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Jungle Ventures today announced the appointment of David Gowdey, formerly with TPG Growth, as managing partner. With this appointment, the Singapore-based firm will now have a team of four managing partners led by co-founders, Anurag Srivastava and Amit Anand as well as Jayesh Parekh, co-founder of Sony Entertainment Television India who joined the firm in 2013. Earlier this month, Jungle appointed Ratan Tata, Chairman Emeritus of Tata Group, as a Special Advisor.
Gowdey brings to Jungle Ventures over 16 years of experience in investing and working with internet companies in both mature and emerging markets. He will be based in Singapore, where he will help lead Series A and B stage investments with a focus on the consumer internet sector.
Jungle is in the process of closing its second South Asia focused fund. The appointment of Gowdey will further build on its vision to provide deep expertise to their portfolio companies in key areas such as strategy, marketing, product management and recruiting, particularly in the early stages, to support high growth ventures in consumer internet and enterprise technology, said the company.
"Over the last few years, start-ups in the region have had unprecedented access to early stage or seed funding, which has resulted in an explosion of new companies and innovation in the region. I believe there is currently a tremendous opportunity to build a world-class venture capital platform and create something quite unique in the Asia Pacific region. Jungle, with its focus on being a truly value-added investor, has set themselves apart from other funds and I am excited to be joining the team," said Gowdey.
Gowdey spent twelve years at Yahoo! where he was the head of international M&A operations. From Yahoo!, he spun out a venture capital fund, Xplorer Capital, focused on internet investments across the emerging markets. In 2012, he then joined TPG Growth to focus on internet and technology investments outside of the US. He has been involved in several TPG investments and will continue to represent TPG as a member of the board of directors of Propertyguru, the largest online real estate portal in South-East Asia.
Amit Anand, co-founder and managing partner Jungle Ventures, said, "I am excited to have David join us in this journey of building Jungle into being the preferred investor by leading entrepreneurs in Asia. Our vision has always been to invest and help build regional and global tech category leaders from Asia, and David's many years' of experience in the tech space and deep network around the globe make him a great asset to Jungle and our portfolio companies."
Some of the other advisors with the Jungle Ventures network include Gokul Rajaram, product engineering lead at Square; Lim Dershing, founder of JobsCentral; and Alon Sobol, director of ISP/ telco relationships for Spotify.
