomed by the White House and the governments of Australia, India and Japan that focuses on cross-border capital, public-private collaboration and resilient supply chains.⁠[7]

Mehta was appointed by California Governor Jerry Brown to the California Workforce Investment Board, received Ernst & Young’s Entrepreneur of the Year award for Northern California, and was named a Tech Pioneer by the World Economic Forum. The nonprofits he founded also include Grassroots Innovation.⁠[7][1]

LinkedInLinkedInLinkedIn is a social networking platform for professionals. It was founded in 2002 by Reid Hoffman and others, launched in 2003, and listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2011; after Microsoft acquired it for approximately $26.2 billion in 2016, it became a wholly owned Microsoft subsidiary. Its revenue comes from membership subscriptions, advertising, and recruitment solutions.Open the full entry: Public profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mehtakarl/ (opens in a new window).⁠[4]