SuprDaily founder Puneet Kumar quits Nexus Venture Partners to launch new startup

SuprDaily founder Puneet Kumar, who joined Nexus Venture Partners in 2024, has quit the investment firm less than two years on, people aware of the development told ET. SuprDaily, a morning grocery delivery service founded by Kumar with Shreyas Nagdawane and Rohit Jain, was acquired by Swiggy in 2021 and then subsequently merged into its quick commerce unit, Instamart, in 2024.

“Puneet is considering starting up again and is building in stealth…,” one of the persons said. Kumar was previously at startup accelerator Y Combinator, where he was a group visiting partner for a year, from April 2022. At Y Combinator, he participated in demo days, where startups pitched to get selected in the accelerator's summer and winter cohorts.

Kumar’s departure from Nexus Venture Partners comes close on the heels of the firm raising a new $700-million fund to back Indian and US-based startups focused on the artificial intelligence, enterprise and consumer sectors.

Nexus Venture Partners did not respond to ET’s queries. Text messages sent to Kumar also remained unanswered at the time of publishing.

Venture partners are not involved in investments at a VC firm but advise portfolio companies on operational matters. Kumar had joined Nexus Venture Partners at a time when several investment firms were roping in founders and operators as venture partners.

This included Magicpin cofounder Brij Bhushan, who joined Prime Venture Partners. Bhushan was earlier a vice president at Nexus Venture Partners. The same year, Lightspeed had appointed former Godrej Consumer Products and Boat CEO Vivek Gambhir as a venture partner.

In 2024, Priyanka Gill, cofounder of PopXo, which had been acquired by Good Glamm Group, had joined Kalaari Capital in a similar role. Gill quit the VC firm last year to launch her own startup, CoLuxe.

Over the last four to five years, Nexus Venture Partners has also seen other senior-level exits. Managing director Sameer Brij Verma, who had led the firm’s investments in startups such as enterprise unicorn Postman, edtech platform Unacademy and B2B marketplace Infra.Market, had resigned in 2024 and launched his own fund, Northpoint Capital.

Founding partner Sandeep Singhal left Nexus Venture Partners in 2021 and is now an advisor at climate-focused investment firm Avaana Capital.