Vinayak Mishra

General Counsel. India.

Born in suburban India, Vinayak grew up traveling extensively with his father, then a forest officer,  to some of the remotest parts of India. He learned early in life that empathy is one of the most underrated human qualities.

 After graduating from Hidayatullah National Law University, Vinayak began his career as a corporate lawyer doing M&A, PIPE and PE transactions. Along the way, he was attracted to early-stage investing and started representing a few of the world’s most active venture capital investors. Realising the potential of solid professional legal advice to chart the growth trajectory of startups, contributing to the startup ecosystem in India became Vinayak’s passion. This inspired him to quit a major law firm career to pursue his zeal to meaningfully contribute to the startup ecosystem, and him starting his independent legal practice. He later set up a law firm with a couple of like-minded entrepreneurs to help VCs and VC-backed companies.

When he’s not collaborating with entrepreneurs and the investment team at Lightspeed, Vinayak loves spending time with family. He’s also an ardent Kishore Kumar fan and believes that the most difficult situations can be made easy if the musicians, orchestra and the singer can play in perfect harmony.

Lightspeed Management Company, L.L.C. (“LSVP”) and Lightspeed India Partners, L.L.P. (“LSIP”) are distinct investment advisory entities, are not a unitary enterprise and operate independently of one another. From time to time LSVP may draw on its relationship with LSIP, and vice versa, but only to the extent consistent with its status as a separate investment adviser.

This individual is personnel of LSIP, and not LSVP. However, such individual provides certain services to LSVP in connection with LSVP’s advice to its funds pursuant to contractual agreement and consistent with LSIP’s status as a separate investment adviser. Please see the Terms of Use for more information.