Devesh Ramchandani, principal, investor relations at Mercurius Media Capital, is one of our top 50 Emerging Leaders in corporate venturing for 2025.

Devesh Ramchandani is one of the founding members of recently launched Mercurius Media Capital, a US-focused media-for-equity fund.  

Ramchandani got his feet wet in corporate venturing during his time at US financial services firm Prudential, where he worked on strategic partnerships and had opportunities to evaluate startups in the fintech and insurtech sectors.  

From there, he joined Indian media conglomerate The Times of India Group, where a role opened up to lead the corporate VC team at its investment subsidiary Brand Capital International. There he honed his media-for-equity investing skills in companies seeking to enter the Indian market.  

Mercurius Media Capital was formed in 2023, where Ramchandani leads the capital formation and investor relations team, scouting for media company limited partners to join the fund and managing relationships with existing investors.  

This role involves a lot of education about the benefits of media-for-equity, which is not as well known in the US. “I spend a lot of time explaining the thesis and the benefit to media companies. Essentially, we have become like an outsourced corporate venturing arm for these media companies,” he says.  

“Essentially, we have become like an outsourced corporate venturing arm for these media companies.” 

The firm has a dedicated brand strategy team that works with startups on media campaigns with the fund’s partners. “Once there is agreement on how the media investment is going to be utilised, the execution of that campaign is managed by the brand strategy team working in co-ordination with the different media companies. That is one of the value-adds that we bring to the table,” says Ramchandani.  

In addition to his aim to grow the fund’s LP base from approximately $80m at present, the team wants to make sure its media company partners represent all types of media. This diversity will allow it to invest in all types of startups seeking to reach all demographics. “From a portfolio diversity standpoint, it works out really well,” he says.  

See the full list of Emerging Leaders 2025 here.