Nishant Verman quits Canaan Partners to lead M&As and investments at Flipkart

Nishant Verman, vice president of venture capital firm Canaan Partners, quit the VC firm to join India's largest e-commerce platform Flipkart to focus on M&A and investments. He transitioned to the new role two months back as per his LinkedIn update.

The Economic Times first reported the development.

Verman is actively involved with the startup ecosystem in India and serves on the board at Kerala-based accelerator Startup Village. He is also a mentor at Microsoft Accelerator Bangalore, where he closely works with incubatee companies on product-market fit, strategy and fundraising.

In his last job at global VC firm Canaan Partners as part of its India team, Verman focused on mobility, enterprise software and cloud. Prior to Canaan, Verman co-founded Groovebug, a personalised music platform for the iPad, where he focused on product development and marketing.

He also worked at Microsoft Singapore as a senior business development manager focusing on strategic partnerships across China and India.

Verman has an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management, an MS in Computer Science from Stanford University, and a BS in Computer Engineering from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

His move comes at a time when all top e-commerce firms in the country are looking to acquire firms to boost their businesses in India.

Amazon India roped in Abhijeet Muzumdar, former vice-president at Bessemer Venture Partners, to lead its corporate development function, where he is expected to be involved in investments and acquisitions in India and Southeast Asia.

Snapdeal roped in Abhishek Kumar, head investments at venture firm Palaash Ventures for acquisitions, investments and deep partnerships that can lead to mergers for the company.

Meanwhile, Verman's move comes at a time when Canaan Partners is looking to review its investment strategy in India amid rumours of cessation of its operations in the country, as first reported by VCCircle in May.

The firm is currently in discussions with its global partners across the US, Israel and India to take a re-look at its strategy to remain relevant to the Indian market. Its India chief Alok Mittal is turning an entrepreneur and has said he will disassociate himself from fresh investment activity of the Silicon Valley VC firm in the country, while he will continue to manage the firm's existing investments in India.

Mittal is planning to launch a startup while at the same time continuing to support Canaan's existing portfolio firms.

(Edited by Joby Puthuparampil Johnson)