Sumer Juneja of Norwest set to head SoftBank's India investments

Thursday November 22, 2018 , 2 min Read

After a three-year-long search, Japanese conglomerate SoftBank finally settles on Sumer Juneja of Norwest Venture Partners as the head of its India investments, say reports.

SoftBank has reportedly roped in Sumer Juneja, who is currently a partner at Norwest Venture Partners, to head its India operations. This appointment marks the end of the Japanese investment giant's three-year search for an executive. Sumer is slated to work with SoftBank's Vision Fund Team.

As a part of Norwest Venture Partners, Sumer had led the first investment in the food tech unicorn, Swiggy. Currently, several sources and media reports also suggest that Swiggy is in talks with the Japanese investor for its next round of funding.

Before Norwest, Sumer worked with Goldman Sachs in London and Hong Kong as an investment banking analyst.

He is not your average investor and believes in running as hard as any entrepreneur. In an earlier conversation with YourStory, Sumer had said, "After all as a VC, you need to keep pace with an entrepreneur, have your finger on the pulse of the market and not just give an arm-chair view of what you think is right"

Reports also suggest that SoftBank may hire another executive to help manage its India operations. The company has made some key investments in the Indian startup ecosystem including ride-hailing aggregator Ola, the hotel brand platform Oyo and the fintech giant Paytm. The Japanese conglomerate had also invested in Flipkart.

This year has been interesting for the investment giant. Apart from getting a $4 billion exit from Flipkart with the Flipkart-Walmart deal, SoftBank pumped an additional $1 billion into Oyo, making the Gurgaon-based startup a unicorn.

So far, it has invested close to $8 billion into the Indian startup ecosystem. According to several media reports, Softbank is being more bullish on the India market. It is currently believed to also be in talks to invest approximately $450 million in logistics startup Delhivery, which will push the Delhi-based company into the unicorn club.