Dr. Rajesh Srivathsa, Managing Partner: rajesh@ojasventures.com Rajesh and the Ojas team aim to leverage their operational expertise to support entrepreneurs based in India and help create successful, scalable, internationally competitive, profitable companies. Before Ojas, Rajesh was the Business Head helping manage P&L for the Mobile Terminals Business Unit (MTBU) at Aricent, Inc which licensed products and provided services across the mobile ecosystem. MTBU was created through the merger of several units from different companies, one of which was Emuzed, Inc., a startup based in California with R&D in India. As the CTO of Emuzed and Head of Sales & Marketing for the mobile business, Rajesh was responsible for customer acquisition & revenues, strategic business initiatives, ecosystem development & management and interfacing with a cross border engineering team. Prior to Emuzed, he spearheaded development of video systems for the broadcast market at Lucent Digital Video, an internal venture funded by Lucent Ventures and subsequently acquired by Lucent Technologies. Before LDV, he was at IBM Watson Research Center responsible for development of advanced algorithms and implementation on embedded chips. He holds a Bachelor of Technology, Master of Science and a Doctor of Philosophy degree from the National Institute of Technology Karnataka at Suratkal, University of Texas at Austin and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign respectively. Rajesh has represented Lucent and IBM in international standard bodies such as MPEG and SMPTE. He has several articles and patents to his credit. Rajesh loves to travel; he has travelled as far down south as the Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica and Finland in the north. He is a student of Taek-wondo and a practitioner of Vipassana meditation.
Pavan Krishnamurthy, Partner: pavan@ojasventures.com Pavan has over 13 years experience across various industries such as early stage investing, consulting, venture advisory, research etc. In the recent past, he has worked with Nadathur Holdings and Investments (an early stage venture capital firm focused on technology & life sciences ventures), SRW Advisors (an advisory & mentor capital firm that worked with entrepreneurial ventures in areas such as strategy, business model/plan development, finance, mentoring etc) and Syndicated Research Group (US based research advisory firm that provided research advisory services to senior executives of Fortune 500 companies in the domains of Human Capital Strategies and Corporate Finance Strategies). In the past, Pavan has also worked as a CFO for two venture backed companies in the domain of internet applications and media besides stints with Ernst & Young and Price Waterhouse in their Assurance and Advisory practices. Pavan is a Chartered Accountant by qualification and holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Mathematics, Economics & Statistics
Gautam Balijepalli, Principal: gautam@ojasventures.com Gautam has more than 12 years of experience in the technology sector in venture investing, business development and software development. Prior to Ojas, he was with the venture capital team at Nomura (NYSE: NMR), Japan’s largest investment bank, based in London. During his time at Nomura, he has syndicated investments of around $60m. He led and managed investments in Compellent (NYSE: CML), Revivio (Symantec) and NetForensics, as part of a team. Prior to Nomura, he gained experience in Business Development at Sun Microsystems and had significant senior management exposure while working on marketing initiatives for Sun's software products. Gautam has experience in creating sales & marketing strategies targeted at CIOs as well as consulting to them on strategic IT initiatives. He has also held roles in consulting at PricewaterhouseCoopers (IBM) and software development at Infosys. Gautam has a Bachelor’s degree in Technology from the Indian Institute of Technology, Chennai and an MBA from London Business School.
Raghu Batta, Partner: raghu@ojasventures.com Raghu joined Ojas
Ventures in June 2007, after a five year stint at VantagePoint Venture Partners
(San Bruno, CA), with an investment focus on wireline/wireless
infrastructure-applications and digital media infrastructure. At
VPVP, he was a key member of team that led investments in Spatial
Wireless (sold for $275M to Alcatel), Widevine, (software based security
platforms for IPTV and Open Internet), Entrisphere (sold to Ericsson for
$290M), LiveScribe (revolutionary SmartPen computer), ProtoStar (Satellites
over South Asia), Iand Innopath (over the air updates for cellphones). He also
sold two companies (Kagoor Networks to Juniper and Alopa Networks to C-Cor), as
a board member representing VantagePoint. Prior to VantagePoint, he worked for over 11 years at various Data Comm and
Telecoms companies in the San Francisco Bay Area in Prod Mgmt, Business
Development and M&A at various companies that include Madge Networks, Bay
Networks, Assured Access, Alcatel, and CopperCom.
Raghu has an MBA from Baruch College, New York and B.E from Manipal Institute
of Technology.
We have been fortunate to be backed by one of the early industry luminaries in India who, along with his cofounders, has shown entrepreneurs by example that it is possible to create a transparent, scalable, competitive, wealth sharing, world class technology company out of India - Mr. Raghavan S. Nadathur (NSR), the co-founder and former JMD of Infosys. NSR has been an active player in the early stage ecosystem in India since 2000 helping with mentorship and guidance through NSR Center for Entrepreneurial Learning at IIM – Bangalore as well as with financial capital from Nadathur Holdings and Investments. NHIL (www.nadathur.com) is a private wealth management company with assets under management in excess of $500 M. Under his tutelage, we hope we can influence the growth of the early stage ecosystem in India.
Philosophy
Ojas seeks to work closely with entrepreneurs to help with strategy, sales & marketing and operations to help them succeed in their mission to build world class, scalable, profitable enterprises. While Ojas is eager to help companies in all aspects of company growth, it also knows when to step out of the way.
The Gurus of Ojas
Ojas believes that for young startups to become successful, it is imperative that they have the guidance of experienced professionals who understand the market place in depth. We recognize that with the help of such professionals, the value we can add to our portfolio companies can be magnified several fold.
We are actively seeking to partner with such professionals who are passionate about helping young companies succeed. We recognize the limitations on their time given their current jobs; however, we believe that for their engagement with Ojas and our companies to succeed they should be willing to ‘adopt’ a portfolio company and commit a minimal amount of quality time & energy to the engagement. The Gurus should be able to help with validation of market & technology, guide in execution and provide access to customers.
If you would like to be an Ojas Guru, we would love to hear from you at pingus@ojasventures.com
Portfolio
Who Are We ?
Why Partner with Ojas?
Ojas is an India centric, technology focused early stage VC firm. The first fund is a US$ 35 Million fund. Our mission is to (in our own small way) energize the entrepreneurial ecosystem in India.
So what’s different about us? Firstly, as you may have noticed, there aren’t too many VC Funds in India whose primary focus is to provide between $750 Thousand to $3 Million of capital that a technology entrepreneur typically requires at the early stages of their venture.
Secondly, our team consists of individuals who have either been entrepreneurs themselves or worked with start-ups for much of their careers. So, we understand to a good extent, the challenges that arise in nurturing a company from an idea to a scalable, profitable, competitive business. We are ever ready to roll up our sleeves and dive in to help our portfolio companies. And, we are not just talking about ‘once-a month board meeting’ sort of help, but, actual operational support be it in strategy, business development, HR, finance or any other area. Now obviously we realize that we are not experts in all domains nor do we have unlimited bandwidth! And that is why:
Thirdly, we are actively bringing on board the “Gurus of Ojas”. The Gurus of Ojas are “in-the-field” experts in leadership positions in their respective organizations and are passionate about mentoring and helping entrepreneurs in India create the next Google. A Guru would work closely with the entrepreneurs and help wherever the venture needs it most. At the same time, recognizing that the venture is the entrepreneur’s baby, we are ready to step out of the way if we become an impediment to execution. More often than not however, ventures feel the need for deeper involvement from the Gurus and that’s when the magic begins to happen!
