Ashish Gupta, former COO& founder, Evalueserve and Prof. Rishikesha Krishnan, Director, IIM Indore also come on board
New Delhi, April 18, 2017: Early stage venture capital firm, YourNest, today announced the advisory board for its recently launched Rs. 300 cr YourNest India VC Fund 2.Sharad Sharma, co-founder and CEO of iSPIRT, Ashish Gupta, founder of Evalueserve & Benori Ventures, and Prof. Rishikesha T Krishnan, Director IIM-Indore are the first three appointees to the proposed eight-member board. The other five seats will be represented by institutional investors.
Sharad Sharma said, “YourNest aims to co-create cutting-edge technology solutions out of India. Their track record, as well as leadership, highlights their commitment to forge product leadership out of India. I look forward to work with them in shaping the next wave of techpreneurs.”
Sharad Sharma embodies entrepreneurship and technology evangelism in India and is the co-founder of iSPIRT, the think tank for Indian software products. Ashish Gupta is a successful entrepreneur and a well-known angel investor. Prof. Krishnan is a recognised expert in the area of innovations with an India focus.
The Advisory Board will offer strategic counsel to the YourNest team on investment strategy, corporate governance and leadership development. The board members bring deep expertise in building high-growth companies, readingthe evolving technology landscape and define the contours of the Indian venture capital and start-up ecosystem. They would act as sounding members to drive key growth initiatives at YourNest.
Sunil Goyal, Founder & CEO, YourNest said, “YourNest’s workis expanding rapidly as we continue to back the best in the Indian startup ecosystem. In order to deliver greater value to all ourstakeholders,it is critical to bring knowledgeable anddiverse minds to the table.Each of our advisors brings incredible knowledge and experience in various realms of VC Funding and startup ecosystem and will make the entire team wiser with their inputs.It is humbling to have someone like Sharad be a part of the board on a pro-bono basis due to his zeal to invigorate the product ecosystem in the country.”
In late 2016, YourNest launched YourNest India Fund II with a corpus of INR 300 crores, to offer pre-Series A funding to 4-8 ventures every year. From the 4,000+ proposals YourNest receives annually, the second fund will focus on startups that operate at the cutting edge of technology. The sectors they will target include Internet of Things, Electronic System Design, Artificial Intelligence, Advanced Robotics, Enterprise Software and Mobile Internet. From its Fund 1, YourNest has invested in companies like Arya.ai, Uniphore, Mycity4kids and GolfLan. For Fund-1, YourNest had Alok Mittal, R Satya Narayan, Badri Aggarwal, Prof MM Pant, Ramesh Dharmaji (SDIBI nominee) and Purvi Parkeria (an IIFL nominee) in its advisory board.
About Sharad Sharma
Sharad Sharma embodies entrepreneurship and technology evangelism. He co-founded iSPIRT, the think tank for Indian software products, and is a member of its governing council. He was the CEO of Yahoo! India R&D centre and turned around VERITAS operations in India. He brought AT&T/Lucent R&D to India as an intrapreneur. He was the Chair of NASSCOM Product Forum and a member of the Executive Council from 2009-13. As an entrepreneur, he co-founded Teltier, now part of Cisco. He is one of the most active technology angel investors in India with about two dozen investments.
About Ashish Gupta
Ashish Gupta is a successful serial entrepreneur and angel investor. An IIT-Delhi graduate with an MBA from Carnegie Mellon, Ashish founded Benori Ventures to incubate, invest and accelerate start-ups in India. A McKinsey alumnus, Ashish is one of the founding members of Ashoka University.
He was the COO and Global Business Unit Head, Financial Services of Evalueserve, aglobal professional services provider offering research, analytics and data management services. Prior to that,in 2000, he foundedTies2Family, a community portal to connect people and services. Ashish is also a member of TiE Delhi and Advisory Board Member at Laureate Education India.
About Rishikesha T. Krishnan
Prof Rishikesha T. Krishnan is the Director of Indian Institute of Management, Indore. He taught at IIM-Bangalore, from 1996 to 2013, and served on a number of committees set up by the Government of India, Nasscom and CII to promote and reward innovators in India. Prof Krishnan has authored two critically acclaimed books. From Jugaad to Systematic Innovation: The Challenge for India and 8 Steps to Innovation: Going from Jugaad to Excellence (co-authored with Vinay Dabholkar). He has more than 140 articles to his name in refereed journals and the press. His work has been widely praised for its relevance and applicability to the Indian context. Prof. Krishnan is a part of Thinkers50 India, a list of most influential management thinkers from India.
About YourNest
Founded in April 2011 by Sunil K Goyal, Sanjay Pande and Girish Shivani, YourNest is an early stage venture capital fund that invests in the new connected economy represented by the Internet of Things, Electronic System Design, Artificial Intelligence, Advanced Robotics, Enterprise Software and the Mobile Internet. In 2016, the company brought Dr. Vivek Mansingh on board as a General Partner.
YourNest is among the top quartile of pre-series A stage venture funds. Acting as a lead investor in investment rounds of upto USD 1 million, YourNest co-creates successful companies by mentoring and closely working with start-ups. The portfolio consists of 16 companies, including Uniphore Software, mycity4kids, Rubique, Arya.ai, Smart Software Testing Solutions Inc, Simpli5d, SmartQ, seeDoc, Fashalot, aahaa stores, MoMark, and GolfLAN.
The first fund launched in 2012 saw subscription from 144 individual investors as well as 3 institutional investors – SIDBI’s India Opportunity Fund, IIFL Seed Ventures and Northgate Capital (a Silicon Valley based USD 5 billion Fund of Funds) with a corpus of INR 90 crore. In October 2016, YourNest announced its second fund called ‘YourNest India VC Fund II’ for Rs. 300 crore targeted at investing in 25-30 start-ups over the next 4 years.