Benhamou Global Ventures Expands Team and Cross Border Platform for Entrepreneurs

Seed and Early-Stage Venture Capital Firm for Enterprise Technology Startups Launches Startup Accelerator in India, Expands Team in Paris and Palo Alto

Benhamou Global Ventures (BGV), an early-stage venture capital firm with deep Silicon Valley roots and an exclusive focus on the digital transformation of the enterprise with a cross-border innovation theme, announced the expansion of its team with promotion of Yashwanth Hemaraj to Partner in Palo Alto, and the hiring of CFO Susan Boehnlein in Palo Alto, and associate, Sarah Benhamou in Paris, France.

In addition to the team expansion, BGV expands its outreach to entrepreneurs with the launch of Arka Venture Labs in partnership with Blume Ventures and Emergent Ventures. BGV has empowered disruptive ideas from key B2B innovation hubs spanning Israel, Western Europe and India scale up globally. The majority of BGV's current early stage portfolio is comprised of startups with global geographic diversity, anchored in Silicon Valley. Recent representative investments include Scalefast, Platform.sh and 4iQ (originally conceived in Western Europe) and Totango, SDO and Ayehu (originally conceived in Israel). BGV utilizes a structured mentorship process to connect these cross-border startups to Silicon Valley. This process includes educating entrepreneurs on the specific value drivers for establishing operations in Silicon Valley, improving their product market readiness, and finally setting up US operations. The recently launched Arka Venture Labs is an extension of the firm's cross-border investment strategy to Indian Entrepreneurs. Arka will focus on investing in disruptive B2B SaaS startups conceived in India, mentored in Palo Alto and with aspirations for global growth.

Susan Boehnlein, CFO - Palo Alto

Susan Boehnlein joins BGV as CFO, where she will oversee BGV's reporting to limited partners and supporting portfolio companies. Susan brings 20 years of experienced financial leadership in the VC industry with firms like Granite Ventures and Kranz. At Kranz and Associates, Susan was responsible for 17 venture funds with investments worldwide in sectors such as technology, communication and medical devices. Prior to Kranz and Associates, Susan was with Granite Ventures in San Francisco. A California CPA, Susan began her career in public account working for PWC and Arthur Andersen. She grew up in Louisiana and has a Bachelor of Science in Accounting from Louisiana State University.

Yashwanth Hemaraj, Partner - Palo Alto

Yashwanth Hemaraj has been promoted to partner and has been an investor at Benhamou Global Ventures for more than four years. At BGV, Yash led/co-led several investments for BGV including Tagnos, Macrometa, Totango and 6dbytes and assisted on Blue Cedar, Kaptivo, Drishti and Spikes/Cyberinc. He's also leading the BGV effort in Arka Venture Labs, an accelerator platform for India based B2B companies to scale up globally. Yash focuses on intelligent automation, robotics and customer centric applications powered by a combination of enabling technologies such as AI, ML, Blockchain and computer vision. Prior to BGV, Yash was one of the first engineers at SpiderCloud Wireless (acquired by Corning Incorporated GLW), a venture backed bay area startup building indoor wireless systems. He graduated with a MBA from Kellogg School of Management, MS in Electrical Engineering from University of Maryland and bachelors in Electronics and Communication Engineering from the National Institute of Technology Karnataka, India. He is also a fellow of the Startup Leadership Program, Silicon Valley and has been board member at various non-profit organizations.

Sarah Benhamou, Associate - Paris

Sarah Benhamou joins BGV as an associate in Paris, France to bolster the team's investment evaluation capacity for Western European sourced deals. Prior to joining BGV, Sarah worked as an analyst with a team of entrepreneurs turned venture capitalists focused on highly promising European startups, offering funding combined with operational support to accelerate growth. Earlier Sarah held roles in corporate finance, auditing and research and business development. Sarah earned an MBA from IDC Herzliya, the Magistere BFA and DEMI2E in Mathematics from Universite Paris Dauphine.

About Benhamou Global Ventures

BGV is an early-stage venture capital firm with deep Silicon Valley roots and an exclusive focus on digital transformation of enterprise with a cross-border innovation theme. The BGV team has successfully built and implemented a cross-border venture investing model with companies from Israel, Europe and Asia. BGV currently has 21 active companies in its portfolio with a majority conceived outside Silicon Valley, and now headquartered in the US. The fund was founded by Eric Benhamou, former chairman and CEO of 3Com, Palm and co-founder of Bridge Communications. Comprised of an experienced partnership team of global operating executives and investors, BGV is often the first and most active institutional investor in a company, leveraging a powerful network of technical advisors, executives and functional experts who actively engage with portfolio companies. The firm has offices in Palo Alto, California, Tel Aviv, Israel and presence in France and in India through the Arka Venture Labs.

Website: www.benhamouglobalventures.com
Twitter: @BenhamouGlobalV
Email: marketing@BGV.vc
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/benhamou-global-ventures

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