In a sigificant talent transition, Jinesh Shah, the former CFO and vice president of Nexus India Venture Partners, has joined Omnivore Capital, the VC fund backed by Godrej Group, as partner. The group recently announced the setting up of its early stage fund to invest in agricultural technology startups with a target corpus of $50 million.
Confirming the development, Jinesh Shah told VCCircle, "I have recently joined Omnivore Capital as a Partner and looking forward to making a positive impact on India’s long-term food security through my involvement with Omnivore Capital. We believe that raising agricultural yields, in India and globally, is one of the greatest challenges of our times. Population growth and rising incomes will put incredible pressure on the global food system in the coming decades. Without long-term food security, India cannot expect a future of peace and prosperity."
In his previous stints, Shah worked as AGM (Finance) at Datamatics and Finance Manager at Patni Computers and HCL Technologies. He was responsible for M&A, Treasury and MIS functions at Datamatics while he served as team leader from Finance for Patni’s IPO. He holds an MMS (Finance) degree from Jamnalal Bajaj School of Management, Mumbai.
Atish Babu, a former Vice President at Nexus Venture Partners, is the co-founder and investment partner of Omnivore. Omnivore's other team member is Mark Kahn, who also serves as executive vice president for strategy & business development at Godrej Agrovet.Omnivore Capital, which is focused on early-stage, agri-tech venture capital investing in India, the United States, and Canada, will invest approximately $5 million in each portfolio company over the lifecycle of the company.
In recent times, there have been quite a few instances of lateral-level people moves. For instance, Tapan Gandhi, former head of corporate development & strategy, Lehman Brothers, joined as Principal - Investments at Pravi Capital, a $200-million fund launched by former ICICI Venture executives Jayanta Banerjee, Anand Vyas and Sunay Mathure. ICICI Venture hired Manikkan Sangameswaran, former chief of Babcock & Brown Infrastructure's India unit, to head its $1-billion infrastructure fund. Enam hired Jayesh Desai, national director for infrastructure, Ernst & Young to launch a fund.
In August 2010, US-based private equity major TA Associates hired Dhiraj Poddar, a director at Standard Chartered Private Equity, for its Mumbai office as a director. Amitabh Chakraborty, former president of equity at Religare Securities, joined as MD & chief investment officer of Kitara Capital. Some other recent top level moves include Mahesh Chhabria, a partner British PE major 3i Group Plc in India, who joined Actis.
