The startup ecosystem has grown over the past few years because many venture capital firms are investing in the early stages of upcoming startups. One such homegrown early-stage investing firm is Nexus Venture Partners, which was founded by successful entrepreneurs Suvir Sujan, Sandeep Singhal and Naren Gupta in 2006.
The firm has its main headquarters in Menlo Park, California with head offices in Bengaluru and Mumbai in India. It is a pioneer of investing in global technology products and technology-led business for India. Nexus focuses on funding startups in the industries such as Enterprise Technology, Consumer Internet, Healthcare, Consumer, Business Services, Media, Software, Big Data Analytics, Data Security, Fintech, DevOps, Open Source, Education, Commerce, Gaming, Cloud, SaaS, Agribusiness, Rural Sector, Energy, Etc.
Nexus is an early partner firm and believes in being the first institutional investment in the seed or the series A rounds. The firm also has long term commitment and work closely with the startups they invest in. Nexus Venture Partners has over $1.5 billion in AUM, after partnering with many entrepreneurs from both America and India.
So far the firm is known to have invested in 294 companies and has over 65 exits. According to Venture Intelligence, Nexus has earned more than $500 million in exits by 2020. Nexus’s core identity has been its success in software deal-making, unlike other Venture Capital firms that only choose to fund successful consumer’s internet unicorns.
The firm also prefers to invest in companies from India or global markets and may also invest in companies located outside India with a focus on American based companies with technologies that are relevant for India and its emerging markets.
Snapdeal
Shopclues
Delhivery
Unacademy
Olx
Zolostays
Pratilipi
Rapido
Yolobus
Druva
Postman
Frequently Asked Questions
Here are some of the startups funded by Nexus Venture Partners
Snapdeal
Snapdeal is a well-known e-commerce company in India, which was founded by Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal in 2010. The company has its headquarters based in New Delhi and has recently grown to become one of the largest online marketplace in the country.
Snapdeal is different from other e-commerce sites because its sellers offer good quality merchandise, customers get to pay value for money which is similar to local markets in metro cities. The website has over 500,000 sellers that sell fashion and home products to customers from 3,700 towns and cities across India.
The company raised over $12 million in its first funding from Nexus Venture Partners and Indo–US Partners in 2011. Three years later, Snapdeal raised $133 million from eBay, Kalaari Capital, Nexus Capital Partners, Bessemers Venture Partners, Intel Capital and Saama Capital in 2014. The last investment made by Nexus Venture Partner to Snapdeal was in 2017 where the company raised funds Rs 113 crore from the firm.
ShopClues
ShopClues is one of the top online marketplaces in India, that was founded in 2011 by Sanjay Sethi, Sandeep Aggarwal and Radhika Aggarwal. The company has its headquarters in Gurgaon and its parent company is Clues Network Pvt Ltd. ShopClues was said to be valued at $1.1 billion in 2015 as it was backed by top investors like Tiger Global, Helion Ventures and Nexus Venture Partners, among others.
In 2019, Qoo10 a Singapore based company acquired Shopclues for 470 million. Shopclues is the country’s first online Managed Marketplace that connects buyers & sellers online while offering a trusted and safe online shopping environment to customers in over 9000 cities across India.
The company secured over $10 million in their Series B round of funding from Helion Venture Partners, Nexus Partners and Netprice.com in 2013. According to the company, the funds were used to scale their business, increase the website’s product catalogue and expand their reach to their target audience.
Jeenal Jain
Delhivery
Delhivery is the leading supply chain services chain company in India that was founded by Sahil Barua in 2011 and has its headquarters in Gurgaon. The aim of the company is to become the operating system for commerce in India, with the help of advanced infrastructure, logistics operations and cutting-edge technology.
Delhivery so far claims to have delivered over 500 million shipments, in 230 cities across the country. The company aims to provide products and services in order to help improve the lives of consumers, small businesses, enterprises.
They provide services such as transportation, warehousing, freight, reverse logistics, cross-border and technology services and has over 500,000 sellers and over 10,000 customers. The company raised over $5 million in its series B funding from Nexus Venture Partners in 2013. These funds were said to have been used to further expand its customer base.
Unacademy
Unacademy is one of the top EdTech companies in India that was founded in 2015 by Gaurav Munjal, Roman Saini, and Hemesh Singh. The company has its headquarters based in Bengaluru, Karnataka, and started out as a YouTube channel from 2010 to 2015.
Currently, Unacademy claims to have over 18,000 educators that offer free and subscription-based live classes along with preparation materials for professional and educational entrance exams.
As of 2020, the EdTech startup was valued at $2 billion. Unacademy raised over $4.5 million in their Series A funding from Nexus Venture Partners and Blume Ventures, Girish Mathrubootham, (the CEO of Freshdesk), and Ananth Narayanan (the CEO of Myntra) in 2017.
The company used these funds to strengthen its base of educators from 200 to 2000. Unacademy again secured over $50 million in their Series D funding round from existing Venture capital firms like Steadview Capital, Sequoia India, Nexus Venture Partners and Blume Ventures.
Ashwini
Olx
Olx short for Online Exchange is a popular Dutch online marketplace that was founded in 2006. The company is owned by Naspers (South African media group), has its headquarters in Amsterdam and operates in over 45 countries.
Olx allows its users to buy and sell from a wide range of products and services such as electronics, fashion items, furniture, household goods, and vehicles like cars & bikes. In India, Olx has launched special services like Olx Autos (in 2020) and Olx Cashmycar (2018).
Olx is not only popular in India, but also has a strong foothold in countries like Spain, Portugal, Mexico, South America, China, and the Philippines. Olx secured over $5 million in its initial stages of funding from Nexus Venture Capital in 2009.
Zolostays
Zolostays is a Bengaluru based company that provides services for co-living and accommodation options especially to students and young professionals. The company was founded by Snehas Choudary, Dr Nikhil Sikri and Akhil Sikri in 2015 and is available in more than 10 cities across India.
Zolostays provides many budget-friendly unique services like good quality food, carefully curated living space, dedicated support team, free maintenance and zo-tribe events. Currently, the company claims to accommodate 40,000 Zolo properties and is aiming at reaching 200,000 beds by December 2022.
Zolostays has raised $56 million in its Series C funding from Investcorp, Nexus Venture Partners, Mirae Assets and Trifecta Capital in 2020. It had also earlier raised $40 million from Nexus Venture Partners, Olympia Developers, Patni Computers Family Office and Mirae Asset. The company will be using these funds to strengthen its technology and AI-driven operating platforms.
Pooja Uniyal
Pratilipi
Pratilipi is a self-publishing e-platform that offers content in ten different Indian languages which are Hindi, Gujarati, Bengali, Marathi, Tamil, Kannada, Telugu, English, Urdu, Punjabi and Odia. Pratilipi was founded by Ranjeet Pratap Singh, Prashant Gupta, Rahul Ranjan, Sahradayi Modi and Sankaranarayanan Devarajan in order to promote Indian languages.
The company was launched in 2014 with its headquarters based in Bengaluru, Karnataka. The platform currently claims to have over 2 crore users and allows its users to publish or read their original works such as stories, poetry, essays and articles. Pratilipi secured over $1 million seed funding from Nexus Venture Partners in 2016.
In 2020, the platform went on to raise Rs 76 crore in their Series C funding round led by Tencent with participation from Omidyar Network, Bennett Coleman, Shunwei Capital and Nexus Venture Partners.
Rapido
Rapido is a well-known online bike taxi and logistics service providing a platform in India that was founded by Aravind Sanka, Pavan Guntupalli, and SR Rishikesh in 2015. The company has its headquarters in Bengaluru, Karnataka and currently operates in over 100 cities across India.
In 2018, the company had over 15,000 registered riders and more than an average of 30,000 rides per day. By 2019, Rapido has 1 crore registered users and had also created over 500,000 jobs in India. Rapido has over 15 million customers and 25 million app downloads, as of 2021. Recently, the company has also launched on-demand auto-rickshaw hailing services in 14 cities across the country.
Rapido raised over $11.2 million in its Series A round of funding from Nexus Venture Partners in 2019. In its Series C round of funding, Rapido raised $43 million from Westbridge Capital, Nexus Venture Partner, Pawan Munjal Family Trust, Everblue Bangladesh LLC, Motherson Lease Solutions, Everblue Bangladesh LLC, Motherson Lease Solutions, Konark Trust, MMPL Trust in 2021.
PV Vyshnavi
Yolobus
Yolobus is an intercity bus aggregator that has its headquarters in Gurgaon, Haryana and was founded in 2019. The company provides its users with world-class bus facilities that cover over 250 routes across India.
All their busses have facilities Wi-Fi, CCTV Cameras, and GPS tracking, their customers can also choose from options such as a fleet of sleeper, luxurious sleeper buses, and AC/Non AC buses, built-in washrooms, etc.
In 2020, Yolobus raised $3.3 million in their Series A funding round from Nexus Venture Partners and India Quotient. The company will use these funds to ramp up their services, technology, customer, crew safety and sanitization. It will also enhance safety measures as in the times of Covid 19, people are wary of travelling intercity.
Druva
Druva is a cloud backup and data protection based firm that has its headquarters in Sunnyvale, California with offices in Greenwich, New York, Hong Kong, London, San Francisco and Mumbai. The company was started in 2008 by Jaspreet Singh, Milind Borate, and Ramani Kothandaraman in Pune, India.
Druva is a leader in providing services like SaaS-based data protection and management products to both companies and government agencies. The company aggregates the data of the enterprise data from endpoints, data centers, and cloud workloads for backing it up or restoring, compliance monitoring, security, and other uses, etc.
So far the company has over 750 customers and is known to protect over 300,000 endpoints worldwide. Druva secured $130 million from Sequoia Capital India and Nexus Venture Partners in 2019. Druva is a pioneer as it has created an industry-first application known as InSync that instantaneous automates backups for laptops.
Postman
Postman is a popular collaboration platform for API Development that was founded by Abhinav Astana, Ankit Sobti and Abhijit Kane in 2014. The company has its headquarters based in San Francisco, California and claims to be used by over 13 million developers and 500,000 organizations worldwide.
The platform helps in simplifying every aspect of building an API and streamline collaboration so the users can create better APIs. Postman raised $150 million in their Series C round of funding from Global venture capital, Insight Partners, CRV and Nexus Venture Partners in 2018.
The company had also been funded by the Nexus Venture Partner in two other rounds first was $1 million in 2015 and $7 million (Series A round funding) in 2016.
Pooja Uniyal
Conclusion
Nexus Venture Partners is one of the leading early-stage investment firms that has helped many Indian startups to grow into unicorns today. The firm has been the most successful in funding software companies, rather than consumer internet unicorns that other venture capital firms prefer investing in.
Over the years, Nexus Venture Partners has earned nearly $500 million exits. Despite being termed as a software investor, the firm is currently investing in a wide variety of industries.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Nexus Venture Partners?
Nexus Venture Partners is one of the first homegrown Venture capital firms and is a pioneer of investing in global technology products and technology-led business for India.
Who is the founder of Nexus Venture Partners?
Nexus Venture Partners was founded by Suvir Sujan, Sandeep Singhal and Naren Gupta in 2006.
What are the industries in which Nexus Venture Partners fund?
The industries in which Nexus Venture Partners fund are Enterprise Technology, Consumer Internet, Healthcare, Consumer, Business Services, Media, Software, Big Data Analytics, Data Security, Fintech, DevOps, Open Source, Education, Commerce, Gaming, Cloud, Saas, Agribusiness, Rural Sector, Energy, etc.
What are startups funded by Nexus Venture Partner?
The startups funded by Nexus Venture partners are Postman, Druva, Yolobus, Rapido, Pratilipi, Zolostays, Unacademy, Olx, Delhivery, Shopclues, and Snapdeal among others.
