Earlier this 12 months, Omers Ventures, the enterprise capital arm of Canadian pension fund Omers, outed a brand new €300 million fund geared toward European know-how startups, having recruited native VCs Harry Briggs, Tara Reeves and Henry Gladwyn.
And now the agency is including a fourth member in Europe: Jambu Palaniappan (pictured centre), the previous head of Uber’s meals supply enterprise in Europe, Middle East and Africa, has joined Omers Ventures as a Managing Partner.
Palaniappan joined Uber in 2012 when it was a 75-person startup targeted totally on the U.S. market. He led the experience sharing behemoth’s growth all through the EMEA area and India, earlier than turning into Regional General Manager for Eastern Europe, Russia, the Middle East, and Africa. He then went on launch Uber Eats in EMEA.
In different phrases, Palaniappan brings much more operational expertise to Omers’ European VC workforce, though he isn’t new to the world of enterprise capital, both. His most up-to-date gig was at London-based enterprise capital agency Atomico, the place he spent 12 months as Executive-in-Residence (information that TechCrunch broke again in July 2018).
Unsurprisingly, Palaniappan has additionally been an angel investor, and is claimed to have backed various startups within the U.S., Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.
Meanwhile, the recruitment of Palaniappan marks a good debut half 12 months for Omers Ventures Europe, seeing the Canadian investor put collectively a workforce of faces well-known to the London and broader European tech and startup scene. Briggs’ resume consists of stints at BGF Ventures and Balderton, in addition to founding and exiting Tonics, a well being drinks firm. Reeves was at seed agency LocalGlobe and in addition co-founded Turo, the car-sharing market. And Gladwyn beforehand managed seed investments for the founders of DeepMind.
The Omers Ventures Europe workforce have already invested greater than €76 million into the European ecosystem. Investments up to now embrace FirstVet, Resi and Quorso.
