z21-ventures
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Abhinav Shashank and the value of walking away
Disney and NASA were early customers, but Abhinav Shashank and his co-founders gave up most of their business to pursue a narrower ambition. The Innovaccer CEO has been revising his ideas about company building ever since.
Anand Akela Learned the Product Before He Learned the Pitch
A computer-science graduate became a Silicon Valley marketing chief by keeping an engineer’s suspicion of vague claims. Now he translates cyber deception for buyers, mentors founders on go-to-market strategy, and studies how AI is changing both attack and discovery.
Raj Singh
Raj Shekhar Singh is the Founder and General Partner of z21 Ventures, a community-first, operator-led early-stage VC firm investing at the pre-seed and seed stages across AI, fintech, enterprise software, and healthcare. An IIT Kharagpur BTech graduate with a PhD from UC Berkeley, Singh built his career from McKinsey to founding executive roles at Innovaccer (now a $3.5B healthtech unicorn) before launching z21 in 2022. The firm's $5M Fund I backed 26 startups and has already achieved two exits; Fund II closed its first $20M tranche with WestBridge Capital as anchor investor and is targeting $40M total.