Sistema Asia Fund (SAF), the Bangalore based Venture Capital firm investing in mid-stage Indian startups, has announced the induction of ex-VC and tech-entrepreneur Sampathkumar P as a part of the firm’s investment leadership in India.
Sampath joins the team as a Senior Partner to lead and manage investments for the soon-to-be launched Fund II by the firm. He will also be working closely with the team to manage portfolio companies from Fund I as well as portfolio exits. SAF has investments into companies like Infra.Market, Rebel Foods, Uniphore, HealthifyMe, Licious among others.
Andrey Terebenin, Managing Partner at Sistema Asia Fund commented, “We are excited to have Sampath as a part of the growing SAF team in India. Sampath comes with a rich mix of experience in technology, investments and entrepreneurship which are all primarily the pillars of VC industry. His experience will help us add complementary experience to build more value for the stakeholders and also extend further support to our portfolio companies. As we prepare to launch Fund II, we are confident that the complementary experience of our investment leadership will help us identify new and relevant opportunities in the market and expand our scope of investment areas.”
Sampath comes with a wealth of hands-on product and technology experience in SAAS, AI/ML, AR/VR and Gaming. He started his professional journey as a software developer and moved into product management starting with Yodlee, followed by Oracle and Certus Software in the San Francisco Bay Area. Sampath moved back to India in mid-2000s to join Vani Kola, Kumar Shiralagi and Vinod Dham in launching NEA-IndoUS Ventures, later renamed to Kalaari Capital.
As one of the early VCs in the Indian ecosystem, he has deep experience of investing, managing and exiting early
stage investments across multiple sectors including ecommerce, education, healthcare and software products. Post the Kalaari stint, Sampath co-founded an ed-tech company focused on early learning, which was acquired by Embibe, now a part of Reliance Jio. His latest stint was as SVP, Product at Embibe.
As part of his announcement, Sampath added, “I am truly excited to start my journey with SAF where the team has built a high-quality portfolio and a strong mid-stage brand. I am looking forward to working with this team in continuing to enable the creation of large, scalable companies and delivering stakeholder returns. I believe in the ethical and impactful application of technology and its leverage in building sustainable business value and differentiation. I am excited to get back to the opportunity of working with quality entrepreneurs and in joining them as a partner towards building great products and large companies serving domestic and global markets out of India.”
“It is a privilege to be able to work with Sampath again, after being together at Kalaari for the good part of a decade. He is a rare combination of deep product and tech inclination and understanding, business nous and exceptional people skills. His onboarding adds a unique dimension to our investment team”, noted Sumit Jain, Senior Partner, SAF.
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