Mayfield hires Navin Chaddha, announces profitable “exits”

Mayfield, the well-known Silicon Valley venture firm, has hired another managing director, Navin Chaddha, from Gabriel Venture Partners.

Chaddha has considerable experience in India, having made three investments in companies that have gone public, and three more in private companies. The hire is Mayfield’s third in the past year, as the firm moves to bolster a younger generation of partners. Last year, the high-profile firm received some criticism from its investors for its mediocre performance, and one of the firm’s leaders Kevin Fong, vowed to do better. The firm has since hired Chamath Palihapitiya, a leading executive from AOL, and Raj Kapoor, an entrepreneur.

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Yogen Dalal, a Mayfield managing director, said the hire should wrap up the firm’s hiring spree for now. The firm has also hired three associates of late, he said.

The firm has enjoyed three “exits” recently, where companies it has backed have been either sold or gone public. Of Mayfield’s most recent fund, which the firm started investing late last year, it has already seen a profit on an investment in Akimbi, a company that provides virtualization tools. The Sunnyvale company was acquired by VMWare.

The other exits include Convedia, which builds telecom equipment for real-time video streaming, sold for $100M, and Northstar, a medical company, which went public.

Chaddha, meanwhile, told us that he’ll continue to focus on software, communications and Internet investments. Along with Raj Kapoor and Kevin Fong, Chaddha will be helping the firm’s investment strategy in India. His investments there for Gabriel include financial services provider IL&FS Investsmart, telecommunications services provider AllSec Technologies and retailer Provogue — all of which went public on the Bombay Stock Exchange.

Chaddha told us he’d gotten to know Dalal back when he was a student at Stanford, while he was launching his first company, Vextreme. That was back in 1995, and the two stayed in touch, he said.