Ven is the President & CEO, Innovation Works and the Managing Director, Riverfront Ventures.
Mr. Raju has more than 20 years of experience in venture capital and private equity investing having led/co-led all facets of the investment process, including origination, due diligence, transaction structuring and portfolio management with strategic and operational oversight via board of director and executive-level participation.
Previously, Mr. Raju served as managing director at Northwell Ventures, the corporate venture arm of Northwell Health (one of the largest health systems in the country). At Northwell Ventures, Mr. Raju led the investment team to deploy capital to early and growth stage companies in health tech, digital health and med tech verticals.Prior to that, Mr. Raju served as partner at Chestnut Street Ventures, a vertical agnostic growth equity fund. At Chestnut, Mr. Raju led the investment team to deploy growth equity capital inhealth tech, internet of things (IOT) computing devices, software as a service (SaaS), AI/machine learning, robotics and life sciences companies. Prior to that, Mr. Raju served as partner at Choate Capital, where he led middle market direct investments totaling more than $800 million in equity.Over the course of his career, Mr. Raju has helped to shepherd a number of companies to a strategic/public exit including Domo, Bloom Energy, Accolade, Freshly, Relayr and Unity Biotechnology. Mr. Raju began his career as a strategy consultant, advising Fortune 100 clients in mergers and acquisitions.
Mr. Raju serves as adjunct faculty member at the Lebow School of Business, Drexel University and guest lecturer at The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. Mr. Raju also serves on a number of for profit and nonprofit boards.
Mr. Raju holds an MBA from The Wharton School and a Master of Science in Systems Engineering from the School of Engineering and Applied Science at the University of Pennsylvania. Heal so received an MSc from University of Oxford, St Hugh’s College and a Bachelor of Science in Engineering, with honors, from The George Washington University.
