Ankit Dhawan

Ankit Dhawan is a serial entrepreneur and technology leader with a diverse background in artificial intelligence, product management, and startup ventures. He is the Founder and CEO of Virtuelly, a platform he created to help distributed teams foster better connections and drive engagement through virtual experiences.12

Career Highlights

Entrepreneurial Ventures: Ankit is currently building a Gen AI startup in stealth mode while serving as an Entrepreneur in Residence at the Allen Institute for AI (AI2).1 Prior to this, he founded Virtuelly in December 2020, which has since served numerous technology companies and scaled to over $1 million in annual recurring revenue.3

Corporate Experience: Before founding Virtuelly, Ankit worked at Amazon as a Tech Product Lead for Generative Artificial Intelligence - Voice, where he was involved in creating artificial voices for Amazon and AWS customers.1 He has also held positions at Webtab and Curtiss-Wright Corporation as a Product Manager.1

Education and Entrepreneurship

Ankit holds an MBA in Entrepreneurship and Business Analytics from Cornell University, where he was actively involved in entrepreneurship and technology clubs.1 His entrepreneurial spirit is evident from his various roles:

• Angel investor in startups (2017-2022)
• Founder of On The Go Infomedia Pvt. Ltd, launching India's first free daily newspaper (2011-2012)
• Participant in Cornell's Life Changing Labs Accelerator Program1

Virtuelly

Ankit founded Virtuelly after experiencing firsthand the challenges of building connections in remote work environments. The platform curates and aggregates interactive virtual experiences and activities to help teams socialize and bond, regardless of their physical locations.2 Virtuelly's offerings range from virtual social activities like games and happy hours to live virtual entertainment events such as comedy, magic, and cooking experiences.1

Ankit's vision for Virtuelly stems from his belief in the importance of social interaction for team productivity and communication, especially in the context of increasing adoption of distributed and remote work models.2