Vignesh Kumar
Vignesh holds an MBA from the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, where he was both a Wharton and Kaiser Fellowship recipient, as well as a Fulbright Science and Innovation Scholar. Vignesh also earned a Bachelor of Engineering (Hons) degree in Biomedical Engineering and a Master of Engineering Studies (Hons) in Medical Device Design and Technologies from The University of Auckland.
A native of India, Vignesh grew up across Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea and Auckland, New Zealand, and is multi-lingual across ‘Tok Pisin’ (official language of Papua New Guinea), Tamil, and Kiwi English. When time permits Vignesh enjoys spending time with his wife and their energetic toddler and spending far too much time and money on home automation projects.
Vignesh Kumar is a Co-Managing Partner at New Zealand based vc firm GD1. At GD1 Vignesh focusses on emerging platforms across Hardware enabled Software, Deep Tech, and Health Tech, where he is an investor and board member of companies such as Foundry Lab (‘metal in minutes using microwaves’), Type One Energy (Stellarator design fusion reactor), Dawn Aerospace (green propulsion for space + suborbital spaceplanes), Basis (the energy operating system of the home), Zenno Astronautics (supermagnets for space applications), Formus Labs (next gen orthopedic tech stack), and Alimetry (wearable diagnostics for the gut) among many others.
Notably, Vignesh co-led the efforts to successfully raise GD1’s first oversubscribed institutional LP based fund at c.$150M, a rare feat in the nascent New Zealand venture ecosystem. Prior to GD1, and after successfully overcoming his own 9 month battle with blood cancer, he co-founded Journey Health, a digital health patient reported outcomes platform for oncology care. Prior to this Vignesh was based in Cupertino and led hardware execution for Apple across the US and Asia for its portable line of products. Previous to Apple, he was a product design engineer at Fisher & Paykel Healthcare, working to design and bring to market several products that are now considered the gold standard in neonatal resuscitation across labour and delivery suites and neonatal intensive care units (NICU) around the world.
Vignesh is mentored by Kate Mitchell, Partner Emeritus and Founder at Scale Venture Partners