Bala Deshpande, 

In India, we look at everything except real estate and infrastructure,” says Deshpande. This year she has deployed $200 million across seven portfolio companies that are part of financial services, e-commerce, and services industries. She has set up the U.S.-based venture capital group’s India office from scratch with seven employees, and says she has the headroom to invest up to $1 billion over the next five years. “It was a little chaotic given that we started out post-Lehman [collapse] and all that,” says the former director of investments, who left ICICI Venture, the private equity arm of ICICI Bank. NEA’s strategy is to create funds and investments based on how opportunities emerge, and not necessarily get involved in early-stage funding. “We look at mid-market stages of growth and building a portfolio that’s most representative of India’s consumption story,” says Deshpande, who earned her Masters in Management Studies from the Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of Management Studies, Mumbai.