AppDynamics founder Jyoti Bansal to invest $50 mn in Big Labs

Silicon Valley-based Indian-American tech entrepreneur Jyoti Bansal, who sold his company AppDynamics to Cisco for $3.7 billion earlier this year, has invested $50 million in his recently launched venture Big Labs. The venture aims to research ideas and spin off a select few into full-fledged companies.

Bansal is also planning to open up an R&D centre for his labs, he told The Times of India.

The first company which will be spun off from Big Labs will be Harness, a tech platform which helps engineering teams deliver software to end users faster through the use of artificial intelligence. Harness has also received $20 million in Series A funding led by Menlo Ventures and Big Labs. Bansal is CEO and co-founder of harness.

The CEO told TOI that post selling AppDynamics he had the option to be a passive investor in companies but he discarded this idea.

Bansal also invested in two Indian startups Leadsquared and Funds Tiger. For Indian startups, he said that he wants to work with them but wasn't able to get the real picture of the ecosystem being in the valley.

Bansal wants to help in bringing the natural emergence between Indian and Silicon Valley mainly in B2B business where his expertise lies.

He further said that he would love to share his experiences on how to build a sales force. With the help of company like Flipkart, Indian talents have been able to have some experience in product development but it’s not the same when one sells his product globally. At this point of time I can help by telling them how to build your startup's culture which is more important, he said.