Aakash Goel is a partner with Trifecta Capital. He has 15 years of overall experience across investing, helping build companies and management consulting.
He joined Trifecta from Bessemer Venture Partners, a US based technology focused venture capital fund with $5 billion in AUM. At Bessemer he was Principal, India Investments and played crucial role in the firm’s equity investments in Urbanclap, BigBasket, HomeFirst Finance, Cashify, Perfios, LivSpace, Innoviti, Pharmeasy and Hungama.
Previously he was an Associate, Sequoia Capital India and was closely involved in the firm’s investments in JustDial (NSE: JUSTDIAL), Citrus Payments (Acq: PayU), Zaakpay (Acq: Mobikwik), Altius Healthcare (Acq: Cygnus Medicare), OneAssist, Near (fka AdNear), UnitedLex and I-Yogi.
Between Bessemer and Sequoia, Aakash has helped deploy ~$240 million in 20+ companies across early, venture and growth stages.
Before Sequoia, Aakash worked for McKinsey and Company as a management consultant advising Technology and Financial Services clients across India, North America and Europe on issues of strategy, operations, go-to-market and post-merger management.
Aakash is an MBA from IIM Calcutta and B.Tech. from IIT Roorkee and was college merit holder at both institutions.
Sandeep Murthy
Founder, Lightbox
As an early investor in InMobi, InfoEdge and Shopclues, three of India's billion
dollar technology companies, Sandeep Murthy is one of the builders of India's
Internet economy. And he hasn't just seen the highs and lows play out as an
investor, but actually roughed it out in operational roles including one as the
CEO of Cleartrip in 2006 for three years.
A dreamer from the start, who doesn’t believe in choosing between “this or
that” he did his undergrad in both business and engineering from the
University of Pennsylvania. Like all good Penn grads he dove into investment
banking. However, since it was the height of the dot.com boom, he did it a
little differently by moving out to Palo Alto, California to join CSFB Technology
Group.
After teaming up with a friend to build a digital music company that was
incubated by Sony Music – 10 years too early. He ended up selling the
company to Sony after the Internet bubble burst. After a few years of living the
Bay Area dream, he moved to New York to join InterActive Corp (IAC) the
owners of Expedia, TicketMaster, Home Shopping Network where he helped
launch Gifts.com. He started to explore the India technology opportunity and
ultimately moved to Mumbai to manage investments for Sherpalo Ventures, a
fund based out of Menlo Park in California.
Today he's a co-founder and partner at Lightbox, a Mumbai-based venture
capital firm investing in Indian consumer technology companies. He has
raised over $350M from leading investors. His most recent investments
include Droom, Faasos, Furlenco and AI-platform Embibe, which got a
$185MM investment commitment from Reliance, India's internet super power.
This is the largest AI investment in edtech any where in the world.
Most of his time is spent figuring how to make something unprecedented
happen. With an all-in, nothing-held-back style, he loves diving in, getting to
the heart of a matter, trying new things and getting as many people as
possible involved. This approach helps to find multiple solutions: some
surprising, others straightforward.
In a somewhat unpredictable market, Sandeep’s investment success stems
from a combination of deep product instinct and unconventional thinking, that
has been the basis of all his investments — from pre-revenue startups to
multi-billion-dollar businesses.
Ajay Hattangdi
Founder, Alteria Capital Advisors
Ashish Sharma
CEO, InnoVen Capital India
Anjali Bansal
Founder, Avaana Capital
Anjali founded Avaana with a vision to institutionalize investment led scale up support to exceptional entrepreneurs creating scalable and impactful businesses. With this vision, she pulled the entire team together and leads the overall vision, strategy, team building and fundraising at Avaana and is a conduit to the complete startup ecosystem. Anjali was an early investor in Delhivery, MakeMyTrip, Nykaa, DarwinBox, Safari, Lenskart, UrbanClap amongst others and continues to mentor them in their scaling up journey.
She is the Chairperson of the Investment Council of NITI Aayog's Fintech and Women Entrepreneurship Platform furthering the 2x gender agenda. She serves as an Independent Non-Executive Director on the boards of various reputed companies including Voltas, Tata Power, Siemens and Kotak AMC.
In the past, she was appointed as the Non-Executive Chairperson by the Government of India to steer the merger of Dena Bank with Bank of Baroda. She was previously global Partner and Managing Director with TPG Growth PE, strategy consultant with McKinsey and Co in New York and India, and Spencer Stuart India Founder CEO. She also chaired the India board of Women's World Banking, a leading global livelihood-promoting institution and continues to be an advisor to SEWA.
As an active contributor to the dialogue on corporate governance and diversity, Anjali co-founded and chaired the FICCI Center for Corporate Governance program for Women on Corporate Boards. She also serves on the managing committee of the Bombay Chamber of Commerce and Industry and is a member of the Young Presidents' Organization. She is a frequent speaker at various international forums and a jury member for awards including ET 40 Under 40, Women Ahead, CEO Awards, VC Circle, AIWMI Wealth Awards and others.
She has completed her Masters from Columbia University and has been voted as “One of the Most Powerful Women in Business in India”, by Fortune India. She is also a charter member of TiE, serves on the managing committee of the IVCA and is a mentor to Facebook SheLeadsTech and NITI Aayog's Atal Innovation Mission. She is also on the Advisory Board of the Columbia University Global Centers, South Asia.
Sushanto Mitra
CEO - Lead Angels
Sanjay Mehta
Founder Partner, 100X.VC
Sanjay Mehta is the Founder Partner at 100X.VC. He has invested in over 100+ startups in India and US through his family office Mehta Ventures. Few of the portfolio companies are Block.One, Box8, LogiNext, Consure Medical Devices, RepUp, Wow Momo - Exited Oyo Rooms, Faballey, Unbxd, Instasafe, Talview, 47Line, Allizhealth.
Madhukar Sinha
Partner, India Quotient
Madhukar Sinha is a Partner at India Quotient. An IIM Lucknow graduate, he loves networking and has a very strong inroads in entrepreneur circles. Before India Quotient, he was part of a microfinance & impact fund, Aavishkar as an Investment Manager. He viewed the microfinance revolution first hand.
Anil Joshi
Founder and Managing Partner, Unicorn India Ventures
Anil is Founder and Managing Partner at Unicorn India Ventures an leading
Venture Capital Fund focusing on early stage investments in tech focused
companies. He has been one of the pioneers of angel investments in India as head
of operations and President at Mumbai Angels and Bangalore Angels, leading Angel
Investment forums in India. Anil’s experience includes corporate management
functions in medium and large organizations, early stage investment in start-ups,
project management, joint ventures and business development.
Anil has helped close over 100 venture-financing deals. Anil serves on the Board of
5 companies and is involved with various incubation centres as mentor in India as
well as internationally. He is very well respected and valued in the start-up fraternity
and is drawn upon by entrepreneurs for advice and strategic direction. Mentoring
start-ups is his passion and he advices Governmental and industrial bodies on the
same. Apart from investments, Anil is very active participant in start-up events as
speaker or panellist, both in domestic and international circuit.
Prior to joining Mumbai Angels, he headed new projects and investment in start-ups
with Artheon Group, a Telecom, IT & Energy group. His early career started with
heading a branch office at Century Rayon, an leading Indian textile conglomerate,
after which he moved to Business Access India Pvt. Ltd. providing consulting
services to Scandinavian companies from diverse sectors establishing their
presence in the Asian markets. Then he moved to Transasia Biomedical Ltd., India’s
largest manufacturer and exporter of bio-medical equipment.
Anil graduated in Engineering and Post-Graduation in Management (Marketing) and
PGDBM in Strategic Finance and Control.
Gaurav Chaturvedi
Partner, Kae Capital
Gaurav is a Partner at Kae capital. An IITB alumnus, he co-founded ThinkLabs in 2006 and helped it grow into one of the largest STEM education companies in India.
After the acquisition of ThinkLABs in 2016, Gaurav continued running the business for one more year before successfully exiting
He loves closely working with founders and helping them. A firm believer in lifelong learning, He thinks that the best way to learn for an investor is to work with the best entrepreneurs. At Kae Capital, Gaurav currently spends time overseeing investments in B2B, SaaS, and emerging technology. He sits on the boards of companies like Zetwerk, Hiver, Hippo Video and Disprz.
Mohit Bhatnagar
Managing Director, Sequoia Capital India Advisors
Govindaraj Avasarala
Head - Enterprise Marketing, Vodafone Idea
Govindaraj heads enterprise marketing at Vodafone Idea Business Services. He is responsible for enterprise brand, strategy, insights, digital marketing and customer engagements across India. Over 19 years of experience, he has worked with startups, consulting, and global companies. The passion areas include grass-root innovation, books and yoga.
VCs on Panel
Aakash Goel
Aakash Goel is a partner with Trifecta Capital. He has 15 years of overall experience across investing, helping build companies and management consulting. He joined Trifecta from Bessemer Venture Partners, a US based technology focused venture capital fund with $5 billion in AUM. At Bessemer he was Principal, India Investments and played crucial role in the firm’s equity investments in Urbanclap, BigBasket, HomeFirst Finance, Cashify, Perfios, LivSpace, Innoviti, Pharmeasy and Hungama.
Previously he was an Associate, Sequoia Capital India and was closely involved in the firm’s investments in JustDial (NSE: JUSTDIAL), Citrus Payments (Acq: PayU), Zaakpay (Acq: Mobikwik), Altius Healthcare (Acq: Cygnus Medicare), OneAssist, Near (fka AdNear), UnitedLex and I-Yogi. Between Bessemer and Sequoia, Aakash has helped deploy ~$240 million in 20+ companies across early, venture and growth stages. Before Sequoia, Aakash worked for McKinsey and Company as a management consultant advising Technology and Financial Services clients across India, North America and Europe on issues of strategy, operations, go-to-market and post-merger management. Aakash is an MBA from IIM Calcutta and B.Tech. from IIT Roorkee and was college merit holder at both institutions.
Sandeep Murthy
As an early investor in InMobi, InfoEdge and Shopclues, three of India's billion dollar technology companies, Sandeep Murthy is one of the builders of India's Internet economy. And he hasn't just seen the highs and lows play out as an investor, but actually roughed it out in operational roles including one as the CEO of Cleartrip in 2006 for three years.
A dreamer from the start, who doesn’t believe in choosing between “this or that” he did his undergrad in both business and engineering from the University of Pennsylvania. Like all good Penn grads he dove into investment banking. However, since it was the height of the dot.com boom, he did it a little differently by moving out to Palo Alto, California to join CSFB Technology Group.
After teaming up with a friend to build a digital music company that was incubated by Sony Music – 10 years too early. He ended up selling the company to Sony after the Internet bubble burst. After a few years of living the Bay Area dream, he moved to New York to join InterActive Corp (IAC) the owners of Expedia, TicketMaster, Home Shopping Network where he helped launch Gifts.com. He started to explore the India technology opportunity and ultimately moved to Mumbai to manage investments for Sherpalo Ventures, a fund based out of Menlo Park in California. Today he's a co-founder and partner at Lightbox, a Mumbai-based venture capital firm investing in Indian consumer technology companies. He has raised over $350M from leading investors. His most recent investments include Droom, Faasos, Furlenco and AI-platform Embibe, which got a $185MM investment commitment from Reliance, India's internet super power. This is the largest AI investment in edtech any where in the world. Most of his time is spent figuring how to make something unprecedented happen. With an all-in, nothing-held-back style, he loves diving in, getting to the heart of a matter, trying new things and getting as many people as possible involved. This approach helps to find multiple solutions: some surprising, others straightforward. In a somewhat unpredictable market, Sandeep’s investment success stems from a combination of deep product instinct and unconventional thinking, that has been the basis of all his investments — from pre-revenue startups to multi-billion-dollar businesses.
Ajay Hattangdi
Ashish Sharma
Anjali Bansal
Anjali founded Avaana with a vision to institutionalize investment led scale up support to exceptional entrepreneurs creating scalable and impactful businesses. With this vision, she pulled the entire team together and leads the overall vision, strategy, team building and fundraising at Avaana and is a conduit to the complete startup ecosystem. Anjali was an early investor in Delhivery, MakeMyTrip, Nykaa, DarwinBox, Safari, Lenskart, UrbanClap amongst others and continues to mentor them in their scaling up journey.
She is the Chairperson of the Investment Council of NITI Aayog's Fintech and Women Entrepreneurship Platform furthering the 2x gender agenda. She serves as an Independent Non-Executive Director on the boards of various reputed companies including Voltas, Tata Power, Siemens and Kotak AMC. In the past, she was appointed as the Non-Executive Chairperson by the Government of India to steer the merger of Dena Bank with Bank of Baroda. She was previously global Partner and Managing Director with TPG Growth PE, strategy consultant with McKinsey and Co in New York and India, and Spencer Stuart India Founder CEO. She also chaired the India board of Women's World Banking, a leading global livelihood-promoting institution and continues to be an advisor to SEWA.
As an active contributor to the dialogue on corporate governance and diversity, Anjali co-founded and chaired the FICCI Center for Corporate Governance program for Women on Corporate Boards. She also serves on the managing committee of the Bombay Chamber of Commerce and Industry and is a member of the Young Presidents' Organization. She is a frequent speaker at various international forums and a jury member for awards including ET 40 Under 40, Women Ahead, CEO Awards, VC Circle, AIWMI Wealth Awards and others. She has completed her Masters from Columbia University and has been voted as “One of the Most Powerful Women in Business in India”, by Fortune India. She is also a charter member of TiE, serves on the managing committee of the IVCA and is a mentor to Facebook SheLeadsTech and NITI Aayog's Atal Innovation Mission. She is also on the Advisory Board of the Columbia University Global Centers, South Asia.
Sushanto Mitra
Sanjay Mehta
Sanjay Mehta is the Founder Partner at 100X.VC. He has invested in over 100+ startups in India and US through his family office Mehta Ventures. Few of the portfolio companies are Block.One, Box8, LogiNext, Consure Medical Devices, RepUp, Wow Momo - Exited Oyo Rooms, Faballey, Unbxd, Instasafe, Talview, 47Line, Allizhealth.
Madhukar Sinha
Madhukar Sinha is a Partner at India Quotient. An IIM Lucknow graduate, he loves networking and has a very strong inroads in entrepreneur circles. Before India Quotient, he was part of a microfinance & impact fund, Aavishkar as an Investment Manager. He viewed the microfinance revolution first hand.
Anil Joshi
Anil is Founder and Managing Partner at Unicorn India Ventures an leading Venture Capital Fund focusing on early stage investments in tech focused companies. He has been one of the pioneers of angel investments in India as head of operations and President at Mumbai Angels and Bangalore Angels, leading Angel Investment forums in India. Anil’s experience includes corporate management functions in medium and large organizations, early stage investment in start-ups, project management, joint ventures and business development.
Anil has helped close over 100 venture-financing deals. Anil serves on the Board of 5 companies and is involved with various incubation centres as mentor in India as well as internationally. He is very well respected and valued in the start-up fraternity and is drawn upon by entrepreneurs for advice and strategic direction. Mentoring start-ups is his passion and he advices Governmental and industrial bodies on the same. Apart from investments, Anil is very active participant in start-up events as speaker or panellist, both in domestic and international circuit. Prior to joining Mumbai Angels, he headed new projects and investment in start-ups with Artheon Group, a Telecom, IT & Energy group. His early career started with heading a branch office at Century Rayon, an leading Indian textile conglomerate, after which he moved to Business Access India Pvt. Ltd. providing consulting services to Scandinavian companies from diverse sectors establishing their presence in the Asian markets. Then he moved to Transasia Biomedical Ltd., India’s largest manufacturer and exporter of bio-medical equipment. Anil graduated in Engineering and Post-Graduation in Management (Marketing) and PGDBM in Strategic Finance and Control.
Gaurav Chaturvedi
Gaurav is a Partner at Kae capital. An IITB alumnus, he co-founded ThinkLabs in 2006 and helped it grow into one of the largest STEM education companies in India. After the acquisition of ThinkLABs in 2016, Gaurav continued running the business for one more year before successfully exiting
He loves closely working with founders and helping them. A firm believer in lifelong learning, He thinks that the best way to learn for an investor is to work with the best entrepreneurs. At Kae Capital, Gaurav currently spends time overseeing investments in B2B, SaaS, and emerging technology. He sits on the boards of companies like Zetwerk, Hiver, Hippo Video and Disprz.
Mohit Bhatnagar
Govindaraj Avasarala
Govindaraj heads enterprise marketing at Vodafone Idea Business Services. He is responsible for enterprise brand, strategy, insights, digital marketing and customer engagements across India. Over 19 years of experience, he has worked with startups, consulting, and global companies. The passion areas include grass-root innovation, books and yoga.