Nexus co-founder Naren Gupta dies aged 73
Naren Gupta, a co-founder of Nexus Venture Partners who is acknowledged as one of the pioneers of venture capital in India, has died at the age of 73.
A graduate of the Indian Institute of Technology in Delhi, Gupta moved to the US in 1969 to continue his studies at California Institute of Technology and Stanford University. Gupta then became involved in early technology entrepreneurship in Silicon Valley, establishing Integrated Systems.
The company, a provider of software, tools, and engineering services for the embedded systems market, listed in 1990. This made Gupta one of the first founding CEOs of Indian origin to take a company public in the US. Integrated merged with Wind River Systems in 2000.
Gupta departed and became a prolific angel investor, which ultimate led to the creation of Nexus in 2006 with Sandeep Singhal and Suvir Sujan. Gupta remained in Silicon Valley, while his co-founders headed up operations out of Mumbai, enabling the firm to capture early-stage opportunities along the India-US vertical across enterprise technology and consumer internet.
Nexus now has more than USD 2bn in assets under management. The firm launched its sixth fund in 2021 with a target of USD 450m. The portfolio includes leading software-as-a-service (SaaS) players like Druva and Postman, B2B marketplace Infra.market, insurance technology platform Turtlemint, education provider Unacademy, and rejuvenated e-commerce start-up Snapdeal.
“He was naturally inclined to identify and back first-time entrepreneurs who are not afraid to traverse uncharted territory, who are not afraid to fail. He would push them to dream big, think beyond the obvious, and remind them that the ‘company building journey is a marathon, not a sprint’ and would stand behind the companies through thick and thin,” Nexus said in a statement.
“He would counsel them on how a company could be killed by overfunding and that it is important to focus on the fundamentals. Every interaction had to add value even if he did not back them. He genuinely cared for every entrepreneur he met and truly wanted them to succeed.”
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