Serial investor Ashish Gupta joins Prime Venture as partner emeritus

Bengaluru-based Prime Venture Partners on Wednesday said it has appointed Helion co-founder Ashish Gupta as partner emeritus.

Gupta will be a part of the company’s investment committee and will be involved in the decision making process of all of its future investments, according to a statement. 

He will also serve as a mentor and advisor to the entire portfolio, the fund’s future strategies and guide the team on several aspects of venture capital investing and portfolio management.

Launched in 2012, the early-stage fund led by Shripati Acharya, Sanjay Swamy, and Amit Somani, has invested in over 25 startups. The portfolio includes fintech firms such as Ezetap and KredX, technical hiring service provider HackerEarth and digital profile management platform  Synup among others.

Its more recent investments include Sunstone Education Technology, fintech platform Recko and car leasing startup OTOCapital.

Apart from establishing Mauritius and Gurugram based venture capital firm Helion Venture Partners in 2005, Gupta has co-founded two other ventures -- price comparison platform Junglee, which has been acquired by Amazon in 1998, and Tavant Technologies.

The IIT Kanpur alumnus holds a Ph.D. in computer science from Stanford University. He has also worked at Woodside Fund, Oracle and IBM. 

An active angel investor in India’s technology startups space, Gupta’s previous investments include IBM-acquired Daksh, Perfios, Info Edge, MakeMyTrip, MuSigma, Upwork, redBus, and Flipkart. He currently serves on several boards including Ezetap, Pubmatic, Simplilearn, SMSGupshup, Naukri, and Pine Labs-acquired Qwikcilver.

“Founders who interact with him even for a few minutes always appreciate his direct style and insights… This will be a huge step in helping us further improve the quality of our investment decisions, as well as an excellent value-add for our entrepreneurs building companies out of India and globally,” Shripati  Acharya, co-founder and managing partner at Prime Venture Partners said in the statement.

Another serial entrepreneur and investor, Raj Mashruwala is also a partner emeritus at Prime.