Matrix Partners India elevates Pranay Desai as Managing Director

Pranay Desai. managing director of Matrix Partners India

Matrix Partners India, a subsidiary of the US-based venture capital firm Matrix Partners has elevated Pranay Desai as its Managing Director from the role of Partner.

"Pranay joined us three years ago and has catalysed our presence in the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) space. We wish him the very best as he scales the SaaS franchise," wrote Vikram Vaidyanathan, existing managing director of Matrix in an internal email to employees and portfolio companies on Sunday.

Desai joined Matrix in the year 2021 and was leading B2B SaaS investments. He was working closely with portfolio companies like Moengage, Rocketlane, Superops, 100ms, Murf and Toddle.

Prior to joining Matrix, Desai was the director of growth marketing at Nasdaq-listed Freshworks where he spent 7 years helping build the organisation from early-stage to pre-IPO, with a focus on the GTM strategy, marketing and sales.

Matrix Partners India recently increased the size of its fourth India-focused fund to $525 million, despite the challenging funding environment in the country. The VC firm is known for backing unicorns like Ola and Razorpay.

Moneycontrol had previously reported in May 2022 that Matrix was seeking to raise a $450 million India-focused fund, which would be its largest ever.

To date, Matrix Partners India has invested in approximately 150 companies in the country, making it one of the most active early-stage investors alongside Sequoia Capital, YCombinator, and other domestic VC firms. The firm has supported eight unicorns, including OneCard, Dealshare, OfBusiness, and VerSe Innovation (the parent company of Dailyhunt).

The move comes at a time when many leading venture capital firms are betting big on SaaS and Artificial Intelligence.

Arkam Ventures announced the launch of its Fund II targeting a total corpus of $180 million. Arkam has invested in SaaS Startups like SpotDraft and Signzy.

Similarly, in April, SaaS-focused VC Boldcap launched its $25 million Fund II. Around the same time, venture capital investor Iron Pillar, which has backed the likes of FreshToHome, Uniphore, Servify, and Curefoods, closed a $129-million fund.

SaaS-focused venture capital firm Together Fund on July 27 announced the launch of its second fund with a target corpus of $150 million with limited partners across the US and Asia, in

In May, Chiratae Ventures, which has invested in SaaS firms like Active.Ai, Pando, and CloudCheery, announced the close of its Rs 1,001 crore growth fund.

Matrix has invested in SaaS firms like RocketLane, SuperOps, MoEngage and AtomicWork.