At a time when start-ups across the globe are struggling to make it through a harsh ‘funding winter’, encouraging news is coming in from the VC circles. India’s Nexus Venture Partners, prominen backer of some of India’s most successful companes, announced the close of its seventh fund on Wednesday.
According to Nexus Venture – which is one of the first Indian VC firms to invest in software startups across India and the US – the latest fund is its largest one yet. With a total size of $700 million, the Mumbai-based firm aims to utilize the funds towards investing in startups in India and the US, especially in early-stage funding rounds. According to a blog post by the company, its sectoral focus would span across the fintech, consumer, SaaS, and AI sectors.
Nexus Ventures VII takes the total assets under management of the VC firm to $2 billion, and apart from being the largest fund by Nexus Venture Partners, the fund is also the second-biggest capital fund raised in a year. The first place still belongs to the $2.85-billion strong fund raised by Sequoia India and South-East Asia in June 2022. Nexus Venture Partner’s last fund was back in December 2015 (with a corpus of over $450 million), at which point of time it became the first Indian VC firm to cross $1 billion in assets under management.
“Our ‘one fund one team’ approach, with entrepreneurial and operating experience across Menlo Park, Mumbai, and Bengaluru uniquely positions us to assist entrepreneurs in building pathbreaking product-first companies in two of the most important technology startup ecosystems in the world—USA and India,” the company said in the blog post.
Nexus Venture Partners is a common name in the Indian startup ecosystem, especially since it is known to have backed multiple prominent startups and unicorns. So far, it has driven investments in close to 200 companies across geographies, and more than half of them are based in India. Some of the more recognizable names in the VC firm’s portfolio include Delhivery (which was recently in the news due to media reports on Softbank offloading some of the logistic firm’s shares), Zomato, Unacademy, Zepto, and Rapido Bike Taxi. It has also invested in multiple SaaS platforms.
“With one of the largest developer bases in the world, India is emerging as a key innovation and talent hub for global companies driving AI and software revolution. India is also amongst the fastest-growing economies on the planet, with accelerating digital consumption powered by best-in-class mobile data networks and advanced payments infrastructure,” the firm added. The development is, unsurprisingly, a breath of fresh air to the struggling startup ecosystem – both in India and abroad – owing to multiple factors such as an economic slowdown, a downturn in the market, rapidly falling stocks, and rising rates of unemployment. It can be expected that with the latest fund, several startups will be getting a new lease on life and a better chance of making it through the current funding winter.
