India's most ambitious founders build with us.
Seventeen years. Four funds. One consistent thesis: back India's most resilient founders before the market does. Athera Venture Partners started investing in Indian technology in 2008, when most global investors thought India wasn't ready. The firm is not a global fund with an India allocation; India is the entire focus.
Rutvik Doshi
General Partner
B.Tech, IIT Kharagpur; MBA, INSEAD
Rutvik has been investing in early-stage technology companies since 2012, following over a decade of operating experience across global technology firms and startups. He began his career in the U.S., building internet infrastructure and enterprise software at CA Technologies and an early-stage startup. In 2007, he joined Google in Bangalore, where he led and launched several products including Voice Search, the Google Mobile App, SMS channels, and Google News globally. He later founded Taggle, an e-commerce startup in Bangalore, gaining first-hand experience building a company from the ground up in India. Rutvik is deeply passionate about technology and product thinking, and is particularly drawn to companies where technology creates a durable moat. He holds six patents in web applications and infrastructure products. At Athera Venture Partners (formerly Inventus India), Rutvik has invested across four funds and partnered with founders from the earliest stages through scale. His portfolio includes Unbxd (acquired by Netcore), Aasaanjobs (acquired by OLX), HealthifyMe, Euler Motors, PlayShifu, and Picsee. He serves on the council of the IVCA Climate and Sustainability council, the apex industry body for alternative capital in India.
Samir Kumar
General Partner
B.Tech (EE), IIT Bombay; MBA, IIM Bangalore
Samir became an early-stage venture investor in 2001 following a 15-year operating career in the IT industry. Samir spent a large part of his industry career as part of Wipro (NYSE: WIT), one of India's well known IT companies. Samir became a VC in 2001 when he joined Acer Technology Ventures (ATV), a $260 million institutional venture fund investing in technology and services companies in India, U.S. and Asia Pacific. Post ATV, Samir co-founded Inventus, and has been an integral part of the three funds that Inventus has raised, including the most recent Inventus III India Fund. He is or has been a Board Member or Observer on the Boards of Telibrahma, Instahealth, Sokrati, Savaari, CBazaar, Knolskape, MoveInSync, Aptener Tech (BluArmor) and VuNet. Samir is a Charter Member, and past member of the Governing Body, of TiE Bangalore.
Investments in securities markets are subject to market risks. Read all the related documents carefully before investing. Past performance is not indicative of future returns.
Parag Dhol
General Partner
B.Tech (Mechanical Engg.), IIT Delhi; MBA, IIM Bangalore
Parag has been an early-stage VC for most of his career. Parag started his VC career with ICICI Venture, India's first venture capital company, in 1993. He followed that up with stints at GE and Intel's corporate venture arms. Parag joined Inventus in 2008, shortly after the first close of Fund I. He is or was a Board Director or Observer at redBus, FundsIndia, Lemnisk, Power2SME, PolicyBazaar, Pixxel, Tricog, worxogo, Clootrack and Ati Motors. Parag is a Charter Member, and past member of the Governing Body, of TiE Bangalore. He is on the Investment Committee of a couple of incubators in Bangalore.
Rajiv Mehta
General Partner
B Chem Engg, Institute of Chemical Technology Bombay; Master's in Chem Engg, U of Penn; MBA, INSEAD
Rajiv became an early-stage venture investor in 2023 following a 21-year operating career in the consumer & retail industry. Rajiv has been in the Indian consumer space since 2005. He launched Puma in India taking it to #1 position in 9 years. He subsequently joined Arvind Brands to launch their footwear and private label apparel divisions. Most recently he was the CEO of Stove Kraft Ltd (kitchen brands like Pigeon, Gilma & Black+Decker) where he took the company public and turned around the operations to bring about faster growth and profitability. Rajiv has been an active Angel Investor since 2011 and has done over 15 investments, including Druva, StayZilla, Unbxd, Wow Momos, Faballey, Bird's Eye systems, Fynd and Wedmegood.
Anshu Pandey
Investment Team
MBA, IIM Ahmedabad; B.Tech Mechanical Engineering, IIT Kanpur
Anshu joins the Investment Team at Athera after over 5 years of experience across consulting, strategy and product roles at some of India's biggest startups and VC firms. Anshu worked on strategic initiatives across fintech, social media and hospitality. He joined OYO in a strategy role where he worked on the mitigation of hotels churn, then joined ShareChat's product team, where he built features to enhance Tier 2/3 India's social experience. He was part of the early team that built Moj, ShareChat's short video platform. Before joining Athera, he worked in the CEO's Office at Navi, leading product and strategy charters for their lending and AMC business. In the venture capital space, he has worked on identifying investment opportunities and building sector theses through internships at Bessemer Venture Partners and Hummingbird Ventures.
Ishan Sinha
Investment Team
MBA, IIM Bangalore; B.Tech Mechanical Engineering, NIT Hamirpur
Ishan joined the Investment Team at Athera after ~7 years of experience across strategy consulting, operations, and project management. Prior to Athera, Ishan was a Senior Consultant at Bain & Company, working on C-suite objectives across strategy definition and implementation, spanning growth, product, channels, CX, margins, and post-merger integrations, mostly in Consumer Tech, Consumer Products, Retail, and Digital Insurgents. Before Bain, Ishan was in a Project Management role in the Energy sector at Technip, delivering large-scale, turnkey refinery, hydrogen and LNG projects. He has also served short stints in fashion retail with ABFRL, in power with NTPC, and in advanced manufacturing with BHEL and Technip.
Tanya Sequeira
Chief Financial Officer
Chartered Accountant (ICAI); Bachelor of Commerce, M.D.S.U. Ajmer
Tanya joined Athera after 10 years of working in Assurance and Financial due diligence at KPMG. Her experience at KPMG cuts across sectors and at various stages of an organisation's journey from incubation to growth and debt listing. Tanya worked with and advised startups in the e-commerce, AdTech and retail sectors. She has also advised and guided venture capital and private equity firms in carrying out financial diligences alongside reviewing deal documentation. At Athera, she assists in evaluating potential investments from a financial standpoint and also assists in deal structuring. Tanya guides portfolio companies in streamlining their finance processes along with assisting them on complicated accounting and tax matters. She also helps in LP reporting, valuation and other matters.
Kaushik Anand
Assistant Manager - Finance
Mangala Jois
Business Administration
Mangala has been associated with Inventus since the beginning. Prior to Athera, she worked at Wipro. She is the force running the Athera office smoothly.
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