Sanjiv Parikh

Sanjiv is the Managing Partner of Avanta Ventures where he drives venture capital investments, incubation/acceleration and corporate development.
Sanjiv has 25+ years of driving growth for corporations across the entire spectrum of growth and strategic investment initiatives.
His strong operating experiences has led him to build businesses from the ground up with a solid technology foundation.
Prior to joining Avanta Ventures, Sanjiv led acquisitions, business development, and investments for SK Telecom in the Americas across Cloud Infrastructure, IoT, Media & Content and Analytics.
At SK Telecom Sanjiv developed a Cloud TV offering which grew to over 17 million subscribers and served on the Boards of several startups and venture funds.
Previously, Sanjiv advised on software strategy for Ciena Corporation vis a vis SDN, NFV and Cloud Computing.
Before Ciena, Sanjiv was Senior Vice President of Business Development at Sentilla Corporation where he helped turn-around and sell Sentilla to Ericsson.
Formerly, Sanjiv was Corporate Vice President of Investments and Corporate Development for HTC and Managing Director of Corporate Ventures at Hewlett Packard.
Prior to HP, Sanjiv was at Microsoft part of the predecessor team to Microsoft Ventures, accountable for Microsoft’s engagement with the innovation community globally.
Sanjiv has a deep career history with large corporations, and has helped launch RightWorks Corporation; an enterprise software startup sold to Internet Capital Group for $1.25 B.
Sanjiv holds a Mechanical Engineering degree with a minor in Electrical Engineering from the University of California at Berkeley and an MBA from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.
On a personal note, Sanjiv is an avid sailor, having been sailing for over 40 years both competitively and for leisure.
Sanjiv has sailed off the coasts of California, Maine, Maryland, Florida, and in the Mediterranean off the coasts of France, Italy and Greece.