Arka’s Investing In AI Breakfast Roundtable, New York

​Join the Arka team, and select industry leaders like yourself, for a breakfast roundtable. Hosted by Viraj Phanse, Partner at Arka, ​we will discuss the state of the AI industry, and how to invest in the next generation of enterprise AI companies. This is an unconference- minimal slides, and an open, practical discussion over breakfast!

​​About Arka:

​​Arka is Benhamou Global Ventures’ cross-border pre-seed and seed fund focused on US-India enterprise AI startups (US-headquartered or planning to redomicile, but having operations and/or engineering in India). We’re a US Delaware fund enabling Indian-origin founders building from India to scale globally.

​​We’re currently raising Arka 2.0, our $20M Fund II, and have achieved our first close, with BGV (www.bgv.vc) as our anchor LP. BGV is a cross-border VC with expertise in enterprise AI and a strong presence in Silicon Valley, Israel, France, and India.

​​Fund I Success:

• ​​Launched in 2018 with $7M, Fund I is on track to be a top performer, with a DPI >36% across 32 investments.

• ​​Fund I has achieved 8 exits, with 6 companies > $1M ARR, 1 in YC, and 13 raising follow-on rounds totaling > $100M.

​​​This session is only for accredited investors.

​About Viraj:

​Viraj Phanse is a partner at Arka Venture Labs. He specializes in enterprise AI, SaaS, infrastructure, data, analytics and cloud. Viraj brings deep cross-border operational, investment and entrepreneurial experience. He was the CEO and co-founder of a venture-backed AI and data startup that achieved an exit in two years, a product and strategy leader at AWS and Oracle, and a go-to-market and business leader at Aerospike and Persistent Systems. He was also a Venture Partner at U First Capital and a Fellow and Selection Committee Member at Berkeley Angel Network. He earned his MBA from UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business, an MS in Computer Science from UCLA, and a B.Eng from Pune University.

​​​SEC definition of accreditation:

• ​​​​​Income over $200,000 (individually) or $300,000 (with spouse or partner) in each of the prior two years, and reasonably expects the same for the current year

• ​​OR

• ​​Net worth over $1 million, excluding primary residence (individually or with spouse or partner)

​​​https://www.sec.gov/resources-small-businesses/capital-raising-building-blocks/accredited-investors