We back early stage founders who create and own categories in Supply Chain application and infrastructure software areas. Our value is that we believe, look for what could go right, and warmly share our knowledge and networks.
Rohini is a venture capitalist with over 20 years of investing experience. As a Partner at NGP Capital, NEA and Intel Capital, she served on 15+ boards as an investor board member and has shepherded companies through exponential growth, successful acquisitions and IPOs. Her expertise includes Saas, infrastructure software, data, AI/ML, networking, wireless, semiconductors, photonics and other deep tech areas.
She currently invests in early-stage supply chain oriented application and infrastructure software companies. Before going into venture, Rohini was a hardware design engineer at Bay Networks. Rohini received an MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management, an MS from Case Western Reserve University and a B. Tech from IIT Madras. She is deeply involved in alumni giving and active on supporting women in technology.
Chad leads investments in supply chain application software companies. Previously, Chad spent 5.5 years at NGP Capital where he made more than a dozen investments across transportation, logistics, supply chain and other vertical industries. He was also the editor of the NGP Road Ahead newsletter, a monthly publication that delivered thematic insights on the broader mobility sector. Prior to joining NGP, Chad worked at Houlihan Lokey, where he supported dozens of transactions, providing strategic advisory across M&A, capital raising, and restructuring. As part of Houlihan Lokey’s TMT group, he specialized in software and growth-stage technology businesses.
Chad holds a BA in economics from Yale, where he was a member of the lightweight rowing team.
Dr. Madhav Durbha is the Vice President of Supply Chain Strategy at Coupa Software. Prior to Coupa, Dr. Durbha held positions at LLamasoft, Kinaxis, BlueYonder and i2 Technologies. With more than 20 years in the supply chain industry, Dr.Durbha has broad experience in strategy & process consulting, program management, go-to-market strategy, and applications of AI/ML. He received his Ph.D. in chemical engineering from the University of Florida and his bachelor's degree in chemical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology at Madras.
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Aparna Chennapragada is a Board Member at eBay and a well-regarded product expert. Previously, she was Chief Product Officer at Robinhood and at Google for nearly 13 years, where she was the VP in-charge of product development for several internet-scale AI products including AR, visual search, shopping, voice assistants and search. She was also a board director at Capital One, a Fortune 100 company. Her core interests include consumer internet, business strategy, product management, design, network businesses, big data, public speaking, leading cross-functional teams and getting things done.
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Scott Rosenberg was most recently SVP and General Manager of the platform business at Roku. Over 9 years at the streaming video leader, Scott led the development of the Roku Channel, Roku’s original programming venture, created and scaled the streamer’s advertising business and led partnerships, revenue, product, analytics, payments, and operations. Roku regards him a key player in their 2017 IPO. Previously, he was Founder/ CEO of Umami and held executive roles at Rovi & ReplayTV.
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Pankaj is an advisor to enterprise SaaS startups, and an angel investor. Previously, he was the Vice President of Product and Data Partnerships at Databricks, responsible for building over 100 successful partnerships. Prior to Databricks, he led the team at Google Cloud that was responsible for their most strategic cloud partnerships. Prior to that he was Founder and CEO of a location-based startup focused on bringing like-minded people together. He's also held a variety of senior roles at HP, Oracle, Cisco, McKinsey, Infosys and Booz-Allen. Pankaj graduated from Dartmouth with a degree in CS and has an MBA from the Harvard Business School.
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Partha Ramachandran is a senior engineering leader with deep experience in data architecture. As VP of Engineering at Project-44, he is responsible for the tech stack that seeks to replace some of the most archaic parts of the global supply chain with an intelligent, efficient and sustainable system. Previously, Partha was VP of Engineering at Nutanix, a converged server-storage category leader, for 11 years and a Principal Engineer & Architect at Citrix Systems for 5 years. Partha brings a fantastic data, supply chain and edge cloud practitioner’s view to the companies we evaluate.
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Our partners have worked with dozens of companies over two decades. There are parallels, common roadblocks, and similar puzzles solved, but ultimately your journey is unique to you.
We are thematic investors. Our investment focus areas are based on our understanding that the innovation ecosystems around Edge Cloud, Generative AI, ML, Data and mobile are rearchitecting enterprise supply chains just as these rails have transformed other parts of the Enterprise over the last decade. At the same time, the need for resilient and sustainable supply chains amidst changing geopolitics is driving demand for new products from procurement, through manufacturing, IOT, warehouse automation, supply chain mapping, enterprise productivity, and logistics.
Through our team’s product-market centric approach and our deep industry networks, we have developed the pattern recognition to identify supply chain infrastructure and application software companies that will transform our future.
We are thematic investors. Our current investment focus areas are based on understanding technological drivers that are driving theEdge Cloud and the secular market trend around Vertical Saas that is poised to transform enterprise productivity, supply chain and logistics. Through our team’s expertise and networks, we have developed the pattern recognition to identify companies that will transform our future.
We are thematic investors. Our current investment focus areas are based on understanding technological drivers that are driving theEdge Cloud and the secular market trend around Vertical Saas that is poised to transform enterprise productivity, supply chain and logistics. Through our team’s expertise and networks, we have developed the pattern recognition to identify companies that will transform our future.
Early-stage portfolio of Supply Chain application and infrastructure software, IOT, logistics , Edge Cloud, AI/ML, Data and mobile-first enterprise companies
OnRamp enables the future of freight through payments and financial technology. They automate payments and optimize price, efficiency, and security for all parties in the freight ecosystem
Investors:
Chad Bailey
http://www.onrampcard.com
A first of its kind AI platform built with supply chain context at its core. The Lyric Studio provides both the efficiency of point solutions and the tailored benefits of a custom build. Be prepared to solve any problem with an expansive catalog of supply chain data, decisions, predictions and products.
Investors:
Rohini Chakravarthy
http://www.lyric.tech
AxleAPI is the universal data platform for trucking, supply chain, and logistics.
Investors:
Rohini Chakravarthy, Chad Bailey
http://www.axleapi.com
Before starting NewBuild Venture Capital, we were investors in category leading enterprise, supply chain, logistics and transportation companies personally or as part of our prior firms.
Helium is "The People’s Network". Powered by the Helium Blockchain and the cryptocurrency HNT, it represents a paradigm shift for decentralized wireless infrastructure
Investors:
Rohini Chakravarthy, Chad Bailey
http://www.helium.com
Immuta is the modern data access and control platform for cloud infrastructure.
Investors:
Rohini Chakravarthy
https://www.immuta.com/
Coda is an all-in-one-doc that is as powerful as an app. Modern Saas for enterprise collaboration.
Investors:
Rohini Chakravarthy
http://coda.io
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As I leave Roku after 9 years and start to work on new things, Rohini was one of the first people I called. She has a great pulse on the early-stage market, is collaborative with entrepreneurs, and great at recognizing new emerging categories.
I spoke at the conference Rohini & Chad put together in 2019. It was topnotch, a real service to entrepreneurs. And was one of the reasons we chose to work with them in 2020.
Chad'sknowledge of the mobility space was one of the reasons I was excited to havehim as an early investor in Lime, he then brought in critical thinking andstrategic support that forged a long term partnership between the twoparties.
Today, the supply chain is undergoing its fastest innovation compared to any time in the past 25 years. I am excited to be helping Rohini & Chad as they build a supply chain focused venture firm.
Rohini and Chad were great investors and partners to Zum. They are collaborative and always willing to help think through different market and business challenges.
I tell entrepreneurs that they would be lucky to work with NewBuild.VC. I have been friends with Rohini for years and admire her as a savvy enterprise investor.
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As I leave Roku after 9 years and start to work on new things, Rohini was one of the first people I called. She has a great pulse on the early-stage market, is collaborative with entrepreneurs, and great at recognizing emerging categories.
While leading partnerships at Databricks, I gained significant insights from my interactions with fast-growing startups, and investors. Rohini is an excellent mentor to young companies in the data ecosystem.
With my experience in data and enterprise, I am drawn to edge applications that use real time data natively. It is fun to advise NewBuild.VC ’s partners since they bring such deep market knowledge. We each learn as I help them evaluate potential investments.
Chad's knowledge of the mobility space was one of the reasons I was excited to have him as an early investor in Lime. His critical thinking and strategic support helped us immensely.
Rohini was a sounding board for me well before she invested in Cacheflow. She made several important introductions that helped us refine our business plan.
I spoke at the conference Rohini & Chad put together in 2019. It was top notch; a real service to entrepreneurs. And it was one of the reasons we chose to work with them in 2020.
Rohini co-led the Series A investment for my startup, Springpath, and became a good friend over time. I appreciate her empathy for the entrepreneur’s struggle.
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When you are creating a new category, you need coaches who help you think from first principles, expand your network, add creative energy, and boost your execution urgency.
We would love to connect with you if you are building a category-leading enterprise company. Here are answers to some frequently asked questions on what we look for in our investments. Contact us if you feel we are a match.
We are early-stage investors looking to back teams that have a minimum viable product and can demonstrate proof of value. We help with finding reliable product-market fit and proof of market. In terms of rounds, these are typically seed and Series A rounds of financing, usually the second round a company raises.
Our core focus is on the early stage, we lead or co-lead investments at the seed and Series A stage. However, as thematic investors, we always like to help entrepreneurs working within our themes, even if it ends up being too late for an investment from NewBuild.VC. So we won't invest in a late stage company, but do contact us if we can be of help.
Our investments tend to cluster around supply chain related infrastructure software and applications. The infrastructure rails that we are following are
1) Edge Cloud, which connects the billions of connected devices in the enterprise to developers who derive intelligence.
2) AI/ML because every enterprise user needs (or wants) an AI assistant. NLP and vision AI are spawning a Saas refresh, but route optimization, pricing, geo location of inventory are supply chain specific AI categories that can create infrastructure software opportunities
3) as students of decentralized networks, we see a gush of streaming data creating new data storage, data transport and analytics opportunities. Blockchain technologies that enable cooperative systems and Web3 projects that have real world uses are very interesting to us.
In the application software world, we are prioritizing warehouse automation, procurement, logistics and supply chain productivity as key areas of focus. We expect these enterprise supply chain management areas to attract significant dollars this year.
These are the themes where we are active right now, but our curiosity extends much further! If you’re building something different targeted at supply chain enterprise customers, we want to hear from you and learn about the vision of the future you have in mind. We will be respectful of your time and still add value via introductions to our network if it is not a fit for NewBuild.VC.
We love to learn! Find a common connection, share something insightful about your space, tell us how you plan to change the world, or how we can help you on your journey. We are very responsive on email and (fairly) responsive via LinkedIn/ Twitter.
Yes! Since we are thematic investors, we see category defining clusters emerging in many areas around the US and Canada. We are also quite comfortable with "headquarter-less" and "all-remote" models or Delaware-incorporated companies with extensive development teams outside the US. Our main criterion is that the companies target US enterprises as the initial/ primary market segment.
Being a small firm, all our companies get the whole team (yay!) and we are all thematically focused on the disruption we see in the $5 Trillion large Supply Chain market. That said, if you have a specific team need, we are open to a conversation about it. As a starting point, Rohini is focused on Edge Cloud, AI/ML, Data and other infrastructure software areas and Chad is working on Supply Chain application software.
Our investment amount will depend on the stage of the company, ranging from $2M to $10M.
We invest with conviction and would like to have a material position on the cap table. Ideally that would be 10-20%, in category-leading companies where we bring unique value.
We will lead or co-lead in rounds. Our expectation is that we will lead 60% of our investments and co-lead in the remaining 40%. Stage wise, we will lead a seed stage investment and can lead/co-lead Series A rounds.
Yes, we take board seats or board observer roles in our companies. It is the most efficient way for us to have the business context needed to be helpful to our entrepreneurs on company culture, business development and product growth. As companies grow, we are active in building balanced boards and helping entrepreneurs develop strong operating plans.
You may be referring to the World of Connections 2019 we helped organize while at NGP. The conference was indeed wonderful, and it brought together our entrepreneurs, co-investors and corporate partners in a way that added value to each. As the world emerges out of the pandemic, many of our friends are asking when we might meet in person again. We are working on two ecosystem events in 2023. Do reach out at marketing@NewBuild.VC if you wish to co-host it with us.
We are based in the Bay Area working from co-working spaces in Palo Alto, San Francisco and Oakland. So modern!
We are excited to add new voices to the enterprise investing conversation. If you are an entrepreneur or operating executive working in our thematic areas, let us talk!
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