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JLL Spark

Location: AMERICAS – WEST

Ajey Kaushal

Terry.Fadz@am.jll.com on March 7, 2024

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Ajey Kaushal

Investment Principal

Ajey Kaushal is an investment principal at JLL Spark, responsible for sourcing, evaluating, investing, and scaling early-stage PropTech startups. Prior to joining JLL Spark, he held roles across strategy, tech investing, commercial real estate, and management consulting, most recently serving as Chief of Staff at Anderson Holdings and as an investment associate at PLG Ventures prior to that.

Ajey holds a B.S. in Industrial Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and an MBA from the UCLA Anderson School of Management, where he served as student body President. After graduating with his MBA, Ajey has been an official mentor for current UCLA Anderson MBAs looking to launch startups post-graduation.

Location

Los Angeles, California USA

Favorite building

Fallingwater, Pennsylvania

Hobbies

In his free time, Ajey enjoys playing golf and tennis, cooking, traveling, and rooting for the Los Angeles Lakers.

Latest Posts

  • JLL Spark’s investment in Ren Systems: AI-driven relationship intelligence for high-value sales

    JLL Spark Global Ventures recently led a $3.5 million funding round for Ren Systems, reaffirming not only our intent to back visionary founders building world-changing businesses but also our commitment to tech-enabling our core business and transforming our industry.

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  • The future is now: How technology is shaping the way we work

    The past three years have arguably made the commercial world more connected than the previous hundred combined. The COVID-19 pandemic has forever changed the way we work, unlocking the ability to work from anywhere and redefining the employer/employee dynamic.

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Christine Chao

Terry.Fadz@am.jll.com on March 7, 2024

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Christine Chao

Director, Marketing & Communications

Christine leads marketing and communications for JLL Spark. She is responsible for elevating the Spark brand within the venture capital, tech, and real estate communities by developing and executing the media strategy for the global venture fund. Christine also partners with the JLL and JLL Technologies corporate communications teams to amplify internal awareness of Spark.

Prior to joining the JLL Spark team, Christine was the communications lead for BakerHughesC3.ai, a joint venture developing industrial AI and machine learning. Before that, she managed marketing programs for tech and consulting firms.

Christine holds a B.A. from the University of California, Berkeley. 

Location

San Francisco, California USA

Favorite building

Cathedral de Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence, Italy

Hobbies

Exploring new cultures and watching her kids play sports.

Latest posts

  • Spark Notes, featuring insights on our investment in PROBIS

    Our recent investment in PROBIS emphasizes JLL’s commitment to CRE innovation, specifically in real estate development. JLL Spark Principal Sean Wright explains why PROBIS stands out among its competitors, embodying numerous advantages for JLL and its clients

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  • Spark Notes and and why we invested in Ren Systems

    JLL is committed to tech-enabling its core business and transforming the commercial real estate industry by investing in cutting-edge PropTech solutions. One such solution is JLL Spark’s newest addition to the fund, Ren Systems.

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  • Spark Notes and a feature on VergeSense, the occupancy intelligence platform

    Smart building technology has become essential for enterprises as the corporate world continues to define the new meaning of work, especially for “return to office” strategies.

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  • Spark Notes and a portfolio company feature on Safehub

    Smart building trends vary across global regions with the common goal to achieve sustainability and energy efficiency while enhancing safety and building security

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  • Spark Notes and an overview of global smart building trends

    At JLL Spark, we track smart building trends on a worldwide scale, recognizing the overarching priority of energy efficiency and sustainability.

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  • Spark Notes and a deep dive on Proda to revolutionize rent roll data processing

    Real estate asset managers rely on high fidelity rent roll data to evaluate portfolio performance. However, these data sets are often fragmented in addition to the manual process of collecting and standardizing the data.

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Laurent Grill

Terry.Fadz@am.jll.com on March 7, 2024

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Laurent Grill

Partner

Laurent is an entrepreneur turned venture capitalist collaborating with start-ups to successfully build scalable teams, strong company cultures, and disruptive products. Laurent believes there is a need for additional support within the early-stage ecosystem in budding technology hubs in the US and globally. His desire to support these growing tech communities led to his current role as Partner at JLL Spark in April 2021, focusing on strategic PropTech investments.

Laurent has founded, expanded, and managed multiple start-ups ranging from a tech-enabled corporate catering company, Eat Club, to a leader in the mobile health and wellness space, Zeel. His experience working in the early-stage startup scene has given him the tools necessary to understand the needs of founders in the infancies of their companies.

Laurent holds a B.A. in International Relations and Occupational Science from the University of Southern California.

Location

Los Angeles, California USA

Favorite building

SoFi Stadium, Inglewood

Hobbies

Golf, basketball, and hiking.

Latest posts

  • JLL Spark Global Ventures: Pioneering the future of real estate through innovation 

    Technological advancements are transforming industries at an unprecedented rate, and the real estate sector stands to benefit tremendously from this revolution.

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  • JLL Spark’s CVC series, part 3: What sets us apart

    JLL Spark Global Ventures stands out for our unique approach to investing in PropTech and built world technology. With a strong focus on commercial real estate, we strive to make a profound impact on the future of the built world.

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  • The future of company culture

    Fostering a successful remote or hybrid company culture is a challenging yet rewarding task. For this to be successful, technology and programs are required to support a positive and productive work environment.

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  • Trending now in CRE: Sustainability

    Since real estate is responsible for nearly 40% of global CO2 emissions, it’s no surprise that the built world is focused on sustainability and climate action.

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Mihir Shah

Terry.Fadz@am.jll.com on March 7, 2024

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Mihir Shah

CEO, JLL Technologies

Mihir Shah is co-CEO of JLL Technologies (JLLT), a business division of JLL dedicated to commercial real estate (CRE) technology, where he draws on his nearly two decades of experience in building and leading teams to bring successful technology-based products to market. Mihir is also a member of the JLL Global Executive Board.

Previously, Mihir served as co-CEO of JLL Spark Global Ventures, JLL’s global venture fund investing in early to mid-stage startups to fuel and accelerate innovation in PropTech. Prior to his time at JLL, he was a senior executive at Groupon, the co-founder and CEO of Mob.ly (acquired by Groupon), a product leader at Yahoo!, and a management consultant at R. B. Webber & Company. Additionally, Mihir has been an angel investor and adviser to a number of startups, including Uber and Boom Supersonic.

Mihir holds a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering and computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Location

San Francisco, California USA

Favorite building

Transamerica Pyramid, San Francisco

Hobbies

Mihir enjoys cooking and trying out new restaurants.

Raj Singh

Terry.Fadz@am.jll.com on March 7, 2024

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Raj Singh

Managing Partner

Raj is the managing partner of JLL Spark, the corporate venture capital group of JLL, focused on strategic PropTech investments. Previously, he was interim co-head/managing director of investments at JetBlue Technology Ventures, the corporate VC of JetBlue Airways.

Prior to that, Raj served as CEO and co-founder of London-based Sooqini, an on-demand economy task delegator for small businesses. Before that, Raj co-founded and led a Geneva-based consulting firm and worked with various governments to foster entrepreneurship. As a general partner and co-founder of Pervasive Technology Ventures—and also as a principal for the New York-based VC arm of Investcorp—he was responsible for sourcing, negotiating, and closing new investments in tech startups. At Booz Allen Hamilton (now Strategy&), Raj led strategy and technology projects in ecommerce; technology, media, and telecommunications; and financial services. He also held multiple positions at IBM at the start of his career.

Raj holds an MBA from INSEAD in Fontainebleau, France, and a B.S. in computing science from Imperial College London.

Location

San Francisco, California USA

Favorite building

Chrysler Building, New York

Hobbies

Reading, squash, and Twitter doomscrolling.

Latest posts

  • Return to office or hybrid? JLL Spark invests in the future of work

    For the avoidance of doubt, there is a future for work. While this might be bad news for those of us that enjoy our time off, the rest of the picture is decidedly less certain. As the recent JLL Future of Work survey illustrates, the complexities of where and how work will be performed are…

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  • Raj Singh – Driving Sustainability: Venture Capital’s Role in Climate Tech

    In this episode of the Cretech Climate Cast podcast, Michael Beckerman interviews Raj Singh, Managing Partner of JLL Spark, about the importance of sustainability in the built environment and the role of venture capital in driving climate tech solutions.

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  • Questioning the unquestionable: Building PropTech infrastructure for the hybrid future of work 

    Curioser and curioser. Alice’s description of the rabbit hole leading to Wonderland is an apt commentary of the return to office/work from home situation that we find ourselves in.

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  • CVC series, part 6: The future of corporations and startups working together  

    Correctly balancing the needs of employees, shareholders, and investors is critical to successfully run a CVC. In order to get it right, you need top level support , aligned processes, investment skills, allocated capital and time, of course, but you have to start with metrics.

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  • JLL Spark’s CVC series, part 1: The goal of corporate venture capital

    Corporate venture capital (CVC) has captured our attention for a couple of decades, having started off in high tech companies and steadily expanded more broadly into other industries such as FinTech as well as carbon and emissions tech in recent years.

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  • Sustainability measurement: The heat is on

    On the heels of COP27 and the relative lack of progress towards agreement beyond the loss and damage accord, it’s clear the real estate industry and governments still have a long way to go to deliver on climate change promises.

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Sonia El-Sherif

Terry.Fadz@am.jll.com on July 11, 2024

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Sonia El-Sherif

Chief of Staff

As Chief of Staff for JLL Spark, Sonia develops and monitors critical business metrics that provide actionable information to the JLLT senior leadership, JLL Executives and Board. She drives operational efficiency and repeatability throughout Spark. She serves as a highly visible strategic partner, focusing on long-term planning and projects to ensure the growth of the organization and the success of the Managing Partner.  

Prior to joining Spark, Sonia worked at JLL specializing in tenant representation on both a local and global level. She utilized JLL’s best-in-class technology platform to find creative solutions to meet her clients’ unique needs. Her responsibilities included technology platform management, global market analysis, lease and sale negotiations, client portfolio optimization, as well as all disposition and acquisition activity.

Prior to JLL, she worked at WBT selling into the industrial, construction, and data center markets. She managed revenue streams for six states by establishing sales targets, deployment strategies, and go-to-market initiatives.

Location

San Francisco, California USA

Favorite building

The Pyramids of Giza, Egypt

Hobbies

Sonia likes high-intensity sports and has competed in Triathlon, CrossFit, and horseback riding competitions. She also has a love for music and grew up playing the violin in symphony orchestras.

Latest posts

  • Global smart building trends shaping the future of real estate 

    Smart buildings are revolutionizing the real estate industry by seamlessly integrating advanced technologies like sensors, automation, and data analytics.

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  • Impact on CRE: What to expect from the incredible rise of AI 

    With the integration of AI and machine learning – as well as the recent surge in generative AI – the industry is poised for significant transformation.

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