Mehra joins Nirvana Venture Advisors
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Bangalore: Nirvana Venture Advisors will raise $75 million venture fund by the Patni family. The firm has roped in former eBay India country manager Rajan Mehra as its Managing Director, reports VCCircle. Mehra is currently a venture partner at Clearstone Venture Advisors India and will continue at the US-headquartered VC firm that will look at co-investment in India. He will continue to sit on the board of Clearstone's India investments-IndiaIdeas.com and Games2Win India. Besides, he also sits on the board of online classifieds firm Quickr. Mehra said that Clearstone will make fresh investment in India through the co-investment route. Clearstone has backed companies like PayPal and has raised $650 million of committed capital. Rahul Khanna, India founding director for Clearstone quit the firm to join global venture capital firm Canaan Partners India as a managing director in March this year. Nirvana Venture plans to invest $500,000 to $4 million in early stage start-ups in India's digital consumption space, that is mobile and internet start-ups. They will continue with their later-stage investments. Mehra said that the changes taking place in Indian market due to the 3G technology, mobile becoming the dominant mode of communication and the increasing level of innovation has led him to believe to be in an inflection point. Nirvana has already started to evaluate transactions and expects the first few transactions in the early-stage segments and looking forward to expand its team. Earlier this year, the Patni family had sold their 45.6 percent stake in India's sixth largest IT firm Patni Computer Systems to iGate Corporation and Apax Partners. Amit Patni, Chairman of Nirvana Venture Advisors, plans to raise funds from domestic and overseas limited partners. Mehra believes that investors realize Indian technology space has the potential to create tens of billions of dollars in value in the next 10 years as China's economy did in the early 2000s and U.S.A did in mid-to-late 90's. A graduate from Sydenham College, Mumbai and Darden School, Mehra was the country manager for eBay India and a member of the eBay Asia Pacific leadership team before joining Clearstone in 2008. He incubated eBay India Motors Marketplace, India's first B2B marketplace for used vehicles and setting up payment service PaisaPay at eBay. He was also in various operating roles and a part of the management team of Baazee.com, which was acquired by eBay in 2004. He is also the co-founder of online automotive auction portal MotorExchange, which has raised funds from Canaan Partners and Epiphany Ventures.

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