Nexus Venture Partners’ MD Sameer Brij Verma Set To Quit, To Float Investment Fund

Nexus Venture Partners, an investor in several homegrown startups like Unacademy, Hasura, Postman, Turtlemint, Apollo.io and M2P among others, is set to see the departure of one of its managing directors Sameer Brij Verma after his 13-year stint.

Verma will be leaving the venture capital firm to start his own investment fund, ET reported, citing people close to the matter.

He is in discussions to float a multi-sector, multi-stage fund, with a diversified approach towards early-stage investments, the report said.

“Verma will stay on at Nexus for a few months as he transitions out of his current board positions,” one of the persons cited above said, adding, “He is expected to be around at the VC fund till August-September.”

Verma has confirmed the development to Inc42.

Verma’s stint with Nexus saw him invest in startups like enterprise unicorn Postman, edtech platform Unacademy, and Infra.market, which sells construction materials, as he focused on consumer tech, enterprise, SaaS, healthcare, and business-to-business (B2B) commerce verticals. 

He had invested in around 80 startups during his tenure at Nexus.

“The focus will be to bring in people who can help on the operating side. The strategy is to prepare startups to go public in five-six years with a valuation of $500-600 Mn,” the report further said.

“This is a solo partner fund with the option of going beyond technology and consumer deals which is mostly the remit of pure-play VC funds… The cheque sizes will start at $4-5 Mn but can go up to $10-12 Mn for scaled companies,” the report added.

Verma’s departure comes a year after the venture capital firm announced the closure of its Nexus Ventures VII fund at $700 Mn. 

Founded in 2006 by Naren Gupta, Sandeep Singhal and Suvir Sujan, Nexus mainly infuses money into tech-enabled startups based in the US and India. It counts global pension funds, family office and endowment funds as its investors.

The development also comes at a time when the Indian startup ecosystem has been reeling under the impact of a capital drought. However, this has not stopped VCs and private equity firms from accumulating dry powder. 

According to Inc42 data, investors launched 64 India-focussed funds worth more than $5.6 Bn in 2023 while 126 funds worth over $18 Bn alone were unveiled in 2022.

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