Meet the people behind Akken
Giridhar Akkineni
Founder, President & CEO
With his entrepreneurial spirit and technical expertise, Giridhar Akkineni founded Akken in March of 2005.
Prior to founding Akken, Giridhar establish InterWorldNet, an IT Staffing Firm in 1999. Previously, Giridhar has managed businesses in IT Solutions, Transport, Manufacturing and Retail industries.
Foreseeing the potential of the Internet and the changing software delivery model, he closed his staffing business in 2002 to focus on developing a revolutionary on demand business services software system - Akken Staffing™. Giridhar's passion and conviction took Akken from an innovative concept to being a competitive player in the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) market, offering the most comprehensive integrated solution for the staffing and recruiting industry.
Giridhar holds a Bachelor of Science in Electronics from India and a Masters in Computer Science from the University of Bridgeport in Connecticut.
Timothy Quirk
VP Marketing
Timothy Quirk has served as the Vice President of Marketing since October 2006 and is a primary contributor to the fast growth and success of Akken.
Prior to joining Akken, Tim served as Senior Product Manager, Secure Identification Products, for Digimarc Corporation. In this capacity, he transformed its aging $60 million flagship product line, improving product performance and customer satisfaction while closing business in new domestic and international markets. Before to his tenure with Digimarc, Tim held increasing levels of responsibility in sales and marketing positions with Forrester Research, NeoMedia Technologies, and Inc.com, a spin-off of Inc. Magazine, which, similar to Akken, offered SMBs one login to all their business applications from its website. Tim has more than eight years of experience in high technology sales, marketing, business and product development, strategic planning, and operations.
Tim holds a B.S. in Business Administration with a concentration in entrepreneurship from Babson College.
Prakash Akkineni
VP Engineering
Prakash Akkineni joined Akken in November 2007 as Vice President of Engineering. In this position, he is responsible for managing two teams with a combined total of more than seventy engineers. Prakash's focus is on keeping the communication channel open to meeting the company's aggressive release schedule.
Prior to Akken, Prakash worked in an IT capacity at Videojet, a Danaher company and a manufacturing organization that utilizes a business model of continuous improvement, used to guide and measure everyday activities within the company. Thirteen years of working in a company culture that, as a team, focused on being better, exposed Prakash to the other critical components of a successful business operation such as research, product development, sales and support. The experience at Videojet, where Prakash gained the broad business perspective of continually striving to improve, formed the foundation of his team approach style that he implements today.
Prakash holds a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering from Gulbarga University in India.
