Hirak Parikh is a venture partner at Augment Ventures. Hirak is a scientist, entrepreneur, investor, and dad. Over the last 17 years, Hirak has worked in various capacities in startups sitting at both sides of the table. He is passionate about the promise of innovative technologies being able to transform and impact human lives in a positive way.
Hirak’s first job out of graduate school was at a U-M spinout Neuronexus Technologies where he was senior research engineer when it was acquired by Greatbatch Medical in 2013. He then moved to Stuttgart, Germany to help co-found the Neuromarketing Labs where he worked on a number of different international projects for Fortune 500 companies such as: Audi, PepsiCo, FiServ, Roche/Genentech, Hornbach, Fox Germany in Europe and North America.
Since 2016, Hirak has been the Fund Manager of University of Michigan’s Monroe-Brown Seed Fund, an early stage fund that makes investments in life-science spinouts from the University of Michigan. Thus far, the fund has made nine investments across therapeutics, devices, healthcare/IT and genomics.
Hirak holds a Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering, MSE in Electrical Engineering, MS in Biomedical Engineering, BE in Electronics and Telecommunications from University of Pune, India. He lives in Ann Arbor with his wife and two kids (not to mention the dog!). When not busy reading he can be found running around town putting in some miles of training for his next marathon.