E8: Rama Bethmangalkar (Director, Qualcomm Ventures)

Rama Bethmangalkar is the Director at Qualcomm Ventures. He joined Qualcomm with 17 years of experience spanning technology investing, R&D and product management. Previously, he was Principal at Ventureast, a premier VC firm in India. His current interests include enterprise software, IoT, and machine learning among the emerging technologies.

Prior to venture capital, Rama was with Sun Microsystems in Silicon Valley for close to 7 years, initially as a systems programmer and later as a senior product manager. Rama holds an MBA from Cornell University, M.S. in Computer Science from the University of Rhode Island, and B.Engg in Computer Science from University of Mysore, India.

Follow Rama on Twitter (@Ramab323) and while you’re at it you can also follow our host, Akash Bhat (@bhatvakash).

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In this episode we cover:

1. What corporate venture capital (CVC) is?

2. How does corporate venture capital differ from traditional venture capital?

3. What is the value proposition of a corporate venture capital?

4. What is the investment thesis of Qualcomm

Ventures India?

5. The thought process behind portfolio construction from a CVC perspective

6. Challenges that corporate venture capital presents in general and in a country like India

7. What are metrics CVCs look out for while investing in companies