Asha bio

As one of Silicon Valley’s most highly respected venture capitalists, Asha Jadeja has invested in over a 100 well known technology startups in the Valley such as Paypal, Mimosa, AppDynamics, Meraki and Pinterest. As founding stake holders in Google, Asha & her late husband Prof Rajeev Motwani played a critical role in building & crafting the DNA of Google the startup. Asha continues to work closely with Google Ventures and Google Foundation on various joint investments. As an active philanthropist, Asha helped create MakerFaire Africa in 2009 and later launched dozens of Maker festivals in India with the objective of showcasing alternative means of learning and earning through local problem solving. Asha set up India’s most advanced Fablab at Cept University (her Alma mater), and placed key engineers and architects from MIT and CEPT in it, to integrate Fablab into course curriculum. The results have been spectacular. 

Asha launched the RajeevCircle fellowship for Indian entrepreneurs from smaller towns dedicated to local problem solving. The idea was to create a platform to expand, globalize & connect the entrepreneurs to the Indian diaspora in Silicon Valley. We have over 150 stellar fellows now that work closely together helping each other scale, learn from and contribute towards a stronger fellowship of problem solvers. 

Currently Asha’s interests are in creating a strategic partnership between various Indian and American universities, think tanks and research groups to help accelerate US-India partnership on economic growth, technology, climate and women’s entrepreneurship.