Senior international Google executive Debu Purkayastha will be leaving the search giant after six years of working in the company's international business, particularly in mergers and acquisitions and investments, TechCrunch reported. He will be serving as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence with UK-based Octopus Investments, a venture capital firm that has supported firms like Swiftkey, YPlan and Conversocial, the report said.

Octopus Investments head of ventures team Alex Macpherson said that Purkayastha's role will be to identify new investment opportunities. He will also be providing support to the entrepreneurs and management teams in the company's portfolio. Purkayastha is also expected to further help Octopus expand its already-rich list of contacts, the report said.

During his stint at Google, Purkayastha initially served as Principal of Corporate Development and led the company's worldwide M&A and investment efforts, where he played a role in such deals as ITA Software, Phonetic Arts, Green Parrot Pictures and Gizmo5. He then became Principal of New Business Development where he worked closely with the company's Travel and Finance search products from the time they were formed. Before his stint at Google, Purkayastha headed Sabre's M&A team at EMEA. He also served as an M&A banker with Citigroup's Salomon Smith Barney in the US and London, the report said.

Purkayastha was also one of those who advanced Google's project called Campus London which aims to make a multi-faceted building that would house London's Tech City accelerators and companies that worked together. Tech City has the most concentration of promising technology firms, the report said.

Purkayastha told TechCrunch that the startup ecosystem in Europe has greatly matured in the past five to six years. It is his hope that he will see the next Google come out from Europe, the report said.

CrunchBase information showed that the recent investments of October Investments are Kabbee, Uniplaces, Decoholic, iovox and Surrey NanoSystems.