SoftBank Vision Fund gets Facebook's Kirthiga Reddy as first venture partner

BENGALURU: Kirthiga Reddy, the former managing director of Facebook India, has joined SoftBank as its first venture partner at its $100 billion Vision Fund, and in the process becoming the first women coming on board in a company where the rest are all men.


Reddy, who starts in her new role this month and will be based on Silicon Valley, said she was looking forward to bring her technical and business expertise – from both enterprise and consumer technology, in developed and emerging markets – to the fund team.

"I'm excited to be working closely with Deep Nishar on frontier technologies – AI, robotics, health tech, bio-engineering, semis, IoT, quantum computing, and more – that will enable the next stage of the information revolution. It’s a unique moment in time to join SoftBank, learn from Deep and the talented SoftBank team and help shape the next set of transformative companies. So excited!," she wrote on professional networking site LinkedIn.

"Like in other investment firms, the Venture Partner role enables quick integration of new talent from non-investing backgrounds, which is a perfect fit for me," Reddy, who was also the first Facebook employee in India, added.

SoftBank chief executive Mashayoshi Son set up the gargantuan fund in 2016 to make investments in fast-growing technology companies. Besides him, there are nine more partners including Rajeev Misra, the CEO of SoftBank Investment Advisers. Last month the company, which has invested $5 billion in four Indian companies, appointed Sumer Juneja from Norwest Venture Partners as its India head.

Reddy was the India head between 2010 and 2016 before moving to the headquarters of the Menlo Park, a California-based company in a global role. She led Facebook's global marketing partnership for the Financial Services vertical and also partnered with the company's strategic global advertisers on their Emerging Markets strategy, with a focus on India,

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