Hemant Taneja

Hemant Taneja (born February 24, 1975) is an Indian-born American venture capitalist. Born in Delhi, India, he moved to the USA in 1990. He is currently a managing director at General Catalyst Partners, a Cambridge MA based Venture Capital and Private Equity firm.
Early life and education
Taneja was born in Delhi, India in 1975 and moved to the USA in 1990. He graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1999 with an M.S. in Operations Research, an M.Eng. in Electrical Engineering & Computer Science, a B.S. in Mathematics, a B.S. in Electrical Engineering & Computer Science, and a B.S. in Biology & Biomedical Engineering.
Early career
Upon graduating from MIT, he became founder and CEO of Isovia, a Boston-based mobile software and applications company that was acquired.
General Catalyst Partners
He joined General Catalyst Partners in 2003, where he played a key role in co-founding JumpTap in 2004. He went on to start the firm's cleantech practice and founded Sunborne Energy. He is currently a managing director in their Palo Alto office, investing in early stage companies and focusing on areas such as disruptive energy solutions and next generation IT platforms.
Venture Investments
Taneja's invests in clean energy, information technology and healthcare. His clean energy venture investments and board memberships include ARC Energy, C12 Energy (Observer), CLEAResult, Mascoma, Modular Wind, Stion (Observer), and SunBorne Energy.
His IT investments are Snapchat, Virtual Instruments (named by the Forbes as America's #3 most promising company), Jumptap (acquired by Millennial Media), Humedica (acquired by United Health), Hunch (acquired by ebay), Sand9, SynapDx and TuneIn, an Internet radio service. He was formerly a board member of m-Qube (acquired by VeriSign in May 2006, Observer) and SiteAdvisor (acquired by McAfee in April 2006).
Tanenja leads General Catalyst's partnership with Y Combinator’s start fund, now called the YC VC program.
His opinion pieces and comments on entrepreneurship trends and the venture capital industry have been widely published in Newsweek, Harvard Business Review and TechCrunch.
Advanced Energy Initiatives
Taneja co-founded Advanced energy economy in 2011.
Prior to this, in 2007, he co-founded New England Clean Energy Council which is the leading clean energy policy and advocacy group in New England. He was appointed by Gov. Deval Patrick to the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection's Climate Protection & Green Economy Advisory Committee.
He co-authored an article in Politico titled "Advancing the economy using advanced energy".
Awards
He was named by the Boston Business Journal to the 40 under 40 list.
Personal life
Taneja lives with his wife Jessica Schantz Taneja and their two children in Los Altos Hills, California.

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