The list, which has Peter Fenton from Benchmark sitting at the top position, had New York Times and CB Insights working on it together. The list has been prepared by using the research firm's Investor Mosaic algorithm to develop a data-backed ranking of the top venture capital partners in the whole wide world.
Here are the top ten Indians making us proud on the list.
1) Sameer Gandhi -
| Accel Partners | Notable Investment - Flipkart | Linked Profile↗ |
Acquiring the 25th position, he is the first Indian visible on the list. Associated with Accel partners since the year 2008, Gandhi has been successful in gaining significant muscle in the company since the departure of Jim Breyer. He has spearheaded Accel partners investments in Flipkart ( number one Indian startup currently valued at over $15 billion), drone-maker DJI and Dropbox. A year ago, Accel had invested $75 million in DJI in order to cash in on the great potential that drones hold in the near future. Further, in order to give boost to the flourishing drone related startup market, the firm has also established a $10 million SkyFund with DJI. Passionate about sharing his gift of knowledge that he has gained over the years in the industry, he frequently speaks at the Stanford Graduate School of business.2) Promod Haque -
| Norwest Venture Partners | Notable Investment - Health Catalyst | LinkedIn Profile↗ |
The second Indian on the list, Promod Haque current holds the senior managing partner position at Norwest Venture Partners. Boosting of a magnificent career graph, Haque has had made investments in more than sixty companies and produced more than $40 billion in exit values. He's also responsible for helping over 20 portfolio companies go public and another 30 get acquired. According to industry experts, Haque's most significant deal till now has been FireEye in the year 2013. A cyber security firm, FireEye had the second-best IPO in the United States. His recent investment list is quite long and includes names such as Health Catalyst, Dtex Systems, CareCloud, Palerra and Shape Security.3) Salil Deshpande -
| Bain Capital Partners | Notable Investment - Lending Club | LinkedIn Profile↗ |
Having a special interest in open source software and infrastructure, Deshpande's portfolio companies include Engine Yard, Aria Systems, MuleSoft, Typesafe, Redis Labs, Hazelcast, and Iron.io. His foresight and gut has always paid him well and this is the reason that his early Series A bet of $25 million valuation on Lending Club has been such a huge success. This result is inspite of the turmoil hitting the Wall Street market, which saw it trading at a price which was literally less than even half of its IPO price point, with a market capitalisation of $3 billion. Some of his most recent investments are ScaleArc, Rollbar and frame. Dropcam selling to Google at $555 million and Lending Club going public, raising a whopping $1 billion, have been Deshpande's two of the biggest exits till date and coincidentally they both came in the year 2014.4) Navin Chadda
| Mayfield Fund | Notable Investment - MakeMyTrip, Lyft | LinkedIn Profile↗ |
An IIT-Delhi alumnus, Navin is a typical Indian with cricket and Bollywood in his heart. Currently serving in the capacity of Managing Director at Mayfield fund, Chadda heads the enterprise and consumer division in India, China and the U.S. India's matrimonial site Bharat Matrimony, data platform MapR, mobile fashion marketplace Poshmark customer identity company Gigya are currently the companies from which he has multiple hopes and is currently invested in.As a venture capitalist Navin has had the fortune of championing entrepreneurs of over 40 companies in the U.S. and India, 13 of which have gone public and 15 have been acquired. Some of his past notable investments include IPOs of Akamai, Makemytrip, Persistent Systems, Rhythms NetConnections, Solarcity and Suzlon, among others.
5) Asheem Chandna -
| Greylock Partners | Notable Investment - Palo Alto Networks | LinkedIn Profile↗ |
Holding a Master of Science from Case Western Reserve University, Chandna is currently a partner at Greylock Partners. In his 13 long years of association with the VC, his focus has mainly been on enterprise infrastructure, data management and cybersecurity. His most famous exits include Palo Alto Networks IPO in the year 2012 and Arista Networks IPO in the year 2014. According to Chandna, Cybersecurity serves as a great business opportunity as corporate concern over their data storage is increasing almost similar to how the suspense and interest increases while watching a cat and mouse game. On a personal level, he is a fitness enthusiast and can be often seen running and hiking around.6) Deven Parekh -
| Insight Venture Partners | Notable Investment - Twitter | LinkedIn Profile↗ |
This New York-based investor dons many hats rather than just being an investor. Apart from being the Managing Director at Insight Venture Partners, Parekh is a board member of the Tisch MS Research Center of New York and Chairman Emeritus of Publicolor. He also participates actively in making wine in Argentina with his wife. Some of the biggest names in the tech world including Twitter, Tumblr, JD.com and Alibaba have been backed by Parekh in the past. Most recently, he was involved in making a $150 million investment in Automattic, which is the parent company of blogging website Wordpress. He was also involved in taking Diligent, a New Zealand based software company private.7) Jai Das -
| Sapphire Ventures | Notable Investment - Justdial, PayTM | LinkedIn Profile↗ |
An MBA from University of Chicago, Jai is currently functioning as a managing director at Sapphire Ventures where he leads and manages the VC's investments in Mulesoft, PayTM, Narrative Science, Nutanix, Cyphort, PubNub, Socrata, Alteryx and Mirantis. Having more than 15 years of industry experience, he helps companies in upping their game by suggesting them means to innovate their product offering and conceive marketing strategies that can help them sit at the top position in the market in their segment. Das's primary focus and interest lies in the areas of software defined infrastructure, smart machines, cloud and mobile computing, IoT and pervasive analytics.8) Hemant Taneja -
| General Catalyst Partners | Notable Investment - SnapChat | LinkedIn Profile↗ |
Holding the profile of Managing Director at General Catalyst, he hold five degrees from MIT : Electrical Engineering & Computer Science (BS and MS), Operations Research (MS), Mathematics (BS), Biology & Biomedical Engineering (BS). Taneja firmly believes in working with startups and founders who are building technology companies with an authentic mission in sight. His investments at General Catalyst includes SnapChat, Virtual Instruments, TuneIn, Fractyl, Gridco Systems, Gusto, Highfive, ClassDojo, Livongo and Stripe. He also directs a $10 million GC Stripe Platform Fund, an initiative focused on encouraging new ventures that are built on top of the Stripe Connect platform.9) Neeraj Agrawal -
| Battery Ventures | Notable Investment - Wayfair | LinkedIn Profile↗ |
Associated with Battery Ventures from the year 2000, he majorly invests in SaaS and internet companies across all stages. Bazaarvoice, Guidewire Software, Marketo, Omniture, RealPage, and Wayfair are some of the companies that Agrawal has invested in and that have successfully gone on to stage IPOs. An MBA from Harvard Business School, Agrawal's private investments include Yesware, AppDynamics, Tealium, Chef, Cohesity, Coupa, Catchpoint, Pendo, Nutanix, Optimizely, SmarterHQ, Sprinklr, Glassdoor.com and StellaService. He also holds the credit of investing in several Battery portfolio companies that have gone on to experience M&A events, such as VSS Monitoring, Brightree, Internet Brands, Consona and APlaceForMom.10) Krishna ‘kittu’ Kolluri -
| New Enterprise Associates (NEA) | Notable Investment - Teracent | LinkedIn Profile↗ |
A General Partner at New Enterprise Associatee since the year 2006, his interest lies in energy technology and information technology investments. An M.S. in Operations Research from SUNY, Buffalo, NY, Kittu renders his services on various boards for New Enterprise Associates portfolio companies..
Looking to fund a startup in India? Well, these ten VCs could certainly help you out!
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