Sarath Naru

Bio

Sarath is a Founder and has lead as the Managing Partner of Ventureast across all its funds. Sarath’s approach to venture capital is that of an entrepreneur: with a pioneering privatization that lead to Ventureast’s first fund, the first life sciences fund in India, first seed stage focused fund, etc. He has invested directly or overseen investments in 50+ deals in growth-early stage, in diverse sectors: technology, biotech, healthcare, consumer goods, infrastructure, etc. Sarath’s passion is to spot early on, companies that are differentiating themselves in rapidly growing markets whether emerging or traditional. For example: he has backed from ground up to leadership a port management services company, India’s first fabless semi conductor company, and a Europe-India drug discovery company. Sarath’s USA & India cross- functional experience combined with “one of the longer VC investing experiences” in India, is behind his ability to work closely with investee companies. Sarath’s ability to be enabling is aided by his experience with Procter & Gamble USA in consumer goods brand management and his entrepreneurial experience in opportunistically building a trading business between USA and India in various sectors. Sarath’s wide ranging activities have lead to attracting key investee company personnel (for ex: Chairman of Aureous Asia onto the Board of Naturol), co-investment into investees (for ex: UTI Ventures into Moschip), and the ability to build business alliances. He is the treasurer of Indias biotech association, ABLE; he is on the Executive Council of PanIIT Association; he is on the Boards of UTI Ventures, and Avigo Ventures (previously). His academic qualifications include a B.Tech from IIT Madras, and MBA (Finance) from University of Chicago.