Bharadwaj Ogirala is a corporate venturer whose career might have been given a positive boost thanks to exposure through the GCV Rising Stars publication.
A 2017 nominee, Ogirala, who back then was a corporate development specialist, has since been promoted as a senior specialist, and has also been singled out as an “Axiata Champion”, a distinction awarded to the Malaysia-based phone operator’s top 0.5% employees for their exceptional performance.
Having joined the Kuala Lumper-based Axiata Digital team in 2015, Ogirala focuses on investments, new business funding, joint ventures and mergers and acquisitions in the information technology (IT) space, and on fund setups. He has so far led five deals for the unit, and had a support role in at least five others.
In 2017, he led the Axiata’s $16.8m round for Swedish insurtech group Bima, which provides micro-insurance to underserved families in emerging markets and has 320 million customers across 10 countries.
Ogirala said he was currently also working on further fundraisings for existing portfolio companies.
With operations in Malaysia, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Nepal, Singapore and India, Axiata might very well be the most active corporate venturing unit across Southeast Asia, having completed 20 investments in three years and deployed more than $200m in capital.
Last year, the investor did not slow down its dealflow, having led (aside from Bima) a $23m series B round for Australian mobile advertising company Unlockd, with Alium Capital as co-investor.
But a more significant development was perhaps the rumoured set-up of a $15m Sri Lanka-focused fund, which would operate similarly to the $5m micro-VC fund set up in Cambodia in March 2017. The fund would invest in digital startups and local service providers.
Prior to joining Axiata, Ogirala made a four-year stint at accountants PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) in Mumbai, first as a consultant and later as a senior consultant, before moving to land bank Goodhope Asia Holdings in a role that not only took him to Malaysia, but also served as his introduction to the corporate development and venturing world.
Srinivas Gattamneni, head of corporate development at Axiata and a member of the GCV Powerlist 2016 and 2017, told GCV last year: “Bharadwaj’s dealmaking skills combine a strong blend of strategic as well as financial skillset, which is essential to unlock value for the corporate investor as well as the investee.
“He has been instrumental in growing the Axiata portfolio in the digital arena.”
An Indian native and graduate of the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology (ITT) Bombay, where he completed both his bachelor’s in electrical and electronics engineering and master’s in telecoms and signal processing, Ogirala went on to pursue an MBA with a strategy and finance major at the Indian School of Business, based in the state of Telangana.
Speaking to GCV for his 2017 nomination, he said: “My professional ambition is to continue making solid investments creating value, which entails making sure that our investments are validated by external fundraising or by some form of exit.
“In the near future, I wish to head the CVC function, and take a board role in the investee companies.”
He sure seems to be headed the right way for that.