Rajeev Misra is elevated to the position of executive vice-president of the SoftBank board of Directors. Earlier, he served as the CEO of SoftBank Investment Advisors, which oversees the $100 billion Vision fund. The vision fund is the largest ever private equity fund.
The 56 year old Misra is now among the top contenders for the coveted position of founder Masayoshi Son. He is among the three executives who have been promoted to the position of executive vice-president at SoftBank. The other two are Marcelo Claure and Katsunori Sago.
Misra, former executive at Deutsche Bank has built its credit-derivatives business. He along with Masayoshi Son was also instrumental in bringing Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund as the key investor for the Vision Fund with a $45 billion from the Kingdom.
Misra is an alumnus of IIT Delhi, he further went to study at University of Pennsylvania & Sloan School of Management, MIT. He was elevated to the board of Softbank Group in 2017 and named the CEO of the $100 billion fund in 2016. He joined SoftBank in 2014.
The vision fund was launched with an ambitious aim by SoftBank in 2017. They are looking to make between 70 and 100 investments in technology firms.
Many of the top Indian startups are already enjoying SoftBank’s support. SoftBank’s Vision Fund has made investments of more than $5 billion in Indian companies such as Flipkart, Paytm, OYO, and Ola. With the elevation of Misra, the Japanese investor may further increase their footprint in the Indian startup space.
Despite the early losses in India, the company made a strong come back with the sale of Flipkart. SoftBank has made a successful exit from Flipkart recently. It had acquired a stake of 23.6% in Flipkart at $2.5 Bn last year and sold it for $4 Bn to Walmart.
As per SoftBank’s corporate website, the fund aims to revolutionise wide range of technology sectors with special emphasis on IoT, artificial intelligence, robotics, mobile applications and computing, communications infrastructure, cloud technologies and software, consumer internet businesses and financial technology.
