Singapore’s Jungle Ventures hires 3 operating partners, and they’re all familiar names

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Via TechCrunch:

Jungle Ventures, the Singapore-based VC firm that launched a US$100 million fund last year, has recruited three new operating partners to its team. Michael Smith comes from streaming service HOOQ, where he was chief product officer, joining recent recruits Gabriel Lundberg, ex-Spotify, and Tiang Lim Foo, who led Evernote business development in Asia Pacific.

While their LinkedIn profiles say otherwise, these new team members have been with Jungle for months, though they’ve preferred to stay out of the spotlight. Operating partners in VC firms are essentially people who are tasked with increasing the value of portfolio companies using their knowledge and experiences.

The hires are in line with Jungle’s direction of moving beyond just providing capital and a network to its portfolio companies, and towards counselling on all areas of running a startup. Another important hire in this direction is David Gowdey, who joined Jungle last year after serving as the head of international M&A at Yahoo.

In March, Jungle hosted a visit to Singapore by Ratan Tata, who was the head of Tata Group, India’s largest conglomerate with over 600,000 employees. He spoke to founders in Singapore’s tech community, sharing his experience and dishing advice.