bangalore girish paranjpe the former wipro joint ceo has joined as an operating partner in bostonbased private equity firm advent international soon after leaving wipro in 2011 paranjpe had joined silicon valleybased fuel cell startup bloom energy as head of its international operations he quit bloom in july this year since its inception in 1984 advent has raised over 37 billion in capital and invested in over 280 companies across 36 countries with over 140 ipos of its invested firms as an operating partner paranjpe will oversee advents proposed investments in the it services sector what i liked about advent was that the role of an operating partner is fullspectrum the partner is involved in everything from doing the due diligence to making the investment and then overseeing the investment after it is made advent is perhaps the only pe firm that hires an experienced ceo or coo as domain specialist i have been on the management side before and now i will also sit on the investment side said paranjpe globally advent employs 60 operating partners and has 170 investment professionals of 29 nationalities it opened an office in mumbai in 2009 advent focuses on sectors including healthcare retail technology media and telecom last year the pe major invested 105 million in hyderabadbased hospital chain care hospitals it has also invested in computer age management services cams a transaction processing provider for mutual funds and insurance and in elearning company elementk that was bought by north american ondemand elearning firm skillsoft a portfolio company of advent the buoyancy in it services has made pe players to scout for investment opportunities in this space in august this year baring private equity asia bought 42 stake from hexaware founder atul nishar and private equity firm general atlantic partners for 400 million it then mopped up additional 20 stake in hexaware for rs 816 crore through an open offer giving the private equity major over 71 stake in indias ninth largest it exporter paranjpe was in wipro for over 20 years from 1990 he quit along with suresh vaswani the other joint ceo when wipro decided to abandon the joint ceo model