Bessemer Venture Partners has appointed Mayank Khanduja as a partner in its India practice, as the US-based venture capital firm builds out its early-stage team in the country.
Based in Bengaluru, Khanduja will focus on early-stage deals and support founders from their first institutional rounds, across consumer technology, gaming, healthcare, artificial intelligence and deeptech.
Khanduja holds an MBA from IIM Calcutta and an engineering degree from IP University. At Bessemer, he joins India partners Vishal Gupta and Anant Vidur Puri.
Khanduja joins from Elevation Capital, where he spent nearly 15 years after moving from McKinsey & Co in 2011, rising to partner in 2020. VCCircle reported in January that he had stepped down from the firm.
At Elevation, he led bets in companies such as ShareChat, NoBroker, PlaySimple Games, Atlys and AppsForBharat in consumer and gaming sectors; Loop Health and MOC Cancer Care in healthcare; and Jeh Aerospace and PierSight in deeptech and aerospace domains.
The hire follows Bessemer’s appointment last year of Pankaj Mitra, a former Cisco Investments executive, as a partner covering enterprise technology, AI and cybersecurity.
Bessemer has also been putting more money to work in India. In March 2025, it closed its second India-focused fund at $350 million, more than three years after its first local vehicle. The fund targets early-stage companies across AI-enabled services and SaaS, fintech, digital health, consumer brands and cybersecurity.
Its maiden India fund, raised in 2021, gathered $220 million for seed and Series A deals. At the second fund's close, Bessemer said more than 80% of its India investments over the previous five years had been early-stage.
The firm has backed Indian startups since 2006 and counts more than 80 in its portfolio, including Swiggy, Urban Company, Medi Assist and Perfios, with newer bets such as Sarvam, Boldfit, Vetic, Easebuzz, InRisk and Pluro.
