Sameer Brij Verma, Nexus Venture Partners

Sameer’s journey in India’s venture capital ecosystem began back in 2007 when he joined Reliance Ventures, where he focused on early-stage investments in the Technology, Media / Entertainment & Telecommunications domain.After being with Reliance for 4 years he joined Nexus Venture Partners in 2011 & currently leads their Bangalore office. At Nexus in the last 9 years, he has been part of the investment team that has lead investments in over 35 of their Portfolio companies.Some of Nexus portfolio companies are Druva, OLX, NetMagic, PaySense, Gluster, Rancher, H20, MapMyIndia, Pratilipi, Delhivery, Myupchar, Rapido, Snapdeal, Unacademy, Zomato, and Zolo among others.In this podcast, Sameer shares his experiences of identifying top-notch founders & his signature style of signing the Term sheet in the first meeting with the founders in whom he sees potential. Notes - 00:36 - From CFA Level-I to spending over 11 years in Venture Ecosystem07:48 - I’m very fond of what I do as VC10:50 - Investing in over 35 Portfolio Companies across - Business Services, Consumer Brands, Data & AI, Enterprise & Healthcare16:30 - Top 2 Portfolio Companies in every fund18:00 - Growth & Success of Postman and UnAcademy20:19 - Story behind signing term-sheet at UnAcademy27:11 - Size of Test Prep market in India28:48 - Investing in Postman right around its buyout stage33:37 - Signature style of getting Term-sheet signed & Investing then & there38:30 - Learnings from Mistakes as a VC41:05 - Identifying secular trends/shift in markets44:48 - Guiding founders in situations where they are able to raise $50M+ but haven’t had experience building big startups47:17 - Quality of founders is getting better & better51:55 - Low-value creation in several crappy companies in India01:01:20 - Low-key & Successful Portfolio Companies at Nexus Venture Partners01:04:50 - Being called a P/E VC Investor01:07:10 - Culture of hierarchy-free & openness at a VC firm

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