VC firm Bessemer Venture Partners appoints Pankaj Mitra as Partner in its India team

Bessemer Venture Partners, one of the oldest global venture capital firms, has onboarded industry veteran Pankaj Mitra as a Partner in its India team, intensifying its focus on artificial intelligence, enterprise software, and cybersecurity startups emerging from the country.

The appointment comes at a time when AI investment has entered a new cycle of global capital reallocation, and India’s enterprise tech ecosystem is beginning to mirror early trends seen in the U.S. and Israel—two geographies where Bessemer has historically been an early mover.

Mitra, who joins Bessemer with over 25 years of experience across corporate development and venture investing, most recently served as a senior executive in Cisco’s M&A and investment team. At Cisco, he oversaw the company’s global Customer Experiences portfolio and led its India investment operations. His past investment bets include Fiddler, a startup focused on AI observability; Uniphore, which builds conversational AI for contact centers; and Whatfix, a digital adoption platform.

His entry into Bessemer comes two months after the firm closed its second dedicated India fund of $350 million, announced in March 2025. That fund explicitly outlined AI, digital health, fintech, enterprise technology, and cybersecurity as its target sectors—areas that align closely with Mitra’s investment history.

Before Cisco, Mitra was part of the founding team of Infosys’s $500 million innovation fund, where he backed companies such as Ideaforge, a drone manufacturing startup that went public in 2023, and wearable fitness tech firm Whoop. He also worked at VMware during the company’s push into cloud services and began his career in management consulting at Deloitte.

Mitra holds a degree in engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, and earned his MBA from the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley.

Bessemer Partner Vishal Gupta said in a statement, “We are delighted to welcome Pankaj to the Bessemer family. He 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.”

“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,” said Mitra, adding that he looks forward to partnering with a “new generation of ambitious, world-class founders in India addressing pain points domestically and globally.”

Globally, Bessemer manages over $18 billion in assets, with offices across Silicon Valley, New York, London, Tel Aviv, and Bengaluru.