Sandeep Murthy
Managing Partner at Lightbox
Sandeep Murthy
Managing Partner at Lightbox
Mumbai, Maharashtra
Overview
Work Experience
Managing Partner
2014 - Current
Sandeep is the glue at Lightbox. Having pulled together the team over the past 3 years, he’s the one responsible for keeping the machine moving as one. Sandeep moved to Mumbai in 2005 to lead Sherpalo Ventures in India. As a Partner with Sherpalo he has been a part of two Indian technology unicorns ($1 billion value companies – InfoEdge and InMobi), with a third (GreenDust) on the way to joining the club. He has led Series A investments and taken operational roles such as CEO and head of Corporate Development in companies like InMobi, Cleartrip and GreenDust. A dreamer from the start, who doesn’t believe in choosing between “this or that” he did his undergrad in both business and engineering from the University of Pennsylvania. Like most Penn grads he then went into the world of investment banking. However, since it was the height of the dot.com boom, he did it a little differently by moving out to Palo Alto, California to join CSFB Technology Group. Having helped tell a few stories to the public markets Sandeep decided to write his own story and teamed up with a friend to build a digital music company that was incubated by Sony Music – unfortunately, they were 10 years too early and ended up selling the company to Sony after the Internet bubble burst. After a few years of living the Bay Area dream at a start up and getting his MBA from Wharton, he moved to New York City to join InterActive Corp (IAC) – the owners of Expedia, TicketMaster, Home Shopping Network and other consumer technology businesses. While at IAC he helped launched Gifts.com and started to explore the India technology opportunity. If you want to hear some stories of what it takes to build a consumer technology company in India, just pull up a chair and buckle up… it’s been a rocket of a ride.
Chairman
2006 - 2014
Cleartrip is a Sherpalo Ventures and Kleiner Perkins funded online travel site. The business is focused on "Making Travel Simple" The site offers a comprehensive breadth of travel products that can be booked through an easy, intuitive and uncluttered web interface. www.cleartrip.com
Partner
2005 - 2014
Work with Kleiner Perkins (www.kpcb.com) and Sherpalo Ventures (www.sherpalo.com) to evaluate consumer internet /mobile and renewable energy investments in India. Provide due diligence and ongoing management of portfolio investments in India. Currently serve on the Boards of Cleartrip, PayMate, MapMyIndia, FutureBazaar, ZoomIn, StudyPlaces Kotak Urja, inMobi and GreenDust. Was previously on the Board of Info Edge India Pvt. Ltd. (the company that runs the websites Naukri.com, Jeevansathi, and 99Acres) and StudyPlaces.
Associate Director
2004 - 2005
Member of the Interactive development team evaluating new business opportunities for InterAcive Corp.
Founder
2003 - 2005
StreetLava enables fans to get involved in promoting the artists they love and allows artists to more effectively promote their music by engaging and rewarding their fans. The site also enables Fans to find other Fans who share similar music tastes. Responsible for overall project management,. for generating initial sales leads and development of marketing materials. Additional responsibilities include general management of the company.
Vice President
2002 - 2004
Assisted clients in utilizing Internet auction tools and group buying to improve procurement practices.
General Manager
2000 - 2001
A division of Sony Music New Technology, focused on devloping a digital media management solution. Developed the business plan and managed operations through initial development and business partnerships.
Manager, Strategic Development
1999 - 2000
Performed M&A and general investor relations.
Analyst
1998 - 1999
· Performed valuation analyses relating to equity and equity-linked securities for technology companies. Conducted due diligence and prepared offering memoranda.
Education
MBA
2003 - 2005
Bachelor of Applied Science - BASc
1994 - 1998
BSE
1994 - 1998