Ajit Deshpande

Ajit holds an MBA from the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley, as well as Bachelor's and Master's degrees in mechanical engineering from IIT Bombay and Stanford University, respectively. 

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Ajit is an avid long-distance runner, having completed four marathons and five 191-mile, 12-person relay runs so far. He has also been involved in fundraising for literacy initiatives in rural India. He enjoys playing badminton, dabbling with the piano, and believing in a bright future for the Golden State Warriors.

Ajit has a broad-based interest in the technology sector and is especially excited about new investment avenues being created through rapid strides across the IT spectrum. Ajit is Director of Marketing Business Planning at Salesforce.com, where he is responsible for planning and ROI for marketing initiatives run within the CMO's organization. 

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Previously, Ajit was a senior associate for Opus Capital, where he sourced and evaluated investment opportunities, and contributed business and technical assistance to portfolio companies. Opus Capital is an early-stage, IT-focused venture capital firm based in Menlo Park, California. 

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Early on in his career, Ajit worked for eight years as a robotics and automation engineer in the semiconductor (Novellus Systems) and cleantech (Solyndra) industries. He had short stints in internal corporate venturing (Juniper Networks), seed/early-stage investing (CalCEF Angel Fund), and technology investment banking (Jefferies & Co.). Immediately prior to Opus Capital, Ajit worked with the co-founders of the startup Velocloud to build the business plan in the cellular cloud access and network services space. Velocloud is now a mid-stage startup that has been funded by NEA, Venrock, and others.

Ajit served his fellowship at Opus Capital with mentor Dan Avida, general partner. He is a member of Class 17.