VCCircle

Top managers of large media companies and telcos are leaving their jobs and joining venture-funded startups. The latest is that Rajat Jain (right), former managing director of The Walt Disney Company in India, has joined VC-backed mobile content and distribution company Mobile2win as the MD and CEO. He will also be a partner in the company. Prior to Disney, Jain had headed the sales of SET Max in India.

Mobile2win had recently seen investments from Nexus India Capital and Norwest Venture Partners. It was earlier funded by Softbank China and Alok Kejriwal of Contests2win. The founding team of the company includes Gopal Krishna and Rajiv Hiranandani.

Another biggie who has left telecom giant Bharti Airtel and joined a lesser known (although publicly listed) mobile value added services company is N V Subba Rao. The COO, eastern region, of Bharti Airtel has moved in as the CEO and President for Tanla Mobile Inc (US), the American subsidiary of Hyderabad-based Tanla Solutions. This company plans to expand globally in mobile applications, m-commerce and interactive services.

In fact, Bharti group has lost more people, not necessarily top management, to venture-funded startups. Himanshu Shukla, a manager at Bharti Telesoft, has joined SAIF Partners-backed One97 Communications as Head of Content. Earlier, Anagat Pareeh, formely the Head of Revenue Enhancement at Bharti TeleSoft, had joined One97 Communications as head of operations.

In December last year, former MTV Creative Head Cyrus Oshidar joined as a co-founder in Games2Win, an online gaming startup co-founded by Alok Kejriwal of Contests2win. Games2win is funded by Clearstone Venture Partners.

The common thread in all these - except in the case of Tanla - is that the startups are backed by VCs. It's possible that VCs have played a major role in hiring them.