Matrix Partners India, one of the most active venture capital firms in the country, said Monday it has promoted three executives.
The VC firm, which is a backer of unicorns like Ola, Dailyhunt, OneCard, Razorpay and Ofbusiness, promoted Aakash Kumar, Pranay Desai, and Sudipto Sannigrahi to the post of managing director from principal.
Kumar joined Matrix in January 2022 as a principal. His focus areas are artificial intelligence, gaming, blockchain and frontier technologies. He has focussed on seed to Series B investments in these segments for the VC firm. Previously, he was the senior vice president of growth at Disney+ Hotstar.
He has also worked with companies like operating system maker Indus OS, proptech firm Housing.com, and Star India. In the past, he has co-founded two startups, HR-tech platform Wings HR Solutions and gaming developer Wings Intellect.
Desai, who has so far looked after early-stage investments in the software-as-a-service (SaaS) domain, joined Matrix in May 2021 from SaaS major Freshworks. He worked for seven years at Freshworks, where he worked at the CEO’s office and rose to the rank of director of growth marketing.
Before Freshworks, he was employed as a design engineer at state-run power equipment maker Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd. He is an alumnus of the Indian School of Business (ISB) and the Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati.
Sannigrahi, who is the oldest among the three at Matrix, joined the VC firm in April 2016 as an associate. He was promoted to the role of principal in June 2021. His select lead investments are Captain Fresh, Vegrow, FarMart, Damensch, Bijnis, Loadshare, ZippMat, Ximkart, Sourcewiz, Wootz and Cirkla. He has led investments ranging from seed to Series C stage for Matrix.
Prior to joining Matrix, he was part of the investment banking team at Credit Suisse. Previously, he has worked at companies such as Flipkart and Chronus.
Matrix is currently investing from its fourth fund, which was launched in June last year. The fund received commitments worth $550 million, 22.2% higher than its original aim of raising $450 million.
