Before joining Lightspeed, Mercedes Bent worked at Goldman Sachs and the Federal Reserve, helped scale General Assembly to about $100M in revenue, and worked at a VR startup—background that shows up in how she invests, from researching 60 startups before even landing her Lightspeed job to building a thesis around Black women's haircare based on her own experience and market data. She now leads Lightspeed's Latin America practice, looking closely at regional shifts like Brazil's PIX, evaluates credit startups by digging into risk management and debt capital markets rather than just growth, and leads Lightspeed's Scout program to help Black, Latinx, Indigenous, and Pacific Islander communities build connections in venture.
About their Fund
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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