WestBridge Capital announces additions to Partnership
Wednesday, 05 January 2005, 20:30 IST
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MUMBAI: WestBridge Capital Partners announced today that it has promoted Rishi Navani and Sandeep Singhal to Managing Director, and SK Jain to Venture Director at the firm. They will join founding partners Sumir Chadha and KP Balaraj in helping manage the firm’s investments. WestBridge is an investor in the outsourced services sector in India, and has a number of portfolio companies with market leadership positions including AppLabs, Celetronix, ICICI OneSource, Indecomm and MarketRx. The firm is currently investing out of its first $140 mm fund raised in late 2000 from blue chip global institutional investors. Sumir Chadha, Senior Managing Director at WestBridge, said, "We are very pleased to add to the strength of our partnership as we look to build the growth capital investment franchise in India. Outsourced services as an industry in India is expected to grow at an average of 40% annually for the next five years, and most of our portfolio companies are growing at a faster pace. We take significant pride in having built a very strong and stable management team committed to our focused investment strategy of growth capital for high quality outsourced services companies." KP Balaraj, Managing Director at WestBridge, added, "We are seeing significant deal activity across a wide spectrum of outsourced services opportunities. A lot of what we do is proprietary research or relationship-led investments where WestBridge plays an active, value added role. The additions to our partnership will give the firm more leverage in sourcing the best deals in India and the US." Rishi Navani joined WestBridge in 2001 and has been involved with the firm's investments in Celetronix, STI Knowledge and Indecomm. He was previously at Apax Partners in the US and Indocean Ventures (Soros-Chase affiliate) in India prior to joining WestBridge. Rishi received an MBA with distinction from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania where he finished #1 in his class, and a BA with distinction in Mathematical Methods in the Social Sciences and Economics from Northwestern University. Sandeep Singhal joined WestBridge in 2001 and represents the firm on the boards of MarketRx, Strand Genomics and Reametrix. He brings significance experience in business strategy and operations from his prior assignments at BCG and Unilever, India. Sandeep received an MBA with distinction from IIM Ahmedabad, an MS in Molecular Simulation from the University of Illinois where he was the Abraham Lincoln Fellow and a B. Tech in Chemical Engineering from IIT Delhi. SK Jain joined WestBridge in 2001 and has been involved with the firm’s investments in ICICI OneSource and Zenasis. He was part of the engineering development teams at Intel and Motorola in the US and India prior to joining WestBridge. He received an MBA from IIM Ahmedabad, where he received the President’s Gold Medal, an MS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Minnesota, and a B. Tech in EE from IIT Delhi.
Source: IANS
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