Q&A: Sony Entertainment Television Founder, Jayesh Parekh, Joins Jungle Ventures As a Managing Partner

Jayesh Parekh is a serial entrepreneur and an angel investor. Based out of Singapore, Jayesh is one of the Founders of Sony Entertainment Television, a major television network launched in 1995 in collaboration with Sony Pictures Entertainment, a division of Sony Japan. He is a board member of Asvathaa (gaming & animation), Game Ventures (online gaming) and eBus (TV commercial digital distribution). In an announcement today, Jayesh has joined Jungle Ventures as a Managing Partner.An active angel investor with investments in various VC funds in the Valley and startups across technology and media space, Jayesh’s corporate years have been spent at IBM in various positions based out of Houston (USA) and Singapore, where he was involved in technical, sales and marketing roles.

Jungle Ventures is a Singapore native venture capital firm that provides early stage investments and business building infrastructure to startups across Asia Pacific. Their focus is on early stage investments into Singapore, India, South East Asia and other regional hotbeds of innovation. They also operate a seed fund and incubator in Singapore and India, focused on concept to angel level investments.YourStory got in touch with Jungle Ventures and Jayesh Parekh to know about their plans. Edited excerpts from the interview:

YS: Congratulations team Jungle Ventures. How do you think will Jayesh’s inclusion bolster JV? What space are you excited about?

JV: We are excited to have Jayesh join the core team in furthering our vision of connecting the best and most innovative startups in India to regional and global markets. Jayesh’s expertise in identifying early-stage startups with the potential to become global leaders, as well as offering hands-on guidance is in the spirit of how Jungle accelerates its investee companies. We have invested frequently in digital media in the past and with his involvement we will continue to build on the same. His deep network of financing, business development and operational partners in this sector will super charge go-to market plans for some of our investee companies in this space.

YS: What is your perspective on Jungle Ventures?

JP: Jungle understands the startup economy in Asia extremely well and has a successful track record of connecting local technology companies with partners, talent and regional and global markets. They have the fire power and support infrastructure of a VC firm but act swiftly, just like an angel investor. Having invested extensively as an angel and in VC funds before, this is what makes Jungle unique and attractive to entrepreneurs raising smart and entrepreneur friendly capital, whether first time founders or even seasoned executives turned entrepreneurs.

YS: What are the plans for Jungle Ventures? How many investments can one expect?

JV: Jungle has been making 4-5 super angel investments a year over last few years. Our portfolio now includes companies like DocDoc, travelmob, Mobikon Technologies, Sconce Solutions, Ebus.tv, ekstop.com and One Animation. We have invested in India and Singapore but also in Japan, Thailand and New Zealand, much true to our pan-Asian focus.

Some of these companies have moved onto sizeable rounds of capital, for instance One Animation which secured a $5.4M Series A investment last year. The company has been producing globally successful award winning shows like “Rob The Robot” right here in Asia.

We expect to make 10-15 super angel investments in 2013 with heavy focus on markets like India and have been busy team building for the same. We also expect many co investments and are working closely with several stage investors from each region. Previously we have invested with Accel India, 500startups and several Angel groups and funds.

YS: How do you see the entrepreneurial ecosystem in India? Do you take the success story with a pinch of salt? 

JV: As the valley has shown us, Venture capital is a 20-30 year game. India and possibly most of Asia has just begun on this journey. So it is too early to think we have made it already or get overtly pessimistic with every failure. So far I think we have had some great successes and many important lessons along the way.

Website: Jungle Ventures