Kalaari Capital, the Bangalore based VC firm popularly know for its early investments in Snapdeal and numerous digital media companies, has today announced three key hires to its senior team. This move is aimed to strengthen its lead in the early-stage startup investments in India.
It has appointed Prashanth Aluru, Pooja Gupta and Muthiah Venkateswaran for different roles. Prashanth was a partner at Bain & Company. Pooja is a former HR head at Myntra.
While Prasanth has joined the firm as partner, Pooja has been roped in as head of Portfolio HR. In addition, Muthiah has been roped in as a partner of the firm’s recently launched seed program – Kstart. All three of them are expected to spearhead the multi vertical growth of portfolio companies.
The new hires come after the VC firm raised $290 million. It seems that Kalaari Capital is now building an operations team, just like others in the industry such as Sequoia Capital India and Accel India.
Prashanth has a broad range of strategy consulting and operational experience. He has nearly 18 years of experience in the global technology industry across India, US and UK/Europe. As he was a leader in Bain’s APAC Technology for over 9 years, Prashanth was instrumental in expanding their consulting business with IT services players.
Pooja has more than 15 years of experience with companies like Myntra and SAP AG. For those companies, she played variety of local and international roles in HR.
She has driven the HR charter in large multi-national environme
Muthiah has experience in management consulting & technology across India and US. Most recently, he helped setup Spencer Stuart’s Bangalore office. He also led their Digital and leadership advisory practices in India.
He has consulted with many startup founders. He has also worked closely with some of KStart portfolio companies. His prior experiences include McKinsey USA and nearly a decade long stint with Texas Instruments in multiple roles.
Commenting about these appointments, Vani Kola, MD of Kalaari Capital said,
We are deeply committed to building a Venture firm focused on identifying and nurturing the best technology startups in India. I am pleased to welcome Prashanth, Pooja and Muthiah to join the Kalaari and KStart leadership teams. I am confident they will play a key role in helping us and our portfolio companies.
Last year, Kalaari had also added several new advisors. To work with its portfolio companies, it appointed Ravi Venkatesan and Ram Gupta. It has already roped in Ratan Tata as a special advisor.
