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Soum Paul

Founder & CEO, Spark.live

Soum Paul is Founder and CEO of Spark.Live, a platform for Live Upskilling, Training and Skill-development for the Next Half Billion users from emerging markets. He is a strong believer in harnessing technology and content as a way to connect and empower people. This led to the inception of Spark.Live.

Soum has extensive expertise in Technology, Media, Entrepreneurship, Filmmaking and Creative Writing. He was a founding member of several startups including Pune-headquartered Mixercast and London-headquartered media tech startup State.com. He also founded financial tech consultancy Sixthdot Labs, and has worked for several years as a technologist in the US before returning to India and diving into the startup ecosystem. As Director of Special Projects at Knowlarity, one of India’s top cloud telephony startups, Soum helped the company’s flagship product scale to handle a large number of SMB and enterprise clients.

Soum is also a published author and filmmaker, and his books The Topper Prepares and Flight of the Unicorns, have both been published by HarperCollins. Topper Prepares portrays stories of trials and tribulations that students go through in order to crack one of the most competitive exams in the world. Flight of the Unicorns dives into the startup ecosystems of emerging markets, and the bubbles they go through.

Soum is an alumnus of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kanpur, graduating with a Bachelor’s in Technology (B.Tech) in Computer Science and Engineering. He also did research stints at EPFL, Lausanne and University of Zurich. He is also an avid traveler and has traveled through the depths of India and 36 other countries.

You can find more at soumpaul.com