Setting up a $500m debut venture fund can create a large 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 Rising Stars, 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.
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. In his LinkedIn endorsement, he said: “It was under Ritika’s leadership that our team launched several new offerings, go-to-market models and new initiatives.
“Her intelligence and drive enabled us to cut through bureaucracy and get products out of the door quickly. Her strong-willed desire to drive innovation and change, and achieve big, audacious goals made her the perfect manager and rainmaker. Ritika is one of the elite few.”
Suri, in turn, was full of praise for Bashir as co-head and the other new members of her global team.
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, according to Bashir on his profile page.
Suri said the team’s early approach has been helped by the blueprint drawn up by SAP’s corporate venturing unit, now called Sapphire. Sapphire ventures has recently become technology agnostic but is still are driven by SAP technologies. Suri said: “That was a learning that a CVC can’t be restrictive. So when we setup 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.