MAM
Dentsu launches corporate VC fund with $42 million corpus
MUMBAI: Advertising behemoth Dentsu Inc has established a new corporate venture capital (VC) fund called – Dentsu Ventures Global Fund I, with a total capital of approximately $42 million (five billion yen).
With companies in the US, Europe and Asia as its main targets, the fund will not only provide businesses with capital but will also focus on providing entrepreneurs with extensive business support that leverages the problem-solving resources cultivated by the Dentsu Group to date in order to help them bring innovation to the world.
The changes in the business environment surrounding the Dentsu Group and the advertising industry itself are accelerating, and the importance of open innovation through business collaboration with promising external partners is increasing even more. Under such circumstances the Dentsu Group will, through this fund, promote investment in ambitious venture companies that will create an as yet unseen future as well as open up new areas of development through the provision of business development support to the investees.
The Dentsu Group has to date made proactive investments in venture companies and promoted business collaboration through the Dentsu Digital Fund, a fund managed by its subsidiary Dentsu Digital Holdings Inc. Through investments mainly in venture companies outside of Japan as well as seed and early stage investments in Japanese companies, coupled with the building of a complementary relationship with the Dentsu Digital Fund, Dentsu will accelerate open innovation across the Group as a whole.
The fund will have a seven-year period of operation from April 2015 until March 2022.
Dentsu is looking at investing in areas that can change the marketing and communication business in a broad sense. The VC fund is interested in companies that look at new areas that have a high potential for innovation.
MAM
Ember Cookware appoints Amit Singh as chief of supply chain
10-year veteran to lead operations as brand scales across D2C, quick commerce and retail.
MUMBAI: Ember just handed its supply chain the perfect seasoning because when your cookware is non-toxic and non-stick, the operations behind it better be fast and flawless. Ember Cookware has appointed Amit Singh as chief of supply chain and Services, bolstering its leadership team at a pivotal growth phase. Singh brings over a decade of experience in supply chain strategy, operations and large-scale network buildouts.
He began his career at Singapore-based retail giant Giant Hypermarket before joining Pharmeasy in 2015, where he played a foundational role in building and scaling its pan-India supply chain across B2B and B2C channels. At API Holdings, he later led supply chain operations for North India, managing end-to-end execution across complex, multi-city networks.
In his new role, Amit will oversee Ember’s complete supply chain and service ecosystem including sourcing, manufacturing coordination, logistics, last-mile delivery, post-purchase support and workforce development. His mandate focuses on building cost-efficient, resilient operations that shorten fulfilment times, strengthen inventory management and deliver a consistently high-quality consumer experience as the brand expands nationally.
Ember Cookware co-founder & CEO Siddharth Gadodia said, “Supply chain is where growth either holds or breaks. As we scale across channels and geographies, we need operations that are efficient, resilient, and built for speed, without ever compromising on the consumer experience. Amit has done this before, at real scale.”
Ember Cookware co-founder & CMO Himanshi Tandon added, “As we scale, supply chain efficiency becomes as important as product and brand. Amit’s mandate is to build the operational foundations that make our promise consistent at scale.”
Amit Singh commented, “Ember is building something genuinely different, a category-defining brand with a clear purpose and the ambition to match. I’m looking forward to building supply chain infrastructure that doesn’t just keep pace with growth, but enables it.”
The appointment forms part of Ember’s broader push to deepen leadership across key functions as it invests in its Innovation Lab, proprietary material technologies and operational backbone to support national expansion.
In a kitchenware world where non-stick promises are easy but delivery is hard, Ember isn’t just cooking up products, it’s cooking up an operation that keeps every promise sizzling from factory to fork.
