About

Yogananth Gopalakrishnan is an experienced Intrapreneur and Open Innovation specialist currently driving innovation at Target. With over 11 years of international work experience, Yogi is passionate about empowering first-time founders from inception to growth by putting tech, design, and innovation to work. He is responsible for building interventions that help early to mid-stage startup founders thrive in incubation and acceleration programs. Yogi has been proactively involved in guiding startups through their business journey from idea to enterprise and building an innovation ecosystem for startups to drive growth. Yogi's specialties include Lean Incubation, Portfolio Management, Open Innovation, Experiential Marketing/Brand Building, Technology Commercialization, Business Development, and Ecosystem Development. He mentors startup founders in design thinking, customer value proposition, go-to-market, and business modeling. Yogi has worked with leading MNCs in IT & Telecom sectors in India and the UK. He is an alumnus of Kongu Engineering College and finished a Masters degree in Wireless Communications at Brunel University London. Yogi is currently working as a Program Manager at Target Accelerator India, enabling retailtech startups to unlock their growth potential in the open innovation ecosystem through Target's technology innovation arm. He is responsible for the Global Target Technology Accelerator, where he identifies and embeds breakthrough technology startups into Target's business operations to help solve complex, real-world problems at a global scale. As part of the Target Accelerator Program [TAP] Cohort #9, Yogi supported startups from India, Estonia, and the US and enabled them to work on challenging use cases ranging from Customer Engagement, Marketing, Sourcing, Supply Chain, and Sustainability using 3D [AR/XR], AI/ML, SaaS, and Robotics. Outside of work, Yogi is an ardent Art of Living Teacher, Spiritual Seeker, and long-distance runner. He enjoys content writing, creative design, and jogging. Yogi's tech stack includes Mobile, AI, and ML.