11 PIOs in Forbes magazine's list of best venture capitalists

New York: Eleven Indian-American investors feature in Forbes magazine's annual list of the 100 best venture capitalists who are behind some of the highest- returning investments in the technology sphere.

The 'Midas 2017' comprises 100 best venture capitalists in the world, taking into account a five-year look-back at a partner's portfolio, with exits by IPO or acquisition of USD 200 million or more and private holdings that raised money at valuations of USD 400 million or more over that time period.

The list has been topped by Jim Goetz, Partner in Sequoia Capital. He retains the top spot three years after the monumental sale of messaging giant WhatsApp to Facebook for nearly USD 22 billion.

Goetz, the only investor in the company, transformed USD 60 million over three rounds into more than USD 3 billion in Facebook stock.

The list includes 11 venture capitalists who are of Indian-origin and have been behind some of the highest- returning investments in the technology sphere in the US.

Neeraj Agrawal, General Partner in Battery Ventures on the 17th spot leads the pack of Indian-origin venture capitalists on the list, followed by Sameer Gandhi, Partner in Accel Partners (23), Asheem Chandna, Partner in Greylock Partners (28), Salil Deshpande, Managing Director in Bain Capital Ventures (33), Aneel Bhusri CEO and Cofounder of Workday (37).

Gaurav Garg, Founding Partner of Wing Venture Capital (48), Promod Haque, Senior Managing Partner of Norwest Venture Partners (67), Hemant Taneja, Managing Director of General Catalyst Partners (70), Navin Chaddha, Managing Director of Mayfield Fund (73), Ravi Mhatre, Partner in Lightspeed Venture Partners (76) and Deven Parekh, Managing Director of Insight Venture Partners (99).

Agrawal returns to the Midas List for the 7th consecutive time. Two of Agrawal's software companies, Coupa and Nutanix, went public in 2016, and another, AppDynamics, was about to go public in early 2017 before it was scooped up by Cisco for USD 3.7 billion.

Taneja, who holds five degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, debuts on the Midas List due to an early investment in Snap, the social platform that went public at a market capitalization of USD 25 billion in February 2017.

Haque, an alumnus of Delhi College of Engineering, has served as senior managing partner at Norwest Venture Partners since 2013, where he focuses on enterprise and healthcare IT.

In his more than 15 years of venture capital experience, Haque has invested in more than 70 companies that have produced more than USD 40 billion in exit values.

Forbes said while micro-blogging site Twitter still accounts for 12 Midas investors and Facebook another 10, they're now making way for Snap, the social app that went public in February 2017, and its eight investors in the 2017 Midas ranks.