Venkatesha is an Associate Professor in the Innovation & Entrepreneurship area at the School of Management and Entrepreneurship, IIT Jodhpur. He received his doctorate from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. With over a decade of academic and substantive start-up experience, he combines both the practice and the academic of entrepreneurship in his teaching and research. He is well-networked with academia and the entrepreneurial world, from which he draws inspiration and generates networking opportunities for his student start-ups. Before joining IITJ, he was an Asst. Professor at IIM Rohtak for over six years. He undertook a journey as an entrepreneur, setting up some unique ventures since 2014. He founded a voluntary group called Badte Kadam and a social venture, PurnaShiksha, catering education to hundreds of children from the most vulnerable communities without access to formal education. He co-founded Empathy Connects, which offers rural immersive experiences in India. He also co-founded and ran a successful business incubator. He has published several peer-reviewed books, journal articles, and case studies in internationally competitive and highly reputed outlets. Major works include “Nature of buyer-supplier Relationship”, published in the Journal of Small Business Management (2017), and “Symbolic Interactionism and the Metamorphosis of Sports Brands” in the Journal of Sport Management (2024). His recent book, “Kaplan, J. M., Warren, A. C. & Murthy V. R., (2022). Patterns of entrepreneurship management. John Wiley & Sons has been widely adopted as a textbook for entrepreneurship teaching. He has published dozens of case studies in globally reputed outlets, including Ivey Cases. Recent most impactful case studies on Ivey include Village Ways: Small Steps, Big Impact through Responsible Tourism (2025)And   Even Cargo: India's Women Only E-commerce Logistics Company (2021). He also presented his research work at prestigious conferences in different parts of the world. Theoretically, Venkatesha works within economic sociology, Transactional Cost Economising, and Symbolic Interactionism. His primary research stream focuses on micro and small-scale entrepreneurship, social and substantive entrepreneurship and Shared Business Models—the insights generated through his research help enhance business innovation and consultancy services. He offers consultancy services on critical scale-up issues, business model innovations, and brand visualisation for start-ups using various hands-on matrix solutions.

He offers PhD guidance on Social Entrepreneurship, MSME Entrepreneurship, Rural Entrepreneurship, Sports Entrepreneurship, BoP Enterprising, Shared Business Models, and Craft and local Community Entrepreneurship.