A quick snapshot of Indian founders in Europe
There's more than you know, paving the way for many more to come.
In my last post, I wrote about the interesting opportunity in Europe owing to the massive influx of Indian immigrants in technology. Since then a lot of people have reached out asking when will this wave materialise, and my answer to them is that it’s already happening - they’re just not observing close enough.
And so, I thought of sharing a snapshot of Indian entrepreneurs in Europe. This is a list of first generation Indian immigrant founders - people that grew up in India and then moved to Europe, either directly or via other countries. There are ofcourse many more Indian origin entrepreneurs in Europe, this includes the wider Indian diaspora that grew up outside India, and infact that list is even more impressive (and includes companies like Improbable, OakNorth, Razor Group, Builder.ai and more).
This is by no means an exhaustive list, but just what I have discovered through my conversation and while living in the UK.
Indian immigrants founders that made it big in Europe
Avinav Nigam moved to the UK in 2018 on the back of having been in the leadership / founding team at massive unicorns in India like Cars24, Hotstar and PayU, and immediately co-founded IMMO - a technology led real estate investment platform that most recently raised a $75M Series B. After being at the helm for 5 years, he’s now on his next entrepreneurial stint with Tern Group where he’s revolutionising the internal migration and recruitment market (more exciting news to come)! Every time I speak to Avinav - I realize his ambitions are so much larger than I can imagine.
Aniruddha Sharma is at the forefront of entrepreneurship in the climate space having moved to London in the early days of the Carbon Clean journey and has been making waves in Europe and globally with their cost-effective, scalable carbon capture, utilisation and storage technologies. They last raised $150M in their Series C round. Interestingly I remember meeting Aniruddha many years ago while we were both students - in Copenhagen during the COP15 and he’s also a fellow Blume portfolio founder.
Aseem Munshi spent over a decade at HSBC across US, Malaysia and the UK. This IIM-A grad then started Updraft - a personal finance app that has grown to over half a million users. It recently closed a £272M financing round (that includes a £250M forward flow arrangement with Jeffries)
Naren Shaam is the co-founder of the mega OTA Omio Group (and Rome2Rio) that sold over 41m tickets last year. Omio has raised over $480M, its latest being an 80M Series E in 2022. Naren grew up in India and moved to the US for his education and then while visiting Europe in 2010 built Omio based on his frustration to find reliable ways to book public transportation. The company has since expanded into a full fledged OTA.
Suryansh Chandra is an architect who was the co-founder of Automata, a science lab robotics automation startup which has raised close to $100M in funding with their latest $40M Series C round. After moving on from Automata, Suryansh is now building The Mind Distellery, his second entrepreneurial venture where he uses Mind Mapping for performance enhancement for individuals and businesses.
Tariq Rauf, is another architect turned product who started Qatalog and is part of the Wise mafia in Europe. He moved to the UK from India for work and started Qatalog the day he got his permanent residency. Qatalog's product gives businesses easy access to company knowledge and systems, and automating routine tasks, competing with companies like Glean (also started by an Indian) and has raised $26M in capital since inception.
Next wave of Indian immigrants who are making it big
While the ones above have scaled their businesses, there’s many more which are growing their wings. These startups are started by both young people that decided to startup after a few years of working, as well as veterans that grew to the upper echelons of their trade and now decided to don the founder hat. Again, this is just a very small list.
Vaayu ($11M Atomico) - Ex-Zalando Sustainability Head Namrata Sandhu
Lumirithmic ($6M seed) - Ex-IHS Market Director Gaurav Chawla
Tvarit (€11.5 million Momenta) Ex-Proemion Data Scientist Rahul Prajapat , Ex-Qualcomm engineer Suhas Patel
BoxyHQ ($2.5M OSS/Nauta) - Ex-Redsift CTO Deepak Prabhakara
Partykit ($2.5M Sequoia) - Ex-Meta/Cloudflare Engineer Sunil Pai (p.s: I am an investor)
Glyphic AI ($5M Point72) - Ex-Deepmind Researcher Devang Agrawal
Dashtoon ($5M Matrix) - Ex-PocketFM founding team Sanidhya Narain
Kayzen ($4M Lifeline Ventures) Ex-Applift VP Product Puneet Gupta Servesh Jain
bitsCrunch ($4M Coinbase Ventures) Ex-Telefonica Data Scientist Vijay Pravin Maharajan
Opna ($6.5M Atomico) Ex-Deutsche Bank Head of Sales Shilpika (Shilps) Gautam
Playzap Games (seed KuCoin) Ex-U2opia Games VP Product Abhishek Buchvani
Collabkit / Shape (seed Moonfire) Ex-Meta Designer Namit Chadha
Flagright (seed Moonfire) Ex-Palantir Engineer Madhu G Nadig
Supersight ($1M Blockchain Founders Fund) Ex-O’Reilly published AI researcher Advait (Leo) Jayant
Bryo (EF) Ex-CapitalOne Data Scientist Nikhil Mudholkar
Moongate ($800K EF) Ex-Juno Product Manager Praneet Sinha
Dookan (seed Lighthouse Ventures) Ex-Qualcomm Sandeep Sharma Dookanwala
Future Therapeutics - University of Freiburg PhD Pankaj Mishra, PhD
Facctum - Ex - Barclays US CIO KK Gupta
Asgard - Ex-RB COO Aditya Sehgal
Scaled up founders that relocated to Europe
Now in addition to these startups, we’re also seeing founders of scaled up startups in India that have relocated to Europe. Every few weeks, I end up talking to such founders, who are considering a move to Europe. These include those that have recently exited their business, or those that have scaled their business.
Some examples of such founders include Chaitanya Kalipatnapu (Eruditus), Nishit Rastogi (Locus), Krish Subramaniam (Chargebee), The Turakhia Brothers (Directi - though Bhavin moved to the US I believe). There’s many more in this list as well.
It’s just beginning…
I am certain of it. And I am so excited to see this story unfold - and excited to play a tiny part in this movement.
P.s: If you’re an Indian operator or founder in Europe, I’d love to connect with you!