Leading VC Fund Strengthens Revenue Bearing Relationships™ and Data Strategies
SAN FRANCISCO, October 4, 2021 – Leading technology venture capital fund Telstra Ventures has promoted two senior executives, further strengthening its strategic growth platform and data analytics capabilities. Gurpreet “Gup” Ghuliani has been appointed Operating Partner, while Jonathan Serfaty becomes Data Science Principle. Both appointments are effective immediately.
“This latest round of senior promotions helps us scale our unique approach to venture capital investing, reflecting our commitment to building Revenue Bearing Relationships™ with our portfolio companies and harnessing data science to inform our investment strategy,” said Mark Sherman, managing director, Telstra Ventures. “Our people are key to delivering on our mission of understanding where the world is heading and generating real revenue for our portfolio companies – and I congratulate Gup and Jonathan on their new roles.”
Gup Ghuliani has more than 30 years global experience across industries including IT, telecoms, managed services, e-commerce and investment banking. Prior to joining Telstra Ventures in July 2015, Ghuliani held several senior positions at Telstra and other organisations, based in Australia and the UK. Ghuliani’s new role will see him continue to develop the fund’s Revenue Bearing Relationships™ model designed to provide portfolio companies with unrivalled revenue growth opportunities via connections across the world. To date, the team has generated more than US$350 million in revenue for Telstra Venture portfolio companies.
“Our extensive partner ecosystem including Telstra, Infosys and others around the world provides our entrepreneurs with a vast network of connections and technology buyers around the world, enabling them to reach global scale at speed,” said Ghuliani. “We have built these strategic Revenue Bearing Relationships to deliver even more value to our portfolio beyond our initial investment. We help our portfolio companies enter new markets, we fund POCs, we support them at events and we commit to their growth.”
Jonathan Serfaty will continue to lead Telstra Ventures’ growing data science unit, which is revolutionizing the way the firm identifies investment opportunities and the microtrends driving industry change. Serfaty joined Telstra Ventures in 2017 to develop a data science unit aimed at improving sourcing, due diligence, and portfolio management. He was previously a Data Scientist at LinkedIn, focusing on improving B2B sales and marketing outcomes through the use of machine learning. Serfaty recently added Donghai He PhD, as Staff Machine Learning Engineer to support the data science program.
Serfaty notes, “Telstra Ventures is at the forefront of using data to identify opportunities based on market conditions and performance indicators. We currently process terabytes of data on millions of companies using our home-grown data solution with the aim of spotting the next Uber, ByteDance or Stripe.”
In 2021, Telstra Ventures’ data science team published research into the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the tech start-up ecosystem in the US, and a study into how start-ups are evolving to hire remote workers in the new fluid workforce.