Bessemer Venture Partners has roped in Pankaj Mitra as a partner for its India division to focus on investments in enterprise technology, artificial intelligence (AI) and cybersecurity. Meanwhile, Vivek Gupta, who served as the CTO at crypto company CoinDCX, has stepped down from the role after a five-year stint.
Bessemer ropes in former Cisco exec
Bessemer Venture Partners, one of the oldest global venture capital firms in the world, has roped in Pankaj Mitra as a partner for its India division to focus on investments in enterprise technology, artificial intelligence (AI) and cybersecurity.
Mitra, who has over 25 years of experience in technology, was earlier a part of Cisco’s corporate development team, where he led investments and M&A activity for the global customer experiences portfolio and for India for over seven years.
His investments at Cisco included Fiddler (AI observability), Uniphore (contact center AI) and Whatfix (digital adoption). Previously, he worked at Infosys in a similar role and was part of the founding team for its $500 million innovation fund, investing in companies such as Ideaforge and Whoop.
Crypto company CoinDCX CTO quits
Vivek Gupta, who served as the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at crypto company CoinDCX, has stepped down from the role after a five-year stint.
CoinDCX, founded by Sumit Gupta and Neeraj Khandelwal in 2018, allows people to buy and sell cryptocurrencies and other digital assets. The platform, which offers more than 500 different crypto assets, claims to have over 1.6 crore users.
Gupta was instrumental in developing CoinDCX’s DeFi initiative, Okto, a self-custody wallet – he also played a key role in making the platform risk-proof.
His exit signals a pivotal shift for the company, which has been navigating a tough landscape marked by an extended crypto bear market and increasing regulatory pressures, including the introduction of taxes on digital assets in India.
