Pragnesh Kanakia

About Pragnesh Kanakia

As an Senior Presales Architect with 30 years of experience in enterprise IT infrastructure, data platforms, and AI/HPC solutions, I help large enterprises and service providers accelerate digital transformation through modern data and AI architectures. I combine deep technical expertise with strong business acumen to design solutions that deliver measurable business outcomes.Currently the first employee of VAST Data in India, playing a key role in establishing and expanding the company’s regional presence by driving customer adoption and building the partner ecosystem. I lead presales architecture for large-scale GPU clusters 1K-10K (H100/H200, B200/B300 and GB300) and design end-to-end AI data pipelines supporting training, inferencing, and Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) workloads.A trusted advisor to CXOs and technical leaders, I specialize in translating business objectives into scalable solutions across AI infrastructure, data platforms, hybrid cloud, Kubernetes, containers, data protection, enterprise storage and distributed systems.I am passionate about technical evangelism, presales leadership, and customer success, having driven multi-million-dollar account growth, built high-performing technical teams, and enabled partners and GSIs to accelerate adoption of next-generation data platforms and AI infrastructure.Key areas of expertise:AI & HPC Infrastructure • Data Platforms & Storage • AI Data Pipelines • RAG & Inferencing • Hybrid & Multi-Cloud • Data Protection • Kubernetes & Containers • Presales Solution Architecture • Enterprise Transformation • Partner & Ecosystem Enablement

Experience

1. Senior Sales Engineer

   VAST Data

   Feb 2024 — Present

   As the first employee of VAST Data in India, I am instrumental in establishing and expanding the company’s regional presence by driving customer adoption and building the local partner ecosystem.Lead presales engagements, POCs, and architecture design for large-scale NVIDIA NCP GPU clusters and modern AI data pipelines optimized for training, inference, and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG).Serve as a trusted technical advisor to service providers and large enterprise customers for AI, HPC, and data-intensive workloads.Collaborate with sales, product, engineering teams, and technology partners to align customer requirements with VAST Data’s AI OS.

Education

• Sikkim Manipal University - Distance Education

  Master of Business Administration (M.B.A.), Marketing

  2010 — 2012

• Indira Gandhi National Open University

  Bachelor of Computer Applications, Computer and Information Sciences, General

  2001 — 2003

• Bharati Vidyapeeth

  Diploma, Computer Technology

  1990 — 1993

Skills

• Cloud Solutions
• Data Center
• Solution Selling
• Pre-Sales
• Storage, San, Virtualization
• Itil
• Disaster Recovery
• Network Security
• IT Service Management
• Cloud Computing
• Solaris
• Enterprise Software
• San
• Virtualization
• Solution Architecture
• Storage Virtualization
• Business Intelligence
• Disaster Recovery, Backup/Recovery
• Storage Area Networks
• Storage
• Vendor Management