Prime Venture Partners ropes in Ashish Gupta as partner emeritus

Prime Venture Partners has announced the addition of Ashish Gupta as partner emeritus to further strengthen its investment team. A serial entrepreneur and venture capitalist, Gupta has been an early investor in top companies including Flipkart, MuSigma and MakeMyTrip. He also co-founded Helion Ventures in 2005.

At Prime, Gupta will be a part of the investment committee and actively involved in the decision-making process of all future investments. 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.

“The Indian startup ecosystem is in a very vibrant phase of its evolution and Prime is well-positioned to be a key player in the building of Digital India,” said Gupta. “I’ve known all the partners Shripati (Acharya), Amit (Somani), Sanjay (Swamy) and Raj (Mashruwala) for the better part of the last 30 years and am delighted to be working closely with them in helping shape Prime’s next phase of growth,” he said.

Gupta is a Kauffman Fellow, holds a PhD in Computer Science from Stanford University, and a BTech from IIT Kanpur. His first entrepreneurial venture, Junglee (a price-comparison platform) was acquired by Amazon in 1998 following which he founded Tavant Technologies in the year 2000. Gupta also serves on several boards including Ezetap, Pubmatic, Simplilearn, SMSGupshup and Naukri. Some of his other past investments include Qwikcilver (acquired by Pinelabs), Daksh (acquired by IBM), Upwork, Perfios, and Redbus.

“As an entrepreneur, investor, mentor and a friend, he (Gupta) has been the first person we’ve turned to for brainstorming over the years. Founders, who interact with him even for a few minutes, always appreciate his direct style and insights,” said Shripati  Acharya, co-founder and managing partner, Prime Venture Partners. “We’re privileged to have him formally associated with Prime. 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,” he said.