Payal Agrawal Divakaran

Payal joined .406 in 2015 and brings a wide range of technology experiences to the firm. She co-leads the Digital Health investing activity at the firm.

Prior to joining .406, Payal was at Harvard Business School, where she co-founded a company called SpotRocket in the job recruiting software space. The company’s proprietary algorithm ranked 20,000+ global startups and provided the ability to slice and dice the data to help students identify high potential job opportunities. The company participated in the Rock Center Accelerator program.

Prior to her entrepreneurial stint and also while in business school, Payal spent time in Corporate Development at Eventbrite. She helped the company to develop an M&A strategy and to navigate important foundational pieces such as creating a market landscape, housing competitive intel and setting processes for due diligence.

Prior to HBS, Payal was an Associate at Spectrum Equity, a technology growth equity investor in Boston with $7.0B under management. She sourced and executed on deals in the software, information services, data/analytics, security and internet spaces. She sourced the firm’s first investment in online gaming in a business called Jagex, based in the UK, which was acquired by Shanghai Hongtou Network Technology.

Payal started her career pursuing technology investment banking at J.P. Morgan in NYC at the height of the financial crisis. She spent most of her time in the software and financial technology spaces, and was an analyst on Xerox’s $8.3B acquisition of ACS, Visa's $2.0B acquisition of CyberSource, and VisaNet Brazil's $3.7B IPO.

Payal received her MBA, with Distinction, from Harvard Business School and her BS in Electrical Engineering and minor in Management from MIT.