New Delhi, June 4 -- Silicon Valley-based venture capital firm Bessemer Venture Partners, which closed its second India-focused fund in March, said on Wednesday that it has named a former executive at Cisco's venture capital arm as a partner in its India operations.

Pankaj Mitra will focus on investments in enterprise technology, artificial intelligence (AI), and cybersecurity.

Bessemer, which has backed over 80 Indian startups, including PharmEasy, Livspace and Swiggy, closed its second India-dedicated fund at $350 million (Rs 3,008 crore). The fund was launched three years after the firm's maiden India vehicle.

Mitra joins Bessemer after a seven-year stint at Cisco's corporate development team, where he led investments and M&A activity for its global customer experience portfolio and for India. At Cisco Investments, he helmed investments in AI startups like Fiddler and Uniphore, as well as digital adoption platform Whatfix.

Prior to joining Cisco, Mitra was part of the founding team at Infosys' $500-million Innovation Fund, where he led investments in startups such as Ideaforge and Whoop.

He has also held roles at Deloitte, VMware, and Mentor Graphics. At VMware, he helped launch the company's first cloud services as a product manager. Earlier in his career, he also worked as a management consultant at Deloitte.

"Pankaj brings a breadth of experience which is a unique blend of investing prowess as well as deep industry knowledge. This will be invaluable as we look to deepen our commitments in AI, enterprise-tech, and cybersecurity in India," said Vishal Gupta, partner at Bessemer.

Mitra holds a management degree from the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, and an engineering degree from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur.

Bessemer set up its India operations in 2006 and has since backed companies like Mediassist, Perfios, Swiggy, Urban Company, among others. Its recent bets include Boldfit, Easebuzz, Protectt, and Shopdeck.

Published by HT Digital Content Services with permission from VC Circle.