SoftBank India head Sumer Juneja gets larger role, to also oversee Europe, Middle East

SoftBank Vision Fund’s managing partner Sumer Juneja and India head has been given the additional responsibility of overseeing Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA), as per an official communication from the firm on Friday.
Juneja will report to Rajeev Misra, who is currently transitioning out of his role as the technology fund's chief executive (CEO). Misra, however, remains the CEO of Vision Fund 1.

He will continue to lead the India operations of the Vision Fund - one of the country’s largest investors in new-age technology companies such as Delhivery, Swiggy, and Meesho, among others.

Last year, Juneja was elevated as a managing partner at the fund. He will shuttle between Mumbai and London, and be responsible for the EMEA markets which were till now helmed by Yanni Pipilis.

SoftBank Investment Advisors managing partner Munish Varma, who is also departing from the Vision Fund, and Pipilis are set to join Misra’s new investment fund as partners, according to people in the know of the development. Pipilis and Varma are seen as close aides of Misra from the time all of them worked together at Deutsche Bank AG.

Varma had been driving India investments at the Vision Fund since 2018 by backing companies such as Delhivery, FirstCry, and Policybazaar. He was also leading fintech and crypto investments in the US such as Chime, and FTX, among others.

Read more: Open to investing in fintech post Paytm's listing, missed out on SaaS deals earlier: SoftBank’s Munish Varma

Narendra Rathi and Sarthak Misra - who were promoted as investment directors earlier this year - will assist Juneja in driving India, said a person in the know of the development.

Juneja joined SoftBank in 2018 as partner and head of India and has since led investments in Swiggy, Meesho, and edtech firm Eruditus. Before joining SoftBank, he was at Norwest Venture Partners, where he was a director at the Silicon Valley-headquartered venture capital’s India office.

He is credited for setting up the India team, diversifying the domestic portfolio for SoftBank beyond ecommerce and ride-hailing, and backing startups in edtech, business-to-business, software-as-a-service, and enterprise.

Europe will be a significant market for Juneja to lead, with companies such as buy now pay later (BNPL) venture Klarna, robotics firm AutoStore, and British fintech Revolut being a part of the fund’s portfolio.

Recently, the valuation of Sweden’s Klarna was cut to $6.7 billion from $46 billion, one of the highly-priced startups seeing its valuations plummet amid the funding downturn which has impacted public and private valuations for the technology sector.

In July, SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son said Misra, the chief executive officer, SB Investment Advisers, which manages SoftBank Vision Fund, will step down from his executive role, in a major rejig at the conglomerate.

Son said he will transition from his current role and take on the responsibility as a vice-chairman.

SoftBank’s Vision Fund has had a tumultuous few quarters amid a rout of publicly-traded technology stocks and a sliding portfolio leading to massive losses of $17 billion in the June quarter of this year.

Following the June quarter results, Son had said unicorns that were unwilling to take a valuation cut would likely be facing a prolonged ‘tech winter’.

“Our Vision Fund saw huge losses but unfortunately unicorn company leaders still believe in their valuation and they would not accept the fact that they may have to see their valuation (go) lower than they think. So, until the multiple of unlisted companies is lower than [that] of listed companies, we should wait,” Son had said in a post-earnings briefing.

To make matters more difficult for the Vision Fund and Son, shares of the company fell - which are almost 50% off from its peak last year - after reports suggested that hedge fund Elliott Management Corp. has sold off almost all of its position in the Japanese conglomerate.