Ajay Chowdhury assumed leadership of the Board in January, overseeing the strategy of Cambridge Enterprise, which is tasked with supporting the commercialisation of the ideas that emerge from the University.
Chowdhury has 25 years of start-up venture experience, building disruptive, new digital businesses in a wide range of industries.
He has particular expertise in mobile, e-commerce, digital media, data analytics, digital retail and government as well as strong functional expertise in sales, strategy development, product development and fund raising.
Chowdhury is Partner and Managing Director in the London office of BCG Digital Ventures. Prior to joining BCG, he was CEO of Seatwave, a European online ticketing marketplace that was sold to Ticketmaster. Before joining Seatwave he was CEO of ComQi, a global omni-channel retail technology company that was sold to AU Optronics.
Chowdhury was a founding partner of IDG Ventures Europe, a $100 million European venture capital fund. He also served as Chairman of Shazam, a $1 billion mobile audio recognition company and invested in and served on the board of Lionhead, a games developer sold to Microsoft.
Selected as one of the Asian Power 100—the 100 most influential and powerful Asians in the UK— Chowdhury has also been recognised with the 2015 Dealmaker of the Year award from M&A Magazine, Top 100 Asian tech stars and selected as one of 2016’s Sunday Times top 100 BAME business leaders in the UK.
Chowdhury has an MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He serves on the board of the UK Government’s Department of Culture, Media and Sport.
