Bejul Somaia joined Lightspeed in 2008 to build its India practice from the ground up, later helped launch its Southeast Asia business and support its European expansion, and is known for looking past surface-level categories to find the underlying business model, as with India Energy Exchange, a regulated power market with no real global comparison that he backed by treating it like the marketplaces he already understood well. His approach has paid off with early bets on India Energy Exchange, OYO, Udaan, and MagicPin that have returned more than a billion dollars to investors, earning him the Midas Touch award for top venture investor in India in 2019, and today he's expanded his focus beyond India to global companies while also writing about how cheap, abundant AI could unlock much more entrepreneurial activity in India than is currently happening.
About their Fund
Lightspeed India Partners
Lightspeed India focuses on solving India-specific problems rather than copying U.S. or China playbooks, invests mostly at the seed and Series A stage but can offer much larger follow-on funding through its global platform, and writes checks from about $1 million to $100 million across India and Southeast Asia using the same fund. The firm also provides dedicated in-house support in areas like talent, leadership, and M&A, has added experienced operators such as former Boat CEO Vivek Gambhir and Gojek cofounder Kevin Aluwi as venture partners, prefers secondary share sales over IPOs as its main way of returning capital, and sees India's biggest AI opportunity in application-layer tools and upgrading IT and BPO work rather than building foundational AI infrastructure.
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