Jay Dias

Founder & Managing Partner at Leela Capital

Speaker

Jay is the Founder and Managing Partner of Leela Capital and is deeply committed to entrepreneurship and tech innovation. Jay spent the first decade of his career specialising in insolvency and turnaround, predominately at PwC in London along with successful leading nine turnarounds of family-operated businesses in Asia. Post-MBA (LBS), Jay immersed himself in London's venture scene, serving as Head of Strategy for Rackspace Cloud (EMEA & APAC), and CFO and COO at Love Home Swap through to exit.

Jay founded Leela Capital in 2015, initially as an UK buy-out fund and later focusing on early-stage advisory. Jay has since advised on thirty early-stage investments along with spinning up nine SPV investment deals.

Leela launched their first fund, a SEIS fund focusing on the Science of Happiness (healthcare, wellness and wellbeing technology product or technology enabled businesses) at the start of 2024. Leela partnered with eight industry expects and will have the fund fully deploy before the end of the 2023/24 tax year.

Leela are now launching their first GP/LP fund focusing on music technology, looking to support the picks and shovels of the industry, and have partnered with IE:Music and RocNation as strategic LP and co-investor respectively looking at UK and EU early-stage assets.