Athera Venture Partners

Rajiv Mehta is a General Partner at Athera Venture Partners who moved into early-stage venture investing in 2023 after a 21-year operating career in consumer and retail. He launched Puma in India and grew it to the top position, led footwear and private label apparel divisions at Arvind Brands, founded the sports brand D:FY, and served as CEO of Stove Kraft Ltd, which he took public. He has been an active angel investor since 2011 with over 15 investments and was part of the Indian Angel Network.

Rutvik Doshi has invested in early-stage technology companies since 2012, after more than a decade of operating roles at global technology firms and startups. He began his career in the U.S. working on internet infrastructure and enterprise software at CA Technologies, later joined Google in Bangalore where he led products including Voice Search and the Google Mobile App, and founded an e-commerce startup, Taggle. He holds a B.Tech from IIT Kharagpur and an MBA from INSEAD, along with six patents in web applications and infrastructure.

Samir Kumar began early-stage venture investing in 2001 after a 15-year operating career in the IT industry, much of it at Wipro, where he worked on its joint venture with Acer Computer in Taiwan to build and sell computers for the Indian market. He entered venture capital by joining Acer Technology Ventures, then co-founded Inventus and has been involved in its three funds, including Inventus III – India Fund. He holds a B.Tech (EE) from IIT Bombay and an MBA from IIM Bangalore.

Anshu Pandey is a member of the investment team at Athera Venture Partners, joining after more than five years across consulting, strategy, and product roles at Indian startups and VC firms. He previously held a strategy role at OYO, worked on ShareChat's product team (including the early team behind its short-video platform Moj), and worked in the CEO's Office at Navi reporting to Sachin Bansal. He completed internships at Bessemer Venture Partners and Hummingbird Ventures, and holds an MBA from IIM Ahmedabad and a B.Tech in Mechanical Engineering from IIT Kanpur.

Ishan Sinha is a member of the investment team at Athera Venture Partners, joining after roughly seven years across strategy consulting, operations, and project management. He was previously a Senior Consultant at Bain & Company, working on growth, product, channels, CX, margins, and post-merger integration primarily in consumer tech, consumer products, retail, and digital insurgents, and earlier held a project management role in the energy sector at Technip. He holds an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore, and a B.Tech in Mechanical Engineering from NIT Hamirpur.