2014 rank: 2
Rank last year: 3
Clout in venture capital is earned through success, and in recent years, Nagraj Kashyap, the head of Qualcomm Ventures, the corporate venturing unit of US-based semiconductor company Qualcomm, is making a lot of noise.
The business is making its mark netting multiple $1bn exits. Kashyap, in a speech at the Corporate Venturing Symposium, said: “We have had a few successes in the past three years. We had three companies that were all $1bn on exit. Waze was the most recent, but prior to that we had NetQin and InvenSense. We then had a number of other smaller exits.”
The corporate venturing unit also has a stake in fast-growing China-based mobile handset company Xiaomi, which reportedly secured a $10bn valuation in August last year. Following on from this investment success the company set up a $150m fund for China.
Kashyap added: “We will continue to expand at the rate we are, and we will not go too fast. We are at the stage where we have some good returns and exits, and are establishing some strategic value back to Qualcomm.”
Kashyap joined Qualcomm Ventures in 2003 and oversaw the North America ventures team until 2007 when he was appointed head of global venturing.
Under Kashyap’s leadership the business has also established a well-regard early stage prize, QPrize, which rewards entrepreneurs around the world with prize money.
Kashyap grew the Qualcomm Ventures portfolio to more than 100 investments last year from ten in 2003 and has grown the team significantly.
He began his career as a software engineer at Nortel, Motorola and 3Com/US Robotics before moving to management consulting firm PRTM, now part of PricewaterhouseCoopers.