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Reachout's Newsmaker
Mahesh
Murthy
The Marketing
Guru Mahesh is an ex-Hyderabadi, born and brought up in the twin cities: a product of K.V. Picket. After long stints in Hong Kong and the US, Mahesh moved back to Bombay, where he set up and runs Passionfund, India's leading angel investment fund.
After dropping out from the OU engineering College, he became a door-to-door salesman with Eureka Forbes. He then joined ad agency Ulka in Hyderabad as a copywriter and later worked up with advertising agency Trikaya in Mumbai and Delhi. He handled the HCL account and created some kind of
notoriety by launching India's first comparative advertising campaign.
After 6 award-winning years in India, where we was notorious for India's first
comparative advertising campaign, Mahesh moved to Hong Kong, where he helped launch MTV in the region
with a set of promos that won him a "Best Young Director" at Cannes. He also became a net addict in 1993, and soon moved to join a pioneering Silicon Valley-based internet marketing consultancy CKS Partners (later renamed MarchFirst) as Creative Director and General Manager.
At CKS, Mahesh helped launch and market some of the world's top online brands, starting with Yahoo! in 1995, amazon.com in 1996 and MSN in 1997. He also helped Nike, Coca-cola, MCI and Sony shape their interactive strategies. After a successful NASDAQ IPO, Mahesh moved from CKS to a
e-commerce software startup in Seattle, iCat, as VP, Marketing. iCat was acquired by Intel and Mahesh then decided to focus solely on consulting and investing in startups.
He came back to India in 1999, consulting for Channel [V] as their country head in India, repositioning the channel and also launching a successful net-based entity for them, vIndia.com.
For the last one year, Mahesh has been concentrating solely on the companies he's funded: helping out with everything from naming and site design to business strategy, pricing, alliances, obtaining further funding and also hiring away good people from boring jobs to work at what he
calls "firms that can change the world"
Passionfund.com which was started with his partner Mr. Arun Pai, early this year has investments in in 14 internet and technology-enabled companies, including 4 in the US and 10 in India.. Some of these include Securesoft, a world-class encryption company; iVast, an interactive television platform company, Indiaproperties, India's leading real estate company; Webdunia, the world's leading Indian languages Internet
company, EasyBuyMusic, India's leading non-brick-and-mortar music retailer and Infobahn, a top-notch net-based financial software products
company. Co investors in Passionfunded companies include Paul Allen's Vulcan Ventures, Panasonic, Walden, Newscorp and ICICI.
Mahesh is a TiE Charter Member and Chair of the TiE Angel Forum. He has spoken at Internet World, Chicago, CNet's Annual
Technology Conference,TiEcon, Nasscom, Comdex and other industry fora. He is an ardent evangelist of building global technology-based companies out of India and
believes India's IT future does not lie in software services.
Mahesh keeps close ties with Hyderabad, where his parents live, making sure he can visit on a Friday to catch up with his quizzing buddies at K-Circle, where he's been a member for over 20 years. Mahesh is married to another ex-advertising writer, Manisha Lakhe. They have a 3-year old
son Agni, who, he says, is the most difficult startup he's ever had to manage.
Mahesh Murthy was here in the City recently to speak on "Can we build great technology-based companies in Hyderabad?" as
part of TiE,Hyderabad chapter.
-MK
Reachout's News Bureau
March' 2001
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