After Kalaari Capital, Ratan Tata joins VC firm Jungle Ventures as advisor

MUMBAI: Venture capital firm Jungle Ventures, which focuses on investments in Southeast Asia and India, has roped in Ratan Tata as a special advisor. This comes after chairman emeritus of the salts to software conglomerate Tata Sons joined Kalaari Capital, a $350 million India focused venture capital firm, in a similar role earlier this month.

Jungle Ventures is an early stage VC fund with a portfolio of 30 startups like Zipdial (recently acquired by Twitter), LiveSpace, Tradegecko, CrayonData, Fastacash and travelmob (acquired by Nasdaq listed HomeAway).

In his role as special advisor, Tata "has formally committed to spend time with Jungle’s portfolio of companies to help them build category leadership, while being ethically impregnable and culturally strong, in Asian and global markets," said a statement.

Some of the other advisors at Jungle and their start-ups include Gokul Rajaram, Product Engineering Lead at Square and Alon Sobol, Director of ISP/ Telco Relationships for Spotify.

The VC firm was founded by Anurag Srivastava and Amit Anand in 2012 with a $10 million seed-to-early stage fund and is currently raising a second fund.

"As our companies look to become global category leaders in various markets, Mr. Tata will help us and our entrepreneurs understand the economics and dynamics of those markets. It has already been a humbling experience to work with Mr. Tata and we have found him to be astonishingly responsive, insightful and decisive,” said Amit Anand, founding and managing partner at Jungle Ventures.

Ratan Tata has also invested in a number of tech and internet companies like cab hailing app Ola, online retailer Snapdeal and even Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi, the world's most valued startup at $45 billion.