Two years ago, US-based financial services firm Capital One set up a corporate venturing subsidiary to make early-stage investments in financial technology companies.
Jaidev Shergill, then Capital One’s head of digital products now managing partner of Capital One Growth Ventures, was to lead the six-strong unit. He said: “I feel really good about our progress over the last 18 months since we were formed (12 deals).” Its five public deals since launch have included Cylance’s $42m C round, Chain’s $30m closing, H2O.ai’s $20m B round and, last month, Transactis.
In February this year, US-based data-as-a-service platform Vast obtained $14m in series B funding from Capital One Growth Ventures, with Shergill joining its board.
Capital One previously invested in startups through North Hill Ventures, the venture capital firm with which it was affiliated until North Hill was spun off in 2012. It also operated Capital One Labs, a San Francisco-based research subsidiary that operates as a startup laboratory, while Lauren Connolley, venture partner, manages Capital One’s partnership with Plug and Play, one of the largest incubators in Silicon Valley.
Shergill had also overseen digital venture investing and startup business development for Capital One since 2012, and had previously been president of Citi Ventures, the corporate venturing arm of financial services firm Citigroup, from 2007 to 2009 when he left to found and run Bundle, a big data, consumer facing, digital startup.
Similar to his Capital One experience, Shergill had worked at Citi for a number of years – from 2004 in this case – before creating its venture unit.
Previously, he had worked in the US and UK across a swathe of top-tier financial services firms, including Credit Suisse, Lansdowne Capital and Deloitte after his MBA at Insead and engineering degree at Northwestern University.