Mahesh Murthy is an Indian venture capitalist. He is the founder of Pinstorm, a digital advertising firm located in Mumbai. He is also the Co-Founder, Managing Director, Managing Partner, Founding Partner, and Partner in Seedfund Ventures.

In 1982, Mahesh Murthy attended Osmania University to major in chemical engineering. ^[23]He eventually dropped out after 3 semesters. ^[12]He has stated that the lyrics from Pink Floyd's "Time" seemed to mock him during his college days: ^[22]

After dropping out of university, at the age of 19, Murthy was selling vacuum cleaners door to door.

As a salesperson, he was receiving several requests for a vacuum cleaning service instead.

This inspired him and someone else in the company to run one by themselves; they called it Vaclean.

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In creating brochures for the business, he discovered a new interest for writing and design.

When he realized the vacuum cleaning service wasn't going as well as planned, Mahesh Murthy started a design firm.

This also failed.

After learning from his mistakes during his stints with the first two companies he founded, Mahesh Murthy joined FCB/Ulka Advertising as a copywriter.

He worked mainly on food brands, mainframe computer brands, and local retailers.

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After gaining experience, Mahash Murthy's career progressed.

He became a Copywriter and Creative Supervisor for Grey from January 1987 until March 1990.

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After his stint with Grey, he moved to Hong Kong where he worked as the Associate Creative Director for Ogilvy & Mather.

At the time, it was Asia's largest ad agency.

There, he managed content for 40 countries and won awards for his work for clients like Unilever, The Economist, HP, Pepsi, MTV, Intel, Conrad Hotels, American Express, Hennessy Cognac, and Heineken. ^[10]He was also nomiated for “Asia’s best commercial of the decade”. ^[24]

After his stint in Hong Kong, Mahesh Murthy moved to CKS Partners, a Silicon Valley agency; he was a Partner, General Manager, and Content Director.

In 1995, he helped design the first commercial graphic user interface (GUI) for Yahoo! After that, he helped shape the now-classic "Earth’s Biggest Bookstore" campaign for Amazon in 1997. He also launched Paul Allan's net properties. ^[24]

After a successful NASDAQ IPO with one of CKS's clients, iCat, Murthy headed its marketing department. iCat, an e-commerce company, managed over 6,000 e-businesses at the time. It was eventually bought by Intel. ^[8]

In 1999, Mahash Murthy returned to India and joined Channel V, India's competitor for the United States'MTV. In two years, he cut their costs from 90% to less than 10% in one year and increasing revenue dramatically, and repositioned their brand to launch an online community for youth. It was acquired by STAR TV in 2000. ^{[10] [8]}

In founded Passionfund, his angel investing vehicle which backed Geodesic, WebDunia, Inkfruit and Doolally

After leaving Channel V, he went back to his roots and co-founded another company: Geodesic.

They provide software products and consultation services.

It was one of the first product-focused companies out of India.

He was there from April 1999 to 2008.

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In 2004, he started Pinstorm, a digital business consulting firm. ^[10]

Since 2000, Mahesh Murthy has been part of angel investment firms and VCs.

He is the Founder and Principal of Passionfund, which helped Geodesic as well as WebDunia, Inkfruit, and Doolally. ^[10]

After succeeding at Passionfund, he became a Managing Partner of Seedfund in 2006.

It was created after the promoters of Passionfund and Infinity Ventures came together to help early-stage technology startups in India.

Seedfund was twice voted "India's best early-stage fund" by an independent publication surveying Limited Partners - in 2010 and 2013.

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Mahesh Murthy is not a fan of graduate school.

He believes achieving your MBA is a waste of time. In his opinion, dropping out of college was a blessing in disguise. ^[20]

Unlike most entrepreneurs in India, Mahesh Murthy is quite skeptical of social media growth in the area.

He points out that, if social media is to optimize social media growth in India, then the industry needs to understand the region language gap between the Indian-speaking market and the English-speaking market.

He has alluded to Chinese websites like Weibo and Ren Ren as examples that India could emulate. ^[1]

Mahesh Murthy has 3 kids (all boys): Agni, Chayn and Vann.

^{[22] [6]}He was married, but they have since separated. ^[6]

He is a bookworm. He claims to have a few thousand books within 20 feet of his bedside. He tends to read books the way most people surf TV channels. ^[22]

He does not watch much TV anymore and primarily goes through newspapers just to check the advertisemnts.

Instead, he gets most of his news from news aggregator websites, such as Twitter and Google News. He uses other Google applications and Any.do often, as well. ^[22]

He lives by the following motto: