Amit Sridharan, director of corporate venture capital (CVC) in the US for diversified India-based conglomerate Mahindra Group, has left to set up seed-stage venture capital firm First Rays Venture Partners.
First Rays will invest in business-to-business enterprise technology developers in areas such as artificial intelligence, cloud-edge-data orchestration and automation. Its initial portfolio consists of Kleeen Software, Blitzz.io and Enya.ai.
Sridharan said: “I do not have CVC backers yet, but it is something I will look into for fund II. I plan to work with CVCs in deals. Mahindra will be doing the management of the existing portfolio through the team in India as of now.”
At Mahindra since September 2018, Sridharan, a GCV Rising Stars 2019 award winner, had backed Avaamo and Cloudleaf. He had previously primarily worked for 14 years at India-based peer Tata Group as head of strategy, new business and early-stage acquisitions.
Photo of Amit Sridharan courtesy of LinkedIn.
