Nexus Venture Partners cofounder Naren Gupta passes away

“It’s with profound unhappiness that we announce the sudden demise of Narendra Gupta on December 25. Our ideas and prayers are with the household on this very troublesome time. Naren was a stalwart within the international know-how and entrepreneurial ecosystems.. He was a mentor and an in depth buddy to all of us at Nexus and we are going to miss his ardour, caring nature and towering mental..,” Nexus mentioned in a press release late Sunday night. Gupta is survived by his spouse, Vinita Gupta and two daughters.

Primarily based in Silicon Valley, the 73-year-old was among the many first era of Indian American tech entrepreneurs, co-founding software program agency Built-in Programs Inc in 1980 and staying on as chief government for about 15 years.

In 1990, Gupta took Built-in Programs public, merging it with Wind River Programs. He remained on the corporate’s board until it was acquired by Intel.

In 2007, at a time when Indian tech startups had been nonetheless nascent, Gupta launched Nexus Enterprise Companions.

At the moment, Nexus is among the many top-tier enterprise capital companies, having backed firms resembling logistics agency Delhivery, ed-tech firm Unacademy, Software program as a Service platform Postman, and ecommerce market Snapdeal, amongst others.

“Naren was a father determine to a era of enterprise capitalists and founders. He embodied every thing constructive {that a} founder seems for in an investor, all the time backing founders unconditionally, particularly once they had been in a troublesome spot,” mentioned Kunal Bahl, cofounder and chief government of Snapdeal. “He had unbelievable power and his immense knowledge was enlightening and galvanizing to a whole era of founders who owe their careers to him. He leaves behind an immense legacy and can be drastically missed…”

Gupta was until not too long ago chairman of the board at open-source know-how maker Purple Hat, previous to its $34 billion acquisition by IBM.

“I had identified Naren since my days as a Silicon Valley entrepreneur in 1998. Within the mid-2000s, he was early to identify cross-border enterprise investing and had very efficiently established Nexus as a founder,” mentioned Subrata Mitra, companion at enterprise capital fund Accel. “However all his accomplishments, he was humble and down-to-earth and all the time prepared to assist. It is surprising to listen to about his unhappy demise.”

Gupta held a B Tech diploma from the Indian Institute of Know-how (IIT), Delhi; an MS from the California Institute of Know-how and a PhD from Stanford College, all in engineering.

Gaurav Munjal, co-founder and chief government of Unacademy, mentioned, “Will cherish the lengthy discussions and conversations I’ve had with him the few occasions I’ve met him.”

Vivek Wadhwa, tech entrepreneur, author and a fellow at Carnegie Mellon College’s Faculty of Engineering, tweeted, “…Utterly devastating. Naren was a beautiful human being, and he did a lot for the world…”