Sunita Parasuraman was appointed head of investments at Facebook New Product Experimentation (NPE), the subsidiary that US-based social media platform Facebook’s owner Meta formed to launch consumer-focused apps, in July 2020. As part of the group’s rebrand in late 2021, the unit is now known as Meta New Product Experimentation.
Speaking in December 2021, Parasuraman said: “In addition to NPE’s existing approach – building new experimental products from the ground-up – over the past year, we’ve also experimented with ways to get capital into the hands of founders and early-stage teams who share our mission. To start, we made a few initial investments, and will be exploring other scalable ways to partner with more seed-stage and series A startups.
“Meta’s support for the startup ecosystem began over a decade ago, with early programs like the fbFund. Our work is a continuation of that, focused on supporting some of today’s most compelling early-stage startups with capital, expertise and other resources.” NPE led a $3m seed round for mental wellness platform Ami in May 2022, and was involved in the November 2021 seed round for Inworld AI, an AI developer platform for the metaverse.
Prior to joining the NPE team, Parasuraman had spent nine years at Facebook’s treasury group, first as a senior director of global head of treasury before shifting to focus on the Libra blockchain project in 2019.
She holds a bachelor of technology degree in metallurgical engineering from Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, a master of science in materials science and engineering from University of Pennsylvania and an MBA in finance from University of California at Berkeley’s Haas School of Business.
