Sankaet Pathak is an Indian-American businessman and entrepreneur known for founding the robotics startup Foundation, and fintech company

Synapse Financial Technologies Synapse Financial Technologies, Inc. was an American banking as a service company based in San Francisco. It was founded in 2014 and filed for bankruptcy in April 2024. History Synapse was founded in 2014 as a banking as a service platform. Th ...

Early life and education

Sankaet Pathak grew up in

Rajasthan Rajasthan (; Literal translation, lit. 'Land of Kings') is a States and union territories of India, state in northwestern India. It covers or 10.4 per cent of India's total geographical area. It is the List of states and union territories of ...

, India. He moved to Tennessee to attend the

University of Memphis The University of Memphis (Memphis) is a public university, public research university in Memphis, Tennessee, United States. Founded in 1912, the university has an enrollment of more than 20,000 students. The university maintains the Herff Col ...

, where he studied computer engineering, mathematics and physics. He graduated with a master's degree in electrical engineering. In 2014, he was an inaugural Crews Center Entrepreneurship Fellow at the FedEx Institute of Technology.

Career

Synapse

While living with roommates in Twin Peaks, San Francisco, Pathak founded the

banking as a service Banking as a service (BaaS) is the provision of retail banking#products, banking products (such as current accounts and credit cards) to non-bank third parties through API, APIs. Description As a value network, BaaS aims at integrating as many ...

(BaaS) platform

. The company was originally founded to provide banking services to traditionally

underbanked The underbanked is a characteristic describing people or organizations who do not (or volunteer to not) have sufficient access to mainstream financial services and products typically offered by retail banks and thus often deprived of banking serv ...

customers. The company launched in 2014 and raised $51 million from investors including

Andreessen Horowitz AH Capital Management, LLC (commonly known as Andreessen Horowitz, or a16z) is an American privately held venture capital firm, founded in 2009 by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. The company is headquartered in Menlo Park, California. As of M ...

. It partnered with around 100 financial technology companies including

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and

Honey Honey is a sweet and viscous substance made by several species of bees, the best-known of which are honey bees. Honey is made and stored to nourish bee colonies. Bees produce honey by gathering and then refining the sugary secretions of pl ...

, and indirectly provided banking services to an estimated 10 million retail customers. In 2022, the company was listed as one of the 100 fastest growing financial services companies in the United States by ''Inc. Magazine''. In 2024, after ten years of operations, the company filed for bankruptcy.

Foundation

In 2024, Pathak co-founded Foundation Robotics Labs with Arjun Sethi. It is a humanoid robotics startup, with a goal of producing autonomous

humanoid robots A humanoid robot is a robot resembling the human body in shape. The design may be for functional purposes, such as interacting with human tools and environments and working alongside humans, for experimental purposes, such as the study of bipedal ...

capable of automating manual labor. The company launched an $11 million seed round, with investments led by Tribe Capital. That year, Pathak appeared on the ''

Forbes ''Forbes'' () is an American business magazine founded by B. C. Forbes in 1917. It has been owned by the Hong Kong–based investment group Integrated Whale Media Investments since 2014. Its chairman and editor-in-chief is Steve Forbes. The co ...

''' list of the "Biggest Career Comebacks Of 2024".

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Pathak, Sankaet 21st-century American businesspeople American chief executives of financial services companies University of Memphis alumni People from Rajasthan Financial technology company founders Year of birth missing (living people) Living people