Kris Gopalakrishnan is the co-founder and former CEO of Infosys , and currently serves as the chairman of Axilor Ventures , an early-stage seed fund based out of Bangalore. He is recognized as a global business and technology thought leader and was voted the top CEO (IT Services category) in Institutional Investor’s inaugural ranking of Asia’s Top Executives and selected as one of the winners of the second Asian Corporate Director Recognition Awards by Corporate Governance Asia in 2011. He also ...
Dec 14, 2020•1 hr 11 min
Rahul Chandra is the Co-founder and Managing Partner at Arkam Ventures , an early-stage fund partnering aimed at Middle India –– the 400 million people just below the top of the pyramid. He was one of the earliest tech VCs in India, starting in 1998 as part of the team at Walden International's India-focused fund. He later moved to Palo Alto to invest in Silicon Valley start-ups. In 2005, he co-founded Helion Ventures and relocated to India. At Helion, he invested more than $100M in 15 companies...
Dec 10, 2020•1 hr 20 min
Venk Krishnan is the founder of NuWare and NuVentures . NuVentures is an early stage venture fund based out of Bangalore which has backed companies such as MuSigma, BigBasket, Acko, Pocket Aces, Thrillophilia among others. Follow Venk Krishnan ( @krishnanVenk ), host Akash Bhat ( @bhatvakash ) and the podcast ( @thedesi_vc ) on Twitter. . . . The Desi Startups of the Week: 1. BurnCal : India's First AI based home fitness trainer that can see and guide user to provide real time feedback on their ...
Nov 25, 2020•1 hr 8 min
Rohit Goyal is the Manager Partner at Windrose Capital , a Pune based early stage VC firm investing in India’s fast-transforming economy. He has entrepreneurial experience in Manufacturing & Technology and has set-up companies in & outside India, with people from China, Sri Lanka, UK & Germany. He holds a Bachelor's degree in Engineering (Electronics & Tele-Com.) & Masters in Management (Finance & Entrepreneurship) from CASS Business School, City University, London. . . ....
Nov 12, 2020•1 hr 14 min
Srikanth Sundararajan is the General partner at VenturEast , an India focused fund that helps tech startups looking to go global from India across segments like education, health, financial services, agritech, and Enterprise SaaS. Srikanth has 25+ years of international experience in the software product and services having worked at HP, Informix in the US, and was part of the executive leadership team at HCL, the world wide CTO at Cognizant and the COO at Persistent through its successful IPO. ...
Nov 03, 2020•1 hr 6 min
Sasha Mirchandani is Managing Director and Founder of Kae Capital and Co-founder Mumbai Angels . Previously, he was at Blue Run Ventures as Managing Director for the India operations. Before joining Blue Run Ventures he was CEO and Founder of Imercius Technologies. Earlier he was at Mirc Electronics (Onida) where he was Head of Corporate Affairs and new business. Follow Sasha on Twitter ( @sashamirchi) , host Akash Bhat ( @bhatvakash ) and our podcast ( @thedesi_vc ). . . . The Desi Startups of ...
Oct 18, 2020•43 min
Utsav Somani is a Partner at AngelList India and General Partner at iSeed (a seed-stage fund looking to bridge successful Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and Indian founders in the search of money as well as the expertise and knowledge of scaling up a startup). Follow Utsav ( @somani_utsav ), host Akash ( @bhatvakash ) and our podcast ( @thedesi_vc ) on Twitter. . . . The Desi Startups of the Week: 1. Flatheads : Flatheads is an all-day casual sneakers designed for work wear and optimized for 14-ho...
Oct 05, 2020•1 hr 1 min
Rutvik Doshi is the General Partner at Inventus Capital India , early stage Venture Capital firm that invests in Pre Series A and Series A. Rutvik has participated in India’s fast emerging internet ecosystem since 2007, first with Google where he launched several products including Voice Search, Google Mobile App, SMS Channels and managed Google News globally, and most recently as the CEO of ecommerce startup Taggle in Bangalore. Before Google he spent 6 years in the US building internet managem...
Sep 14, 2020•1 hr 17 min
Vinay Bansal is the CEO at Inflection Point Ventures , an early stage angel investing platform. He is a finance professional and turnaround specialist with 20+ years of experience across Fortune 50 companies, private equity & startups. Last, he was Senior Advisor at TPG Global and before that CFO & CIO at Wildcraft India. He is a Chartered Accountant by qualification and spent the first 14 years of his career in leadership positions across Financial Management and Manufacturing / Supply-...
Aug 24, 2020•1 hr 4 min
Melissa Frakman is the founder & managing partner of Emphasis Ventures ( EMVC ), a venture capital fund investing in early-stage fintech startups in India. She brings 15 years of experience participating in India’s digital revolution to bridge worlds for entrepreneurs and companies. Named on the “Global Fintech PowerList” by Innovate Finance, Melissa has led early stage investments in asia, supported new market strategy, and built partnerships worth over $1 billion for 15 of the Fortune 100 ...
Aug 17, 2020•50 min
Pankaj Jain is an angel investor and Ex-Partner at 500 Startups, a California-based seed fund and accelerator program. Pankaj focuses on investing in early stage startups across India, United States, and South Asia and has led investments in over fifty companies. Pankaj spent over 12 years in the Financial industry at firms such as JP Morgan, Long-Term Capital Management (LTCM) and GlobeOp Financial Services in various operational roles including enterprise mortgage risk management, application ...
Aug 03, 2020•1 hr 58 min
Ankur Warikoo is an angel investor, entrepreneur, mentor and public speaker. He co-founded Nearbuy.com in 2015, where he served as the CEO from 2015-2019. Ankur was previously the CEO of Groupon India + APAC, MD of at Rocket Internet India, Co-founder at Accentium Web, and a management consultant at A.T. Kearney. He also holds an MBA degree from The Indian School of Business, an MS Physics from Michigan State University and a BS from Hindu College, Delhi University. Ankur has 1M+ followers acros...
Jul 28, 2020•1 hr 5 min
Shruti Gandhi is the founder and General Partner of Array Ventures a data-driven venture capital firm. Six of her portfolio companies have exited to companies such as Apple, Paypal, and Samsung with 10x returns. Shruti spun Array Ventures out of True Ventures. She is also an adjunct professor in the CS department at Columbia University, featured on Business Insider , BBC , Forbes , VentureBeat , and USAToday , and host of the Array podcast. She also has an MBA from the University of Chicago and ...
Jul 20, 2020•41 min
Chinnu Senthilkumar is the General Partner and CTO at Exfinity Venture Partners , an Enterprise Tech focused VC fund with an emphasis on startups in the US-India corridor. Prior to Exfinity, Chinnu held Senior Executive roles at Intel, SanDisk and Texas Instruments, both in the US and India. In the capacity of SanDisk’s Country Head, Chinnu spearheaded SanDisk (now part of Western Digital) India operations in the areas of R&D, Operations and IT outsourcing. Chinnu is an innovator from a youn...
Jul 13, 2020•1 hr 2 min
Anup Jain is the managing partner at Orios Venture Partners , a VC firm investing in B2B and B2C startups with offices in Mumbai, Bangalore and Delhi. Anup leads their FMCG and Retail investments and has over 20 years of experience of building brands across countries and categories. Follow Anup ( @AnupOrios ), host Akash Bhat ( @bhatvakash ) and the podcast ( @thedesi_vc ) on Twitter. . . . In this episode we will cover: 1. Covid impact on Orios and the VC industry (1:15) 2. Anup’s background (2...
Jul 07, 2020•1 hr 19 min
Sushma Kaushik is a Partner at Aavishkaar Capital , an early-stage venture capital firm currently deploying out of its 6th fund and has close to half a billion dollars in AUM. She has over 18 years of diverse experience in the field of early stage investing, small business incubation and consulting across sectors. She is an engineering graduate from RVCE, Bangalore and has an MBA from the Indian School of Business, Hyderabad. Follow Sushma Kaushik ( @sushmakaushik1 ), host Akash Bhat ( @bhatvaka...
Jun 29, 2020•54 min
Piyush Puri leads the Brand Capital International team in Silicon Valley as Vice President of BWI, the strategic investment arm of The Times Group – India’s largest multimedia conglomerate. Before leading Brand Capital’s US office, Piyush was an investment banker in Mumbai, India focusing on investments in the energy, ancillaries, and the environment spaces. Piyush received his degree in Civil Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), has an MBA from XLRI Jamshedpur, and a Master’s ...
Jun 15, 2020•47 min
Rohan Malhotra is the co-founder and Managing Partner at Good Capital , a Delhi-based early stage fund which takes a bottom-up approach to problem-solving and values first-principles thinking. Prior to Good Capital, he co-founded Investopad , a seed-stage technology incubator that focused on ventures that were centered on solving India-centric problems. You may follow Rohan ( @r0hanmalhotra ), host Akash Bhat ( @bhatvakash ) and our podcast ( @thedesi_vc ) on Twitter. . . . In this episode we wi...
Jun 08, 2020•52 min
Vinod Murali is Managing Partner and Co-founder of Alteria Capital . Vinod has 15+ years of experience spanning Venture Debt, Mezzanine Capital & Structured finance, Corporate Banking and Branding. Prior to Alteria, he spent time as the Deputy CEO at InnoVen Capital India (prev. known as SVB India Finance), and before that, at Citigroup as part of the Corporate and Investment Banking Group where he managed large Corporate relationships across Auto, Healthcare and Consumer industries. Follow ...
Jun 01, 2020•57 min
Alex Lazarow is the Investment Director at Cathay Innovation . Prior to joining Cathay Innovation, Alex was a Principal at Omidyar Network, a global philanthropic investment firm. While at Omidyar, he focused on investments in the global FinTech and financial inclusion space across the U.S., Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia. He is also an adjunct professor specializing in impact investment and entrepreneurship at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey. He is a Kau...
May 25, 2020•46 min
Pankaj Makkar is the Managing Director, Bertelsmann India Investments , a strategic investment arm of Bertelsmann SE & Co. KGaA in India, focusing on investments in the digital, education, media and services sectors. He’s spent his career at Astro, Univision and has been at Bertelsmann for the last decade. He holds a B.Comm Hons. from Delhi University and received his MBA from Harvard Business School. Bertelsmann India Investments has several startups in its portfolio including Licious, Saav...
May 18, 2020•44 min
Ankita Vashistha is the Founder and Managing Partner at Saha Fund , a fund that invests in early stage tech-startups run by women entrepreneurs. Ankita comes with a background finance having spent time working in venture capital and private equity before co-founding Saha Fund along with her partner, Usha Amin. Follow Saha Fund ( @sahafund ) and host Akash Bhat ( @bhatvakash) on Twitter. . . . In this episode we will cover: 1. Ankita’s background 2. Covid-impact on the venture industry 3. What is...
May 11, 2020•49 min
Ishpreet Singh Gandhi is the Founder and Managing Partner at Stride Ventures , a venture-debt fund focused on lending to growth-stage startups with investments in companies such as Bira and Stellapps . He brings over 13 years of experience encompassing Banking, Private Equity and Venture Capital. During his last stint as Regional Head (North & East) at IDFC Bank, he spearheaded startup business by initiating lending business across Fintech, Consumer, Logistics and Agritech space. He has comp...
May 04, 2020•50 min
Ritu Verma is one of the co-founders at Ankur Capital . She is passionate about bringing innovation from lab to the market and did that for a decade across corporates such as Unilever and Philips. She has also worked globally investing in IP-led renewable technologies. She has a PhD in physics from University of Pennsylvania and an MBA from INSEAD. You can follow Ritu ( @rituverma01 ) and host Akash Bhat ( @bhatvakash ) on Twitter. … Glossary of terms: 1. Impact Investing: Impact investing refer...
Apr 27, 2020•43 min
Bhaskar is the Founder and Managing Partner at Unicorn India Ventures . In the past decade, Bhaskar has established himself as a well-regarded early stage investor and advisor, especially in the UK and India. He has held senior corporate positions with Times of India, Zee Telefilms and Altavista UK. In 2000, he started his first entrepreneurial venture, Recreate Solutions, a company within the digital media realm and backed by Insight Partners. After scaling the business, he sold the business to...
Apr 19, 2020•55 min
Mark Kahn is the Managing Partner at Omnivore , a venture capital firm which funds entrepreneurs building the future of agriculture and food systems. Mark co-founded Omnivore in 2010 with Jinesh Shah, ex-CFO at Nexus Venture Partners. Previously, Mark was the Executive Vice President (Strategy & Business Development) at Godrej Agrovet, and also had stints at Syngenta and PFM. He earned a BA (Honors) from the University of Pennsylvania and an MBA from Harvard Business School, where he graduat...
Apr 13, 2020•51 min
Abhishek Prasad is the Managing Partner at Cornerstone Venture Partners (CSVP), an early-stage fund focused on backing startups that are ‘technology enablers’ in India and abroad. A few of the companies within their portfolio include Intelligence Node, Wizgo, Credit Nirvana and Smart Ship. Abhishek is an IIM-B alumnus, committee member at NASSCOM and has previously spearheaded the Investment team at GenNext Ventures Fund (part of Reliance Industries Ltd. ) Follow both, Abhishek Prasad ( @abhishe...
Apr 06, 2020•48 min
Sajith Pai is the Director at Blume Venture . Sajith is a long-time media executive turned VC. At Blume, Sajith supports investments in media, edtech and e-commerce, while simultaneously helping Blume building a research and knowledge platform. Before Blume, Sajith worked at The Times of India Group, across roles in strategy, business development and marketing. Sajith has an MBA from IIM Ahmedabad, and a BA in Economics from Chowgule College, Goa. You can follow him on Twitter ( @sajithpai ) and...
Mar 30, 2020•54 min
Rama Bethmangalkar is the Director at Qualcomm Ventures . He joined Qualcomm with 17 years of experience spanning technology investing, R&D and product management. Previously, he was Principal at Ventureast , a premier VC firm in India. His current interests include enterprise software, IoT, and machine learning among the emerging technologies. Prior to venture capital, Rama was with Sun Microsystems in Silicon Valley for close to 7 years, initially as a systems programmer and later as a sen...
Mar 22, 2020•53 min
Karan Mohla is Executive Director and Head of Consumer Media & Technology sector at Chiratae Ventures where he heads the sector focus and strategy on Consumer Media & Technology investments. He has been investing in Indian companies since 2009 and has over 15 years of experience in the technology industry across India and the US. Prior to Chiratae Ventures, Karan worked with QVT Finance LP, a US based hedge fund and was a founding member of their Asia-Pacific practice. He earlier worked ...
Mar 15, 2020•1 hr 7 min
