Bessemer Venture Partners welcomes Pankaj Mitra as Partner

India’s AI and tech landscape is undergoing a significant transformation across entrepreneurship and venture capital — driven by government policy, robust digital infrastructure, and a thriving talent pool. To help us continue to back emerging founders, we’re honored to welcome Pankaj Mitra as our newest partner to our India practice where the tech industry veteran will focus primarily on investments in enterprise tech, AI, and cybersecurity.

With more than 25 years of experience, Pankaj comes from Cisco’s corporate development team, where for the past seven years he has led investments and M&A activity for its global customer experiences portfolio as well as for India. Some of his investments include Fiddler (AI observability), Uniphore (contact center AI), and Whatfix (digital adoption). He has also worked at Infosys in a similar capacity, and was part of the founding team for its $500 million innovation fund. His investments at Infosys included Ideaforge (NSE: IDEAFORGE) and Whoop.

“We are delighted to welcome Pankaj to the Bessemer family. 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 Partner Vishal Gupta.

Earlier in his career, Pankaj helped launch VMware's first cloud services as a product manager and was also a management consultant at Deloitte. An Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur alumnus, Pankaj holds an MBA from UC Berkeley Haas School of Business.

“I am thrilled to join Bessemer at this pivotal time,” said Pankaj Mitra, “The ongoing AI platform shift offers a once in a generation opportunity for builders to usher in the next wave of tech evolution across industries. With its stellar track record, Bessemer is poised to partner with this new generation of ambitious, world-class founders in India addressing pain points domestically and globally, and I'm excited to be part of this journey.”