Ravi Jain will lead Indian investments for TDK Ventures, the investment arm of Japanese tech company TDK.
Ravi Jain has joined the Indian office of TDK Ventures, the corporate investment arm of Japanese technology company TDK.
Jain, who will lead Indian investments for TDK Ventures, joins from his role as business head and vice president of Krutrim, an Indian AI company making large language models and other components necessary for a full system.
Previously, he was head of strategy for Ola Electric, an Indian electric vehicle manufacturing company which also makes battery cells. He joined the Ola Group in April 2021 as head of the Ola Cars business.
TDK Ventures marks his first step into a CVC role. The unit was established in 2019 and mainly targets startups working on digital technology and energy transition. Its assets under management totaled $350m in June this year. The Indian office was TDK Venture’s first outpost outside of the US, although the team now also has an office in London.
The CVC has backed a number of unicorn startups with valuations above $1bn, including the US semiconductor company Groq, the US lithium-ion battery maker Ascend Elements, and Silicon box, a Singaporean semiconductor integration company.
In July, it took part in the $55m seed funding round for Peak Energy, a US sodium-ion battery maker. It was also an investor in the $12.5m seed round for Amperesand, a Singaporean energy grid infrastructure company, in February.
Nicolas Sauvage, president of TDK Ventures, has been on the GCV Powerlist for the last five years.
Jain joins Vasan Churchill in the Indian office, who has been the investment analyst since March. The two of them are responsible for leading TDK Ventures’ investments into deep tech, digital and energy startups in India.
Churchill previously held a leadership role at Adaxis, an Indian company making software for use in industrial robotics, which he co-founded. He has stepped down from day-to-day activity with the company, but remains as a strategic advisor.
