Gayatri Vasudev Yadav, Ajey Gore and Shweta Rajpal Kohli join Sequoia India

Sequoia Capital India has expanded its local team by hiring three prominent individuals - Gayatri Vasudev Yadav, Ajey Gore, and Shweta Rajpal Kohli. The trio will help Sequoia’s portfolio companies in shaping marketing, technology, and public policy strategies. 

Yadav has joined as chief marketing officer while Gore took a new role in the capacity of operating partner - technology. Kohli will spearhead the public policy vertical of the country’s largest venture capital firm. 

“Their contributions will undoubtedly benefit dozens of founders and startups across India and SEA and make a dent in the years to come”, said Shailendra J Singh, managing director at Sequoia Capital in a LinkedIn post.

Before joining Sequoia, Yadav was leading marketing and serving as president, consumer strategy & innovation at Star India for more than eight years. At Sequoia, she would be based in Bengaluru. Gore, on the other hand, was the part of Gojek as Group CTO for the last 5 years. 

Gore would be based in Singapore and work closely with the firm’s portfolio CTOs and CPOs by providing insight and expertise in building and scaling engineering, data science, product, and design functions.

Kohli would facilitate dialogue and collaboration between the investee companies and government agencies. Hailing from a journalism background, Kohli was with Salesforce as the country director since 2017 and headed public policy for Uber India & South Asia.

With the recent hires, Sequoia India has now six women in its 25-member team in India and Southeast Asia.

Even though the Indian startup ecosystem is witnessing a plunge in investments amidst the Covid-19 pandemic, Sequoia has been quite active in investing in its portfolio companies and growth-stage startups. Last month, the firm had announced two new funds – $525 million worth venture fund and $825 million growth fund – that will focus on investing in India and SEA region.

Along with venture and growth funds, Sequoia also backs early-stage startups in their seed round via accelerator program, Surge. So far, Surge has selected over 52 startups across its three cohorts out of which 27 are from India.