VenturEast hires ex-DFJ partner to run India seed fund
India-focused VC firm VenturEast has hired Sateesh Andra, formerly a partner at Draper Fisher Jurvestan, to head up its seed-stage technology fund. His remit is to create a Silicon Valley-like incubation ecosystem and help companies tap into global venture funding.
Andra was one of the founding members at DFJ India and spent five years at the firm, investing in technology and cleantech companies such as iYogi, Cleartrip, Komli and Canvera. He also helped launch Hyderabad Angels, a platform that provides seed capital to start-ups.
"Having been on both sides of the fence as a successful entrepreneur and as a Venture Partner, we know Andra can skillfully negotiate the gaps between strategy and execution on a global platform," said Sarath Naru, founder and managing partner at Ventureast. "His management style will be an asset to our companies as he is not one to hesitate rolling up his sleeves and get in the trenches when the company so needs."
The seed-stage vehicle is launching at $10 million and Andra is already targeting a corpus of $50 million for its successor. It will focus on cloud, mobile and internet businesses, as well as technology-enabled services start-ups in healthcare, education, financial services and cleantech. The fund is co-sponsored by VenturEast and the Tenet Group in Madras.
VenturEast, which counts Google among its investors, has more than $300 million under management across the technology, healthcare and life sciences, and cleantech sectors.
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