Jishnu Bhattacharjee, head of one of the most widely regarded entrepreneur-friendly VCs in the industry, has years of experience working with technology startups. He has an MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business, an MS in electrical engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology, and a BTech from IIT Kharagpur.
Jishnu started his career as a design engineer at National Semiconductor, went on to be a part of the founding team of the communications system company Scintera Networks, before eventually becoming an investor. In 2008, Jishnu took up the position of Managing Director of Nexus Venture Partners.
Known for its investments in technology-led businesses, the entity typically steers seed and Series A rounds. So far, the VC fund has offered capital and mentorship to a slew of firms, including Dhruva, CrelioHealth, Helpshift, Aryaka, ElasticBox, and Headout, among others.
In the recent episode of 100x Entrepreneur Podcast, a series featuring founders, venture capitalists, and angel investors, Jishnu and Siddharth Ahluwalia talk about the early days of his employment at Nexus, the decisions behind investing in SaaS companies, and having a cross-border investment team on board.
The stepping stones
After completing his Masters, Jishnu began studying for his PhD and worked on and presented multiple papers during the time. In 2001, Jishnu received a call from a company in Silicon Valley, stating that their team had seen one of his papers and expressing interest in roping him into the workforce.
“Scintera Networks called me saying they wanted to drive my ideas to products, instead of papers. Well, that was a pitch which got me excited. I immediately agreed and took a sabbatical from my PhD. I was deeply engaged in building electronics for their optical networks, wireless communication systems, and integrated circuits,” says Jishnu.
Jishnu Bhattacharjee, Managing Partner, Nexus Venture Partners.
After a few years, when the startup was sold off, Jishnu enrolled himself at a business school. During the time, he got connected to a few venture capitalists, including Naren Gupta and Suvir Sujan, Co-founders of Nexus. Impressed by the work they were doing, he joined them.
Over the years, Jishnu got an opportunity to work with some extraordinary entrepreneurs across different domains.
“The experience of working as a venture capitalist has been rewarding. The act of directly or indirectly having influence in creating something meaningful and changing people’s lives is one that is very satisfying. So, I can say that I wouldn’t have had my last 12 years in any different way,” Jishnu adds.
Laying the focus on SaaS
The rapid rise in the number of people resorting to cloud services and the speedy adoption of digital technology is one of the main reasons for the growth of the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) industry across the world, and particularly in India.
Nexus Venture Partners recognised this very early and viewed India as a country with a huge domestic market for SaaS and other technology-enabled innovations. At the beginning of 2007, Nexus made its first investment in the SaaS category in a company called Dimdim, who had a platform similar to Zoom, and provided free web conferencing services so people could share desktops, show slides, collaborate, chat, talk, and broadcast via webcam.
Nexus Venture Partners recognised the potential of the SaaS industry very early.
After selling Dimdim, the VC fund invested in PubMatic, a firm that was engaged in developing online advertising software and strategies for the digital publishing industry. When AWS cloud was floated in the market, Nexus understood the role of cloud in further expediting the growth of technology startups.
Jishnu’s first investment was in a startup called Gluster, which offered a free, open-source software scalable network file system.
“Not many believed in Gluster’s value addition at that point in time. But Naren and I did. I still remember taking the leap and writing the term sheet,” says Jishnu.
Today, the demand for quality SaaS has increased to such an extent that Nexus itself receives over a 100 pitches in the category every year.
Investing in Postman and Dhruva
Over the years, Nexus has built a vast portfolio by investing in and supporting several companies. However, Postman is considered a business that stands out. Talking about why the VC fund decided to back it, Jishnu says,
“We came across Postman through one of the founders who we were associated with. When we did the initial research, it seemed like the company was genuinely attempting to solve a customer pain point and using a bottom-up method to do so. We also resonated with the software and API they were working on."
Since API is computing interface, which defines interactions between multiple software intermediaries and paves the way for making available another service or code, Nexus saw substance in the company’s endeavour. It eventually went on to invest seed capital in Postman.
The team of Postman.
Before ploughing money into any startup, VCs generally try to look for a spark in its product. Jishnu reiterates this,
“We have invested in companies which are at the PowerPoint stage or sometimes even pre-PowerPoint. So, it’s not imperative that they showcase a ready product, but product and technology thinking, as well as possibilities of usage, is crucial. For instance, we used this strategy while supporting Dhruva too.”
Dhruva is a B2B tech startup, that delivers solutions for data protection and management on the cloud. In the initial phase, the startup’s bookings were fairly less and even the revenue was only 500K ARR. However, its product was being used by people across 26 countries. So, that was the trigger for Nexus.
The philosophy behind the VC fund’s decision to back Dhruva was because of their ability to self-serve and enable customers to derive value quickly. Today, Dhruva’s customer base is spiraling organically through word-of-mouth, with hardly any customer acquisition cost.
Jaspreet Singh, Founder, Dhruva.
On the other hand, the customer success and support at Postman has been and continues to be taken care of by the founders themselves. They focus on PQL (product qualified leads) to understand who are using the products, how they are engaging with it, and what are the touchpoints where they get converted into paid customers.
“It’s only the developers who use Postman. Since the platform enables individuals to put together APIs with no know-how about coding, people working in many other departments like operations and sales also started using it. In the coming years, the startup is planning to expand its user base from the current 12 million to 15 million to eventually a 100 million,” notes Jishnu.
Getting to a 100 million ARR
Not all startups have the potential to reach the 100-million mark. Nevertheless, an ever-evolving inspirational vision can lead them to achieving it. Jishnu says that one of the philosophies followed at Nexus is – ‘think broadly and globally, but act narrowly and locally.’
“We have observed that thinking in an unconstrained manner and then mapping resources to the goal helps in getting closer to the desired ARR. That said, just being driven by ARR will lead you to take a lot of suboptimal decisions. Every company is different and the metrics to measure its success may also be distinct,” he said.
A few of the key aspects that Nexus looks into before deciding to work with a startup is – a complementary founding team and resonance with the product, as well as the vision. In addition to evaluating this, the thought processes and feedback of the team is considered while taking the final call.
Edited by Anju Narayanan
Link : https://yourstory.com/2020/10/jishnu-nexus-venture-investing-saas-startups-postman-dhruva
Author :- Roshni Balaji ( )
October 29, 2020 at 05:35AM
YourStory