Google India VP heads to Sequoia Capital

Google's vice president for India and Southeast Asia, Rajan Anandan, is joining Sequoia Capital India as a managing director, the U.S.-based capital venture firm said on Tuesday.

Anandan will leave Google, owned by Alphabet Inc, at the end of April, according to a statement issued by Google’s Asia Pacific chief Scott Beaumont earlier on Tuesday.

An active angel investor in early stage technology companies, Anandan has been at Google India for eight years and previously held key positions at McKinsey & Company, Dell Inc and Microsoft India.

At Sequoia Capital India he will join six other managing directors and work on developing Surge, Sequoia’s program that aims to ramp up early stage startups in India and Southeast Asia.

“Rajan Anandan will join the leadership team at the firm ... where he will focus on developing Surge into the world’s top scale-up program for startups by acting as an investment advisor and mentor to the program’s founders,” Sequoia said in a blog post announcing Anandan’s appointment.

Mentors of the Surge program already include Uber’s Amit Jain and WhatsApp’s Neeraj Arora, as well as executives of Indian hospitality firm, OYO Rooms, Indonesian ride-hailing and online payment company, Go-Jek, and Indian food search and delivery service, Zomato.

Anandan will be replaced by Vikas Agnihotri, country director, sales at Google India in the interim, Beaumont said in his statement.

California-based Sequoia Capital is betting big on the Indian market and looking to make strategic investments in various different verticals.
 
Sequoia has invested in fashion e-commerce firms in India like Voonik, Flyrobe, Snapdeal among others helping it grow to become leading players in the Indian market.
 
Last year, Sequoia Capital India had made some changes to its organisational structure by splitting its investment team in India into venture and growth.
 
The venture team makes early-stage investments and is headed by Mohit Bhatnagar, while the growth team invests in mature companies is led GV Ravishankar.

FashionNetwork.com with Reuters