Preetish Nijhawan

Preetish Nijhawan was an Indian-American entrepreneur and venture investor best known as a co-founder of Akamai Technologies and Cervin Ventures. Cervin’s team page now lists him “In Memoriam,” noting his unexpected passing and describing him as a co-founder of the firm.

He earned a BS in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from BITS Pilani, an MS in Computer Engineering from USC, and an MBA from MIT Sloan. USC Viterbi reported that he entered USC’s master’s program in 1989, completed the degree in 1990, then worked for six years at Intel in engineering and program-management roles before earning his MBA.

After MIT, Nijhawan was part of the founding team at Akamai Technologies in 1998. He later held operating roles across software companies, including McKinsey & Company, BMC Software, NeoEdge Networks, Neon, and iVita, an asset-management software startup he co-founded. USC also reported that he served as CFO for JME Software, Scalable Software, and Neon Enterprise Software.

Nijhawan and Neeraj Gupta began experimenting with early-stage investing around 2007–2008 using their own capital, then raised Cervin’s first institutional fund in 2011. At Cervin, he mentored portfolio founders, served on company boards, met entrepreneurs for new investments, and helped build relationships across venture, alumni, and investor networks.

• Cervin backs “entrepreneurs who are revenue-driven, aim to quickly achieve product-market fit, and own their categories” while capitalizing the business appropriately.
• Nijhawan preferred the formation stage of companies, saying: “I enjoy the formation stage when things are changing rapidly. I feel I can add the most value in those stages.”
• He described Cervin’s decision criteria as “a great team with a great idea and a strong vision in a growing market.”
• Cervin’s current stated focus is early-stage enterprise software, data and AI, cybersecurity, DevOps, cloud, and networking.
• Cervin emphasizes “disciplined entrepreneurship,” capital efficiency, product-market fit, market understanding, and hands-on operating support.
• Nijhawan’s personal areas of interest included the future of work, the application layer in the IT stack, HR tech, sales and marketing tech, and DevOps tools.
• He highlighted cybersecurity, 5G, AR/VR, hybrid work, developer productivity, data management, and globalization of enterprise startups as important technology trends.