Setting up a $500m debut venture fund can create a wave of attention, especially in India. Which is why Ritika Suri, senior vice-president and global head of corporate development at India-based technology provider Infosys – whose remit includes overseeing leadership of mergers and acquisitions and the Infosys Innovation Fund – was cautious about singling out any of her new team for the GCV Rising Stars 2016 awards earlier this year, given its early beginnings.
Such caution bodes well, as does the experience she and her team gained from working at Germany-based enterprise resource planning provider SAP. In January, Suri said the team’s early approach has been helped by the blueprint drawn up by SAP’s corporate venturing unit, now called Sapphire Ventures, which has recently become technology agnostic but is still are driven by SAP technologies.
Suri said: “That was a learning that a CVC cannot be restrictive. So when we set up Infosys, we knew our uniqueness as a CVC would be in the fact that we as Infosys would be technology agnostic.”
She said Infosys would similarly seek to work with VCs and help vet ideas and plan entrepreneurs’ first products, given its IT services pedigree. The Infosys Innovation Fund is earmarked for global investments in disruptive new technologies in India and globally and also includes a startup incubator for seed and early-stage growth.
Suri, whose MBA was from Leeds Business School in the UK, was previously senior vice-president and customer officer for the technology, innovation and products group at SAP Labs in Palo Alto, California, until August 2014.
Yusuf Bashir, managing director of the Infosys Innovation Fund, moved over with Suri from SAP. Together, the team has started striking eight deals in the past year, including a $4m investment in US-based data discovery platform Waterline Data, as part of a $16m series B round that closed in February.
At the time, Suri said: “We see a need for automated data discovery solutions like Waterline Data in helping our clients achieve greater business value from their big data assets. This investment underscores our commitment to our clients to bring innovative big data solutions across our platforms and offerings.”
Waterline is one of eight deals and Suri was happy with the fund’s progress.
For the Powerlist award, she said: “Looking back at the year, it has been a very fulfilling year for our Infosys Innovation Fund. We announced the fund back in January of last year and not only did we launch and operationalise the fund within a few months, in parallel we established our thesis, validated it with our clients and very successfully invested directly and co-invested jointly with some leading VCs in approximately eight startups in the last year.
“Our brand, in its first year of existence saw much recognition due to the great collaboration we have been able to drive between our ecosystem clients and patterns with the startups. The startups value this aspect of our strategic relationship above any other assistance including financial. And as such we are humbled by the overwhelming inbound dealflow.
“However, we have ways to go. It is very early and we are still in our infancy and our endeavour will be to continue to learn, iterate, collaborate and build a strong ecosystem of great new companies, with visionary founders that define new and disruptive business models to drive unprecedented value for us, our clients and all our partners.”