NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Thursday, September 7, 2017

Brooklyn-based ConsenSys, the iconic Ethereum design studio, is launching a $50m (£38.3m) venture capital arm, ConsenSys Ventures, and has hired Kavita Gupta to serve as the new enterprise’s founding managing partner.

ConsenSys is the brainchild of its founder, Joseph Lubin, who also was a co-founder of Ethereum, a blockchain technology. ConsenSys develops applications and tools based on Ethereum and is a founding member of the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance.

ConsenSys selected Gupta due to her broad and pioneering background. Growing up in India, she saw first-hand the power of technology to transform a society for the better. That led her to a deep and varied career, spanning McKinsey, the World Bank, the International Finance Corporation (IFC), and, most recently, the family foundation of Eric Schmidt, who serves as executive chairman of Google’s parent company Alphabet. An alum of MIT and the Media Lab, Gupta created the first “green bond” at the World Bank and was awarded the UN Social Finance Innovator Award of the Year.

Photo courtesy of Andrew Magill.