Our Team
Through our early-stage capital, unparalleled networks and strategic insights, we support companies at their Pre-Series A and Series A stages.
Partners
Ashwin Raguraman
Co-Founder and Partner
Ashwin Raguraman
Ashwin Raguraman is a Co-founder and Partner at BIF (Bharat Innovation Fund). Previously, he founded and led the India Innovation Fund, an early-stage VC backed by NASSCOM, investing in startups like Mitra Biotech, Sedemac, and Consure Medical. He has held board and advisory roles in multiple startups and played a key role in shaping India’s tech startup ecosystem through NASSCOM’s Innovation Initiative.
Ashwin has served on the Government of India’s SIP-EIT committee, the IIT Kanpur Bioincubator investment committee, and CCamp. Earlier, he worked at Wipro Technologies and began his career as a Marine Engineer with Maersk.
Shyam Menon
Co-Founder and Partner
Shyam Menon
Shyam Menon is a Partner and Co-Founder at Bharat Innovation Fund. Previously, he co-founded Infuse Ventures, India’s first cleantech-focused fund. With over a decade in the energy sector, he has held investment roles at Conduit Ventures in London and the World Bank’s clean energy team. He also worked at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab and fuel cell companies in the U.S.
Shyam holds a Master’s in Materials Engineering from the University of Missouri, a Bachelor’s from NIT Nagpur, and advanced energy policy studies from UC Berkeley. He is a Rolls-Royce Chevening Scholar from Oxford’s Said Business School.
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Som Pal Choudhury
Co-Founder and Partner
Somshubhro (Som) Pal Choudhury
Somshubhro (Som) Pal Choudhury is a Co-Founder and Partner at BIF Ventures (Bharat Innovation Fund). Previously, he was the Managing Director of Analog Devices India and spent nearly two decades in Silicon Valley in leadership roles at NETGEAR, Cadence Design Systems, and an early M2M/IoT startup.
Som serves on the board of the US-India Science and Technology Fund (USISTEF) and multiple deeptech startups. He is part of MeitY’s semiconductor startup selection committee and was a board member of IESA. He co-chairs TiE MatrixForum and the TiE Matrix Global Summit. An IIT Kharagpur and Wharton graduate, he co-authored New Kind of Computational Biology, published by Springer.
Som serves on the board of the US-India Science and Technology Fund (USISTEF) and multiple deeptech startups. He is part of MeitY’s semiconductor startup selection committee and was a board member of IESA. He co-chairs TiE MatrixForum and the TiE Matrix Global Summit. An IIT Kharagpur and Wharton graduate, he co-authored New Kind of Computational Biology, published by Springer.
Sanjay Jain
Advisor
Sanjay Jain
Sanjay Jain is a Partner at Bharat Innovation Fund and Chief Innovation Officer at CIIE.co, driving entrepreneurship in digital technology. A volunteer with iSPIRT, he has been a key contributor to India Stack, Open API, and UPI, working with NPCI and regulators to enable cashless and paperless processes.
Previously, he was Chief Product Manager at UIDAI, leading Aadhaar’s development, and created Google Map Maker, shaping Google Maps data for 170+ countries. He has also worked at TIBCO and Sun Microsystems. Sanjay holds an M.S. in Computer Science from UCLA and a B.Tech from IIT Bombay.
Team
Rohan Choukkar
VP - Venture Investing
Snehitha Nukalapati
Associate - Investment
Gokulakrishnan
Sr. Analyst - Investment
Aayush Yadav
Sr. Associate - Legal
Sharmila Chandrashekar
Manager - Administration