Top 20 Indian Venture Capitalists in U.S.

SiliconIndia | Friday, November 22, 2019

The Winding Road to Success

Entrepreneurs succeed not only by innovation in technology and business but from persistence, determination, and leadership to overcome challenges, which require extraordinary emotional, social and personal well being. An entrepreneur’s energy knows no limits, and greatly amplifies idea to reality and value creation. Meet Satish Dharmaraj, an acclaimed entrepreneur, speaker, investor, and venture capitalist currently serving as the managing director at Redpoint Ventures, where he has made a name for himself, as a prolific consumer tech and enterprise investor.

Satish has a Master’s Degree in Computer Sciences and an executive management degree from the Harvard Business School. A true humanitarian at heart, he is extremely passionate about promoting public welfare. He is the founding board member of a non-profit organization based in the Bay Area called HelpingHands and is also associated with the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, a conservation charity that works to protect all wildlife and habitats in Kenya. Satish is also an avid follower of industrial rock band Nine Inch Nails, which led him to invest in Sonos, a consumer electronics company widely known for its smart speakers. Additionally, he is a lifelong fan of trap music, likes comedian Dave Chapelle, and enjoys TV show True Detective.

A bonafide trendsetter, Satish decided to take up the spot as a general partner at Redpoint Ventures. There, he shares his insights and expertise on business software, enterprise arena, and infrastructure. Having acquired over a decade-long experience, and witnessing the considerable ups and downs of building a company, Satish encourages founders to find balance and to keep an eye on the big game.

Asheem Chandna spent his initial years in India before moving to the U.S to pursue his B.S and M.S degrees in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Case Western Reserve University. In 2012 and 2013 Midas List, Chandna has grabbed a whooping 20th rank as one of the top tech investors. For the Wall Street Journal Global Technology Innovation Awards, Chandna is also part of the panel of judges, advising as part of the advisory board and program committee for the RSA Conference, as well as a charter member of TiE Silicon Valley. Prior to this, Chandna has been involved in advisory roles and investments in Alteon WebSystems (NT), BigBand Networks (BBND), FineGround Networks (CSCO), Neoteris (JNPR), Nirvana Business Solutions, Rainfinity (EMC), Selectica (SLTC), Secure Computing (MCAF), VitalSigns Software (BT) and Whole Security (SYMC). Recent investments of Chandna include internet security data startup, Censys, cloud company Avi Networks, as well as security firms Awake and Obsidian. In 2015, Chandna invested in hot data storage startup Rubrik which in recent times reached $3.3 billion as its valuation. Several multiple technology businesses and product lines to market-topping positions have been made successful by Chandna, and all by playing the role of an operating executive and as a venture capitalist at Greylock. While being in Check Point Software for more than six years, the company grew from a valuation of $10 million to $500 million in annual revenues. After taking the lead roles in business development and product management organizations, Chandna has a lot to define his attributes.

Vinod Khosla, the founder of Khosla Ventures— a venture capital firm focused on assisting entrepreneurs in building impactful new energy and technology companies— dreamt of starting his own technology company right from the establishment of Intel. With the motive of owning a company, he continued his business ventures by co-founding various companies, such as Daisy Systems, the first significant computer-aided design system for electrical engineers and standards-based Sun Microsystems to build workstations for software developers. Khosla played a crucial role in taking on Intel’s monopoly by building and growing semiconductor company, Nexgen, which eventually was acquired by Advanced Micro Devices (AMD). He also helped incubate the idea and business plan for Juniper Networks to take on Cisco System’s dominance of the router market and supported the formulation of Excite’s early advertising-based search strategy. Khosla also aided in transforming the moribund telecommunications business and its archaic SONET implementations with Cerent Corporation (acquired by Cisco Systems in 1999 for $7.2 billion). With all these experiences and the desire to be more experimental, Khosla finally founded Khosla Ventures in 2004 that focuses on both for-profit and social impact investments. With a consistent goal of working and learning from fun and knowledgeable entrepreneurs, Khosla focuses on building impactful companies by leveraging innovation as well as spending time with partners. He is highly passionate about technologies, which have beneficial effects and economic impact on society. Khosla likes mentoring entrepreneurs in building technology-based businesses. He has the continuous urge to scaling new energy sources, achieving petroleum independence, and promoting a pragmatic approach to the environment for a positive impact across the world. Khosla, a supporter of many microfinance organizations in India and Africa, has also been experimenting with innovations in education and global housing.

Holding a strong ninth position in The Midas List of Top Tech Investors 2019, Neeraj Agarwal, General Partner at Battery Ventures has a lot to his credit. Neeraj joined Battery Ventures in 2000 and since has been investing in founders building disruptive cloud-software as well as internet companies. BladeLogic, a company acquired by BMC had the fortune of having Neeraj as its founding investor. Additionally, he has invested in several other companies that were transitioned on to stage IPOs, some of them were Bazaarvoice, Guidewire Software, Coupa, Nutanix, Marketo, Omniture, Wayfair and RealPage. Some of Agarwal’s investments that led to M&A exits include APlaceForMom (acquired by Warbug Pincus), Brightree (acquired by ResMed), AppDynamics (acquired by Cisco), Consona (acquired by Vista Equity Partners), OpsGenie (acquired by Atlassian), Glassdoor (acquired by Recruit Holdings) and many more. One of the key roles played by Agarwal in multiple other Battery investments have given him the leverage to take on the company to the next level. His current involvement with BloomReach, Amplitude, Braze, BounceX, Cohesity, Catchpoint, Chef, Clubhouse, Dataiku, Kustomer, inVision, Pendo, LogRocket, Optimizely, Sprinklr, Workato and a bunch of others make him a busy man. The 46-year-old is the founder of the CloudNY conference for the past nine years. Agarwal sternly believes in three scenarios emerging in the near future: companies that assist businesses in developing their software, a whole new phase of marketing tech companies, and finally those companies that help others in moving to the cloud.

The Managing Director of Mayfield Fund, Navin Chaddha, has co-founded three companies in his 20s, including VXtreme (acquired by Microsoft to become Windows Media) and iBeam Broadcasting (NASDAQ: IBEM). To that end, he has been fortunate to be named as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum. He also holds the record of getting featured in Forbes Midas List of Top 100 Tech Investors for eleven times, listed as one of the Top 12 VC Hotshots by Red Herring and a Power Player West, Mobile, Cloud and Green Power Player by Always On. Under his leadership, Mayfield has raised $1.5 billion in new capital through six funds – (four US and two dedicated India funds); partnered with over 100 entrepreneurs who want to change the way people work, live, and play. He also has been involved in the successful financial outcome of 39 portfolio companies. Chaddha has expanded the investing team with world-class professionals, and assembled a comprehensive team of portfolio services executives. With fifteen years of experience as a venture investor, and ten years prior to that as an entrepreneur, Chaddha’s current investments include notable companies like Fungible, MapR, HashiCorp, and Poshmark. Chaddha has championed entrepreneurs of over 50 companies in the mobile, social, cloud/ SaaS, energy tech, and big data themes in the U.S., India, and China. He is also the founder of Mayfield’s dedicated India Fund, which he oversees. Some of Chaddha’s most significant investments comprise IPOs of Akamai (NASDAQ:AKAM), LYFT(NASDAQ: LYFT), Makemytrip (NASDAQ:MMYT), Persistent Systems (NSE:PERSISTENT), Rhythms NetConnections (NASDAQ: RTHM), Solarcity (NASDAQ:SCTY), Suzlon (NSE:SUZLON), and acquisitions of Ankeena/Juniper, CPower/ Constellation Energy, Elastica/Blue Coat/ Symantec, Neopath Networks/Cisco, Pulse/ LinkedIn, StorSimple/Microsoft, Wichorus/Tellabs and Zenprise/Citrix. Chaddha also invested in Gigya, which was acquired by SAP for $350 million in September 2017. Recently, Chaddha invested in three stealth startups spanning cloud security, semiconductors, and blockchain. With 35 patents added to his name, Chaddha has a tremendous impact on the investment sector. He serves on the advisory board of Stanford Engineering Venture Fund, as well.

One of the most leading and popular venture firms, General Catalyst Managing Director Hemant Taneja has hit all the success points in the last decade with Snapchat, Airbnb, Stripe, Hubspot, and Gusto. Taneja, a five-degree holder from MIT has a lot of accolades in his career. The man took the lead of his venture capital firm and made $3.75 billion. In 2011, he launched his Palo Alto office of the firm with a keen interest to change the way industries work. Taneja’s investment thesis, “economies of unscale” talks about the small, niche or tightly focused companies that want to champion much larger companies by leveraging data and services. In the Midas List, Taneja is steadily rising to grab the top position also is currently taking out time to focus on his health this year. In January 2019, the investor-led a $31 million Series B in mental health startup called Mindstrong. Along the same lines, Taneja made another investment in Livongo, a digital health startup which is also targeting an IPO within this year. With a strong interest in the fields of energy, education, media, finance, and medicine, this man is working with a gamut of companies such as Stripe, Snapchat, Gusto, Livongo Health, TuneIn, ClassDojo, Fundbox, Digit, Fractyl, Gridco Systems, and Highfive. Taneja has a mind of combining technology with policy, for which he serves at the board of Khan Academy as well as co-created a public policy advocacy group called Advanced Energy Economy. A $10 million initiative, GC Stripe Platform Fund that aims to help jumpstart new ventures built on the Stripe Connect Platform, is directed by Taneja.

Man with a Mission

The commercial sector is gradually maturing along with the technology curve, companies are realizing that technological adaptation no longer remains an option, but has become a necessity. Mithril Capital, a multi-billion dollar venture, was established on the principle that a deep understanding of technology and markets allows for investing with confidence, irrespective of sector or geography. Spearheaded by Ajay Royan, he leads the firm as the managing general partner, combining his insights from technology, macroeconomics, and finance, and investing in businesses that deploy state-of-the-art technology to solve intractable problems, often in traditional sectors long overdue for innovation. Before founding Mithril, Ajay was a managing director at Clarium Capital Management, where he focused primarily on unleveraged growth investments.

Ajay grew up in India, Abu Dhabi, and Canada. He studied at Yale University, where he also served as a guest lecturer on macro investment. Additionally, he is associated with the prestigious Science Advisory Board of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory and was elected to the Presidents’ Circle of the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine. Ajay often advocates for entrepreneurship and endorses technological innovation in media forums such as Bloomberg, CNBC, The Financial Times, and The Wall Street Journal. As an investor in the technological sector, he believes in partnering with great creative minds and building long-term relationships in industries as diverse as cybersecurity, advanced medical devices, and fusion energy. This conviction allows Royan to partner with credible organizations, offering both strategic and financial support in building powerful and sustainable franchises worldwide, via Mithril.

An Empathetic Entrepreneur Turned Investor

“Your identity as an entrepreneur does not depend on your ethnicity or your college education. It depends on the sacrifices you make for the sake of your business.” These are the humbling words from Mirza Baig, founding partner of Aldrich Capital Partners, on entrepreneurship in a new world.

Mirza began his journey into business by earning his degree in BA, Economics at Cornell University in 1994 and would soon grab an MBA at the Harvard Business School in 1999. He went on to serve as the CFO of AOL’s e-commerce unit for four years. Using the fiscal knowledge he gained over this period, Mirza co-founded three companies—Legal Advantage, Imaging Advantage, and Tech Fetch. He built these companies from zero revenues and sub-10 employees to well over a hundred million dollars in revenue, and over five hundred employees globally.

Since Mirza is a serial-entrepreneur turned venture capitalist, he understands the journey of budding entrepreneurs better than most other investors. He empathizes with the blood, sweat, and tears that business owners sacrifice and he feels grateful to be a part of their journey as an investor. This knowledge has enabled him to bring out the potential in several business owners.

As a leader in Aldrich Capital Partners, Mirza aims to invest in healthcare, I.T, fintech, and application software companies in the lower middle market that are founder-run businesses with more than ten million dollars in revenue. With the expertise and charisma of Mirza Baig at its helm, Aldrich Capital Partners is bound to grow exponentially in the coming years.

A Stalwart in Tech Entrepreneurship

With more than thirty percent of its startup ecosystem based in the technology industry, it is evident that New York City has also become a hub for aspiring entrepreneurs. Leading this wave of change is Amish Jani, Founder & Managing Director at FirstMark Capital.

By earning his Bachelor’s degree in Economics in 1999, and his MBA in 1999 from the University of Pennsylvania, Amish set a solid foundation for himself in finance. He went on to serve as a General Partner at Pequot Ventures for the next eight years. In 2008, Amish founded FirstMark—a venture capitalist investment firm—in New York City (NYC). It was here that he began his mission to change the technology industry in the city, and in turn, all around the globe.

FirstMark, under the leadership of Amish, has provided capital investments across the cloud and Internet landscape, including sectors such as SaaS applications, mobile, commerce, education, and healthcare. Being a venture capitalist for nearly 20 years, Amish has invested in industry-defining companies that include Shopify (NYSE: SHOP), InVision, Pendo, Starry, Tracelink, Frame. io, Guru, Bluecore, IMImobile (LSE: IMO), Schoology (acquired by PowerSchool), Boomi (acquired by Dell), Aveksa (acquired by EMC), and many more.He has been recognized by CB Insights and the New York Times as a Top 100 Venture Capitalist globally. Amish Jani aims to build a technology landscape in NYC in the coming years to rival that of Silicon Valley.

The Frontrunner of Consumer Markets

“I think good VCs are probably 80 percent wrong, bad VCs are 100 percent wrong,” cites Spark Capital co-founder and General Partner Bijan Sabet. For the last 11 years or so, Bijan has enjoyed tremendous success by investing in some of the most prominent consumer technology tartups like Tumblr, Oculus, Twitter and Warby Parker. Being a venture capitalist with legendary wins in the consumer social market, he has aided various organizations to evolve into industry-juggernauts that they are today. He has invested in numerous community-centric and community-driven companies such as Skillshare, Tumblr, Stack Exchange, Foursquare, and dozens of others. In this capacity, he has successfully established key alliances, commercial relationships and joint ventures with leading consumer electronics companies. Prior to joining Spark, Bijan had successfully achieved a B.S. degree from Boston College. After that, he would begin his career managing strategic relationships with cable and satellite operators as well as driving product strategy at Moxi Digital. In this role, Bijan was part of the core team that introduced the MoxiMedia Center, a low-cost replacement for digital cable or satellite set-top box. He is widely known to be an outspoken supporter of the American Civil Liberties Union, recently kicking off a series of fundraising out of Silicon Valley for the civil liberties organization. The investor resides in Boston with his wife and three kids and is a passionate amateur photographer. He travels frequently, often with his film camera by his side. He is not an observer of the confluence. He prefers to dwell in it.

The Catalyst for Entrepreneurial Revolution

Recognized by The New York Times and CB Insights in 2019 as one of the top 100 venture capitalists, Somesh Dash is an expert industry professional who specializes in later-stage industry growth. Currently, he serves as the managing director and general partner at IVP. Somesh has actively participated in IVP's investments in AddThis, Akamai, Amplitude, AppDynamics, At Road, Ayasdi, Brex, Business Insider, CafePress, Care. com, ComScore, Datalogix, Danger, Digital River, Discord, Dropbox, FleetMatics, Gaia Online, Hipmunk, Humu, Klout, Lime, Loopnet, MotoSport, MySQL, Netflix, Personal Capital, Pindrop, Pure Storage, Expanse, Qubole, Quigo, Rubrik, Shazam, SoundCloud, Tanium, Thrive Global, TuneIn, Uber, Uproxx, Walker & Company and Zynga.Somesh has earned a B.S. in Business Administration from the Haas School of Business at the University of California at Berkeley and then an M.B.A. from Stanford University. Somesh was an Analyst in the Corporate Finance Division of Credit Suisse's Technology Investment Banking Group, where his area of expertise included strategic financing initiatives for several public and private technology companies. Additionally, he worked for the Corporate Development Division of Sony Entertainment Television (SET) in Mumbai, India. He joined IVP in March 2005 and quickly gained prominence thanks to his unparalleled persistence, vision, and agility to solve crises related to later-stage industries, which he is known and respected for. As an inherent humanitarian and philanthropist, he is currently a member of the Partnership for a New American Economy, a nonprofit initiative focused on skilled immigration reform and the Stanford Center for Philanthropy and Civil Society. Therefore the qualities and characteristics of such an individual must guarantee success in his ventures.

Early Investments for Promising Businesses

Most kids in middle schools would like to spend their vacations away from anything academic. But Manu Kumar was an exception. A child prodigy, he enrolled for computing lessons in a summer camp and completed the two-week program within a few days. He then proceeded to learn many more programming languages, and by age sixteen, he had dived deep into the world of technology.

Manu holds a Bachelor’s degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering with Honors and a Masters in Software Engineering, both from Carnegie Mellon University. He earned his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Stanford University with a distinction in teaching in 2007. With a concrete background in business and computer science, Manu started his first company—SneakerLabs, Inc. This company that he built with a fund of $5000 ended up being worth over a hundred million dollars when it was acquired in 2000 by Octane/E.piphany. Manu co-founded CardMunch that was acquired by LinkedIn, Carta — the leading provider of equity management solutions for companies, employees, and investors, and more recently HiHello — a company building tools to help users grow their network.

Dr. Kumar founded K9 Ventures in 2009 as a solo-GP fund. He invests in technology-focused “Pre-Seed” stage companies that are based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Unlike other funds at this stage, K9’s approach is to take a concentrated approach to investing in companies at their earliest stages of formation, often engaging with to-be founders even before the companies are incorporated. K9 Ventures operates out of a non-descript industrial building called The Kennel that is located at the edge of Palo Alto. The Kennel serves as the home for K9 Ventures and for several of the K9 portfolio companies in their formative stages.

Manu is often described as “The O.G. for Pre-Seed.” Pre-Seed is used to describe the first institutional capital invested in a company, typically less than $1M, to focus on building the team and the product. Manu/K9 does not follow a sector strategy. Instead he focuses on companies that are either creating some kind of radically new technology/ platform or creating a new market. Manu sees himself more as a company-builder than a company-picker. As such he chooses to align himself with founders early in the life-cycle of the company and then work with the founders to help grow the companies.

A Master of Diversified Investment

During the Cornell University graduation ceremony in 2007, Rohit Gupta was a student who stood out from the rest—one with the mind of a pioneer. He earned his degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering and has never since stopped climbing the rungs of the corporate world. He is now one of New York’s most skilled entrepreneurs and leaders.

Rohit began his voyage into the corporate world soon after his graduation as a Financial Analyst for ABN AMRO by advising corporates on risk management. For the next four years, he would work in Cross Asset Structuring for RBS Global Banking & Markets. Using his innate creativity and the experience he garnered over the years as a financial expert, Rohit ventured forth into the world of investments by becoming the Director at High Line Venture Partners. Soon after which, he co-founded Flavour—a restaurant discovery app— and then moved on to be the Director of Product for Tasting Table, a digital brand for food and drink enthusiasts.

Currently, Rohit is a Partner at Sterling.VC investing in sports, media, Esports, and real estate technologies. He’s also the founder of Bollyshake— an entertainment platform aimed at an Indian demographic to showcase user-generated dancing videos. His latest ventures have been in Esports as he believes they offer a unique opportunity to grow and unite the gaming community both on a local and global stage. This led Sterling.VC to purchase the New York Excelsior (NYXL)—a professional Esports team based in New York. Rohit has gone on to co-find Andbox, the parent company of NYXL and other Esports franchises.

Over the years, Rohit has proven time and again that he’s a visionary who brings about great changes in the financial world. Having picked up excellent management, business strategy, and investment skills over his decade long career, it’s safe to say that he has far more aces up his sleeve.

When it comes to choosing a partner in a venture capital firm, it is crucial to find someone with a go-to-market design and technical insight. With a degree in MBA from Wharton School and a bachelor’s degree from IIT, Delhi- Apoorva Pandhi is the ideal partner to run Foundation Capital. Pandhi began his career around a decade back to focus on enterprise and consumer investments for Lightspeed Venture Partners. Pandhi has a cauldron full of operating experience across product development, P&L management, and go-to-market. In the year 2013, Pandhi co-founded Funnl Labs to develop a machine intelligence platform that focuses on aggregating and personalizing communications across email, social media, and messaging. The company went on to win the Wharton Innovation Award and Snider Seed Award. Before Foundation Capital, Pandhi held the designation of Vice President at Enterprise Sales at Quid-a growth stage NLP and AI-powered SaaS powered. The company soon turned into a multimillion-dollar business as Pandhi played a pivotal role in establishing a new business vertical. Over the years, Pandhi has shared business space with several CXOs and GMs belonging to Fortune 500 companies and helped them tackle business hurdles whole working on design cases to address those needs. As a partner of Foundation Capital, Pandhi aspires to focus on enterprise IT, DevOps, cloud-based services, and machine intelligence.

As the cannabis industry is showing rapid growth, various investors are grabbing the opportunity. Among many, WelCan Capitals from New York focuses on seed-stage and Series A investment opportunities across the industry. To ensure WelCan reaches new heights, managing partner Vikas Desai aims to expand the company’s investment portfolio up to 15 firms in the next 18 months. Desai holds B.S in Finance and Environmental Studies from the Stern School of Business at New York University. Desai began his career as an investment banking analyst at Morgan Stanley, focusing on real estate M&A and capital markets. With tons of experience, Desai has made several personal investments in numerous technology companies and real estate projects. After having an unbeaten inning at Morgan Stanley, Desai went on to become a private equity investor at Oaktree Capital Management, where he focused on real estate investment opportunities and successfully handled transactions of over $2+ billion. At present, Desai operates as WelCan Capital as a partner and aims to invest in high-impact, foundational companies across early-stage, plant-touching, and ancillary businesses.

The present Managing Director of Insight Partners, Deven Parekh, has an impressive portfolio of managing investments in application software, data, and consumer internet businesses across the globe. Actively working with investments in China, Latin America, Europe, and Russia, Deven is currently a member of the Technical Advisory Council of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) that assists the Commission with developing informed technology policies, supporting America’s competitiveness and job creation in the global economy. Making to the Forbes Midas List of Top 100 Tech Investors for continuous five years adds a feather to Deven’s highly successful career. Previously associated with notable companies, such as Buddy Media (acquired by Salesforce, NASDAQ: CRM), Chegg (IPO), Football Fanatics (acquired by GSI Commerce, later acquired by eBay), Media Mind (IPO and subsequent sale to DG Fast Channel), Procuri (acquired by Ariba, NASDAQ: ARBA), ECI Solution (sold to Carlyle), Alibaba (IPO), Twitter (IPO), eVestment (sale to NASDAQ), Deven now serves as Board Chair for Turnitin, Community Brands, Bullhorn, Appriss, Episerver, and EveryAction. He is also a member of the Board of Directors for Fanatics, Diligent, 1stdibs, Vela, Chrono24, Wallapop, Campaign Monitor, and Property Brands. With the fruitful experience of working as a principal at Berenson Minella & Company (a New York based merchant banking firm) and an advisor at The Blackstone Group, Deven has immense knowledge on M&A sphere, as well. Since Deven joined Insight Partners in 200, his responsibilities include the development of organizations, especially start-ups that exhibit high growth potential in exchange for an equity stake. Deven has the honor of a Henry Crown Fellow of the Aspen Institute, which develops the next generation of community-spirited leaders.

One of the Best Deal-Makers in High-Tech Venture Capitals 2019, Sameer Gandhi, joined Accel—one of the leading venture capital firms—as a partner in 2008. Gandhi primarily focuses on consumer, software, and services companies, and led Accel’s early investments in AnchorFree, Bonobos (acquired by Walmart), Diapers.com (acquired by Amazon), DJI, Dropbox (DBX), Dropcam (acquired by Google), Fictiv, Jet (acquired by Walmart), Plex, Raise, Rylo, Spotify (SPOT), Venmo (acquired by Braintree/ PayPal), and Yapstone. Gandhi’s work with Accel India led to the first outside investments in four of India’s most prominent technology and consumer companies, namely, Flipkart, BookMyShow, Myntra, and Taxi4Sure (acquired by OLA). Gandhi also worked with Sequoia and led investments in companies like Barracuda Networks, Gracenote, Trulia (acquired by Zillow) and Sourcefire, prior to joining Accel. As a longtime collaborator with Accel’s India team, Gandhi played a part in the firm’s exit from Flipkart, which was acquired by Walmart with a majority stake for $16 billion in August 2018. Gandhi has also invested in India-based start-ups, including Freshworks, BookMyShow, Cure. Fit and USPL World. Being a part of Accel India’s exits from Dropbox and Spotify, both 2018 IPOs, and two acquisitions, Dropcam by Nest in 2015 and Jet.com by Walmart in 2016, Gandhi now is a proud owner of a portfolio that includes dronemaker DJI (valued at $15 billion), and CrowdStrike, the security company last valued at more than $3 billion. Gandhi is also a Board member of World View Enterprises, Crowdstrike Holdings Inc., and Tremus Inc., at present.

Always being an over-achiever, Ravi Mhatre kick-started his career by earning his BS in Electric Engineering, BA in Economics, and an MBA. Mhatre believes that the simple equation of growth and change while learning with experience is an important part of one’s career journey. Helping founders reach their full potential, and hiring new partners to push the firm forward are just a few hats that Mhatre wears in his everyday life. Having an immigrant father and a Brooklyn-born mother, Mhatre had the advantage of exposing himself to different cultures. He owes his diversified personality to the experiences that he collected during his stay in four continents—the same being reflected even now in his business ventures. As a hardworking person who views technology as both his passion and profession, Mhatre soared up in ranks with his investment in software maker MuleSoft. In 2017, Mhatre invested majorly in AppDyanmics, which was later bought by Cisco at $3.7 billion. In 1999, when Mhatre was the product management leader at tech talent hotbed Silicon Graphics, he co-founded the venture firm, LightSpeed Venture Partners. He was sternly focused on enterprise IT, Internet, mobility, and cloud-based services and applications. Mhatre spends a good amount of time monitoring the hiring bid for LightSpeed, which led to the welcoming of five partners and a VP of Growth in the previous year.

Seven years on the Forbes’ Midas List for Top Tech Investor is not an easy accolade to lay your hands on, but Salil Deshpande is the man with this brilliant feat. Focusing on infrastructure software, open-source, and crypto-Deshpande has invested $350 million into 52 years over a span of 13 years in various companies like MuleSoft, DynaTrace, Lending Club, Buddy Media, SpringSource and Redis Labs. With ample knowledge gained from Cornell University with a Bachelor of Science degree and a master's degree from Stanford University, Deshpande, with his expertise, backs cryptocurrency companies as he believes their infrastructure is based on the foundation of open-source tech. Deshpande’s journey began as an engineer at Sun Microsystems, which is focused on COBRA and Java middleware. He went on to become the founder and CEO of three companies: Customware-a COBRA middleware company, The Middleware Company-a Java middleware company, and TheServerSide.com-a network of developer media sites. Deshpande played a key role during his seven-year-long tenure at Bay Partner, where he was a General Partner. During his tenure, Deshpande invested approximately $85 million into 20 companies. In the year 2013, Deshpande joined Bain Capital to focus on seed and early-stage investments in infrastructure software, with a focus on developmental tools. When not busy investing billions, Deshpande can be seen dealing a hand at poker or taking up flying classes with CEO Gregg Duffy of Dropcam’s.

When Backstage Capital came up with the idea to invest in business led by women, people of color, and the LGBTQ+ community, Tapan Kataria quickly joined the Backstage Capital force to ensure that empowerment is done in the right way. Kataria, also known as ‘Tops’, did not wait to graduate from college to venture into the world of entrepreneurship. From selling study guides at the age of 10 to becoming a DJ at the age of 17, Tops expressed his love for the art of starting and never chose to live with any regret. Taking a gap during his college year, Kataria pursued his dream by founding a market place by the name Zest Meal- an online food market place that connects home-chefs to people looking for healthy homemade meals, away from home. In the past, Kataria has played a crucial time for the Techstars Mobility Accelerator as a Business Operation Associate, lending a helping hand to 11 high growth mobility companies while ensuring the program ran smoothly. He also went on to work as a VC for ID Ventures, investing in pre-seed to Series A startups through an evergreen fund.

Immigrated to the United States in the year 2008, Kataria loves calling Detroit his home and aims to support startups and valuable companies in Detroit. At present, Kataria is working as the Director of Backstage Capital Accelerator in Detroit, which helps underrepresented founders in the local community. Furthermore, he is also a Venture Partner at Venture Catalyst.

Top 20 Indian Venture Capitalists in U.S.

SiliconIndia | Friday, November 22, 2019

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