New Partner Arvind Gupta & Genesis Consortium Reflect Mayfield’s Commitment to Human and Planetary Evolution

MENLO PARK, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Mayfield today announced the addition of Arvind Gupta, founder of the world’s leading biotech accelerator IndieBio, as Partner to expand the firm’s vibrant engineering biology practice. The firm also announced that it had invested in and partnered with SOSV, the parent firm of IndieBio, to co-found the Genesis Consortium, an alliance of funds and corporations to promote human and planetary evolution.

Gupta will continue as Venture Advisor at IndieBio and advise cohort selection as well as mentoring of new IndieBio startups for both San Francisco and New York. SOSV and Mayfield are partnering with other committed investors and corporations to develop the Genesis Consortium. As part of the Genesis Consortium, Mayfield will invest alongside SOSV in their IndieBio batches every 6 months, cementing the partnership with SOSV.

Gupta brings a deep track record of partnering with early stage scientists and helping them build biology-based businesses addressing world scale problems. As Founder of IndieBio, he invested in over 136 companies in five years, defining human and planetary health, and growing the IndieBio portfolio into billions of dollars in value. Under his leadership, IndieBio expanded to New York and grew to fifteen investment professionals with a world class adjunct partner board. He was the first investor in breakout bio companies such as Geltor, Synthex, Prime Roots, NotCo, Prellis, New Culture, DNA Lite and Memphis Meats. He is the author of a forthcoming book Decoding the World, to be published by Twelve Books, a division of Hachette Book Group in October.

“We are at an inflection point in human and planetary evolution which calls for a conscious capital approach to investing - one where we fulfill our moral obligation to partner with entrepreneurs who will help build business for better, not just business as usual,” said Navin Chaddha, Managing Director of Mayfield. “We got to know Arvind as a co-investor, and saw how he shares our people-first philosophy, is passionate about the transformational power of biology, and galvanizes entrepreneurs to evolve from idea to company. His addition to our team, combined with our alliance with SOSV, will enable us to partner with entrepreneurs looking to reinvent trillion dollar industries while saving our planet.”

Since its founding in 1969, Mayfield has a long history of partnering with entrepreneurs driving human and planetary evolution. A complete timeline of its journey can be found here.

The firm’s healthcare and engineering biology practice was founded by Ursheet Parikh, Partner, who is guiding several teams which use biology as the underlying technology to build platform companies.

“Arvind is a pioneer and a high impact investor whose unique playbook of nurturing scientists into entrepreneurs, building an ecosystem of support, and being capital efficient has yielded several successful companies,” said Parikh. “His passion for planetary health complements our focus on human health and together, we are committed to supporting entrepreneurs throughout their journey from idea to iconic company.”

“My purpose remains the same — to partner with the entrepreneurs leading a new wave of biology-based companies that will solve the world’s biggest problems, from climate change and sustainable consumption to therapeutic platforms and healthcare,” said Gupta. “The continued collaboration between Mayfield and SOSV’s IndieBio is a further commitment to the movement. By joining the team at Mayfield, I am thrilled to support entrepreneurs from idea all the way to IPO.”

About Mayfield

Mayfield is a venture capital firm with a people-first philosophy and $2.5 billion under management. Mayfield invests primarily in early-stage consumer, enterprise and engineering biology companies. Since its founding 50 years ago, the firm has invested in more than 500 companies, resulting in 117 IPOs and more than 200 acquisitions. Some notable investments in recent years include CloudSimple, Elastica, Grove Collaborative, HashiCorp, Lyft, Mammoth Biosciences, Marketo, Moat, Outreach, Poshmark, Rancher, ServiceMax and SolarCity. For more information, go to https://www.mayfield.com or follow @MayfieldFund.