Canaan Partners, a global venture capital firm, has made several executive promotions in the US, India and Israel.
Alok Mittal (photo) and Izhar Shay have been named general partner, and Warren Lee has been named venture partner.
‘Each of these venture professionals have realized great success over the past couple of years and have helped Canaan expand its portfolio of emerging market leaders on both coasts of the US and globally,’ says Deepak Kamra, general partner at Canaan.
Mittal and Shay have led several of Canaan’s key, global investments in companies such as Prime Sense, a company based in Israel giving digital devices a three dimensional view of the world; N-trig, the industry’s only pure-play, provider of digital input devices with combined pen and touch/multi-touch capabilities based in Israel; BharatMatrimony.com, the world’s largest consumer Internet site for matrimonial services based in India; and iYogi, an India-based provider of home and remote access computer support for global home and small business users.
In their new roles as general partners, Mittal and Shay will expand Canaan’s presence in India and Israel and focus on identifying and developing emerging companies in the communications and mobility, digital media, enterprise technology and healthcare sectors.
Lee is based out of Canaan’s offices in the New York corridor. He has led numerous Canaan investments in digital media front-runners including Tremor Media, the largest pure-play video ad network; Associated Content, a leading publisher of user-generated content; and Peer39, a leader in semantic advertising technology.
Lee will focus on expanding Canaan’s portfolio of industry-disrupting, digital media investments and he will continue to work directly with his existing investments to help them succeed despite the challenging economic environment.
‘Historically, many of our most successful investments have been made during economic downturns, including Peninsula Pharmaceuticals and Acme Packet,’ says Brent Ahrens, general partner at Canaan. ‘We are in a strong financial position and continue to follow an overall investment strategy based on early-stage, longer-term deals which generate the most lucrative returns. With a proven investment team, we are catalyzing the development of companies with novel technologies, proven management teams and solid revenue models with clear paths to profitability.’
