Bessemer Venture Partners appoints Pankaj Mitra as India partner

Pankaj Mitra, Partner, Bessemer Venture Partners

Global venture capital firm Bessemer Venture Partners has named Pankaj Mitra as a Partner in its India practice, with a focus on investments in artificial intelligence, enterprise technology, and cybersecurity, the investment firm said in a statement on June 4.

Mitra brings more than 25 years of experience in the tech and investment sectors. He joins Bessemer from Cisco’s corporate development team, where he led investments and M&A for the company’s global Customer Experiences portfolio and India operations. His notable investments include AI observability platform Fiddler, contact center AI firm Uniphore, and digital adoption platform Whatfix.

Prior to Cisco, Mitra was part of the founding team of Infosys’s $500 million innovation fund, investing in companies such as Ideaforge and Whoop. Earlier in his career, he helped launch VMware’s first cloud services and worked as a consultant with Deloitte.

An alumnus of IIT Kharagpur, Mitra also holds an MBA from the University of California, Berkeley’s Haas School of Business.

“Pankaj brings a unique blend of investment acumen and deep industry knowledge. His experience will be invaluable as we deepen our focus on AI, enterprise-tech, and cybersecurity in India,” said Vishal Gupta, Partner at Bessemer.

Also Read: Bessemer launches second India fund of $350 million, to continue focussing on early-stage startups

Bessemer has been active in India for nearly two decades, with a portfolio that includes Swiggy, Urban Company, Perfios, and Mediassist. In March 2025, it closed its second dedicated India fund with $350 million in capital, targeting sectors such as AI, fintech, digital health, consumer, and cybersecurity.

“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,” said Mitra.

With more than 145 IPOs and 300 portfolio companies in the enterprise, consumer and healthcare spaces, Bessemer backs startups from their early days through every stage of growth. Bessemer’s global portfolio has included ServiceTitan, Pinterest, Shopify, Twilio, Yelp, LinkedIn, PagerDuty, DocuSign, Wix, Fiverr, and Toast and the venture capital firm has more than $18 billion of assets under management. The firm has offices in Tel Aviv, Silicon Valley, San Francisco, New York, London, Hong Kong, Boston, and Bengaluru.