Former Wipro joint CEO Girish Paranjpe is an angel investor in Bangalore-based educational startup eDreams Edusoft. Paranjpe, who is an operating partner in Boston-based PE major Advent, is also the chairman of the board of eDreams.
IT services bigwigs quitting a company would previously find a top role for themselves in another IT services company. But more and more of them are today turning to roles where they engage actively with startups — as angel investors, mentors or as part of private equity firms.
Former Wipro joint CEO Girish Paranjpe is an angel investor in Bangalore-based educational startup eDreams Edusoft. Paranjpe, who is an operating partner in Boston-based PE major Advent, is also the chairman of the board of eDreams. The startup, founded by former Wipro executive Rajeev Pathak, has a solution for schools — using artificial intelligence, machine learning and speech processing — that enables teachers to give different students in a class different problem sets depending on their abilities.
Former Infosys board member V Balakrishnan is investing in a Bangalore-based risk management product startup. He does not want to name the startup, but said that the solution could be integrated with existing ERP software to oversee regulatory compliance in an organization.
Infosys' former sales head Basab Pradhan has donned the role of an advisor in California-based startup IT Exchange, a marketplace for technology services that connects mid-sized IT buyers and service providers.
Sudip Nandy, who was CEO of Aricent and prior to that the head of the telecom and product engineering solutions division of Wipro, has joined the board of Bangalore-based Religent Global that helps technology biggies to set up global inhouse centres (GICs) or captives in India. Religent was founded by his former Wipro colleague Shreedhara Shetty last year.
Former Infosys board member T V Mohandas Pai has invested in Bangalore-based wearable technology startup GetActive, which is developing an activity tracker to measure sleep patterns, calories, steps and distance covered.
Sudip Banerjee, who was CEO of L&T Infotech and prior to that the head of enterprise solutions at Wipro, is a mentor to and on the governance board of Kolkata-based Totalstart, an entrepreneurial ecosystem developer. Totalstart provides a spectrum of services to startups including incubation centres and consulting services.
"IT veterans can scale up the risk taking abilities of startups and prepare them for a global play. Currently, the startup infant mortality rate is high as they lack access to mentoring and necessary connections, and that scales down their global ambitions. This is vital to invigorate the startup ecosystem," says serial entrepreneur and investor K Ganesh. He is co-founder and chairman of HealthVista, which operates the Portea home medical care services.
Pai says it's exciting to be part of India's startup story. "Our young entrepreneurs are working on disruptive ideas that will push the country into a different orbit," he says.
Courtesy: http://m.timesofindia.com/tech/tech-news/Ex-IT-services-bigwigs-engage-with-startups/articleshow/37797985.cms
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