Upal Basu

Upal Basu

Partner

Upal has worked in the mobile and software technology industry for over 20 years. At NGP Capital, Upal leads the global Connected Enterprise investing theme, where he focuses on mobile enterprise and Internet of Things investments. In addition he is responsible for managing NGP Capital’s investments in India.

Prior to NGP Capital, he was Founder and CEO of Mformation Technologies, the world’s largest mobile device management company, which was acquired by Alcatel-Lucent. Previously he was a management consultant for McKinsey & Company in New York and London. Prior to joining McKinsey, Upal led Product Management activities for Risk Management Solutions (RMS), a leading provider of software technologies for the management of insurance risks. Upal has an MBA from Harvard Business School, an MS in Engineering from Stanford University, and a Bachelor’s degree in Engineering from Imperial College, London.

    Portfolio

    Active

    Company
    Theme
    Description
    Investment year
      • Observe AI
      • Company: Observe AI
      • Description: Contact Center AI
      • Theme: Intelligent Enterprise
      • Investment year: 2020
      Intelligent Enterprise
      Contact Center AI
      2020
      Observe.AI, a leader in Contact Center AI, transforms customer experiences and improves agent performance by helping top brands analyze 100% of calls and streamline quality assurance workflows. With Observe.AI, businesses transcribe every call with high accuracy and coach agents while gaining full visibility into their customer service operations. Observe.AI brings the power of agent assistance, automatic speech recognition, and Natural Language Processing (NLP) to modern contact centers and their frontline teams. Observe.AI is trusted by more than 150 customers and partners, including Root Insurance, Alcon Laboratories, Tripadvisor, and Pearson. Backed by Menlo Ventures, Next47, NGP Capital, Scale Ventures, Nexus Ventures, and Y-Combinator, Observe.AI’s headquarters is in San Francisco with an office in Bangalore, India.

      Articles

      • Zinier
      • Company: Zinier
      • Description: Intelligent field service automation
      • Theme: Intelligent Enterprise
      • Investment year: 2019
      Intelligent Enterprise
      Intelligent field service automation
      2019
      Zinier is an intelligent field service automation platform that helps organizations work smarter, faster, and more efficiently. Zinier’s end-to-end solution, Field Service Elements, uses artificial intelligence, proactive insights, and an intuitive, all-in-one mobile experience to supercharge every aspect of an organization’s field service operations, from the back office all the way to the field. Zinier has international offices in Silicon Valley, Mexico City, Singapore, and Bengaluru.

      Articles

      • Shadowfax
      • Company: Shadowfax
      • Description: Multi-modal logistics platform
      • Theme: Smart Mobility, Mobile Technologies
      • Investment year: 2018
      Smart Mobility, Mobile Technologies
      Multi-modal logistics platform
      2018
      Shadowfax, based in Bengaluru, a brainchild of two IIT Delhi alumni, started in 2015 with an aim to make instant deliveries a reality in India. Its logistics gateway for businesses, operating on a plug-and-play format, offers an on-demand delivery service platform to its clients. The technology enables customers to make fast, safe and reliable deliveries by instantly connecting them (businesses/e-tailers/retailers) with the company’s extensive network of 30,000+ Delivery Partners spread across 80+ cities and towns in India. Shadowfax is on a mission to connect the next million micro-entrepreneurs and suppliers in logistics and aims to deliver 10 Lakh+ orders per day by 2021.

      Articles

      • Security­Scorecard
      • Company: Security­Scorecard
      • Description: Cybersecurity rating tool
      • Theme: Intelligent Enterprise
      • Investment year: 2017
      Intelligent Enterprise
      Cybersecurity rating tool
      2017
      SecurityScorecard is the highest performing security rating platform able to determine the security risk of any organization. The company’s proprietary SaaS offering helps enterprises gain operational command of their security postures and across all of their partners, and vendors. SecurityScorecard provides continuous, non-intrusive monitoring for any organization including third and fourth parties. The platform offers a breadth and depth of critical data points not available from any other service provider including a broad range of risk categories such as Application Security, Malware, Patching Cadence, Network Security, Hacker Chatter, Social Engineering and Leaked Information.

      Articles

      • RapidMiner
      • Company: RapidMiner
      • Description: Data science platform
      • Theme: Intelligent Enterprise
      • Investment year: 2016
      Intelligent Enterprise
      Data science platform
      2016
      RapidMiner, the industry’s #1 open source predictive analytics platform, is disrupting the industry by empowering enterprises to include predictive analytics in any business process—closing the loop between insight and action. RapidMiner’s effortless solution makes predictive analytics lightning-fast for today’s modern data scientists, radically reducing the time to unearth opportunities and risks. RapidMiner delivers game-changing expertise from the largest worldwide predictive analytics community.

      Articles

      • WorkFusion
      • Company: WorkFusion
      • Description: Intelligent automation and RPA for enterprise
      • Theme: Intelligent Enterprise
      • Investment year: 2015
      Intelligent Enterprise
      Intelligent automation and RPA for enterprise
      2015
      WorkFusion is the leading smart process automation solution for the enterprise. WorkFusion is used by 18 of the top 20 information services businesses, the leading financial institutions, global Commerce businesses, and the largest business process outsourcing providers to automate high-volume, labor-intensive knowledge processing work. WorkFusion won SIIA’s CODiE Award for Best Big Data Solution, Data Management Review’s award for Best Data Management Solution and has been recognized by the leading analysts as a transformative solution for customers. The company is headquartered in New York City with offices in London and Eastern Europe.

      Articles

      • Kaltura
      • Company: Kaltura
      • Description: Open-source online video platform
      • Theme: Intelligent Enterprise
      • Investment year: 2014
      Intelligent Enterprise
      Open-source online video platform
      2014
      Kaltura’s mission is to power any video experience. Provider of the world’s first Open Source Online Video Platform, Kaltura simplifies the creation of video experiences, and provides tools that facilitate innovative and engaging experiences that create value. The Kaltura platform engages hundreds of millions of viewers by providing media companies with advanced video management, publishing, and monetization tools that increase their reach and monetization and simplify their video operations.

      Articles

      • Innovis
      • Company: Innovis
      • Description: Consumer data solutions provider
      • Theme: Other
      • Investment year: 2011
      Other
      Consumer data solutions provider
      2011
      Innovis represents “Vision for Innovation”. The company has been founded by telecom professionals with more than 50 years of combined experience in international telecom industry with leaders like Nokia Siemens Networks and Qualcomm. The company is focused on providing End-to-End turnkey services aimed at all technologies in mobile and fixed line telecommunication domain. Innovis is headquartered in Gurgaon, India.
      • Quikr
      • Company: Quikr
      • Description: Online classifieds marketplace
      • Theme: Other
      • Investment year: 2011
      Other
      Online classifieds marketplace
      2011
      Quikr was launched in July 2008 and is India’s leading horizontal classifieds company. It offers a web and mobile-based classifieds platform that addresses a wide variety of local consumer needs. Every month consumers across India visit Quikr to sell, buy, rent or find things ranging from laptops to mobile phones to cars to real estate to jobs, and lots more in hundreds of categories. The company has transformed itself from an online industry leader to a player that leads across online and mobile media within a short span of time.

      Articles

    Exited

    M&A

    Company
    Theme
    Description
    Region
    Exit year
      • Celect
      • Company: Celect
      • Theme: Intelligent Enterprise
      • Description: Retail inventory optimization
      • Region: USA
      • Exit year: 2019
      Intelligent Enterprise
      Retail inventory optimization
      USA
      2019
      Celect is a cloud-based, predictive analytics SaaS platform that helps retailers optimize their overall inventory portfolios in stores and across the supply chain, resulting in double-digit percentage revenue increases. This groundbreaking advance in machine learning and optimization allows retailers to understand how an individual customer shopping in-store or online chooses from an assortment of products, revealing true demand. The technology builds on a fundamental advance in customer choice modeling called by MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory one of the 50 greatest innovations it has ever produced. Acquired by Nike 2019.

      Articles

      • Teem
      • Company: Teem
      • Theme: Intelligent Enterprise
      • Description: Workplace analytics software
      • Region: USA
      • Exit year: 2018
      Intelligent Enterprise
      Workplace analytics software
      USA
      2018
      Teem (formerly known as EventBoard) is a cloud-based software and workplace analytics platform for meeting management and analysis that helps companies maximize their workspace and enable employees to work more efficiently. The platform provides employee-focused meeting tools and activity-driven insights, including eye-catching conference room displays, streamlined visitor management, and detailed space use analytics that drive better decisions on space and facilities utilization. Teem was acquired by The We Company 2018 (WeWork)

      Articles

      • Indix
      • Company: Indix
      • Theme: Intelligent Enterprise
      • Description: Cloud-based product information platform
      • Region: USA
      • Exit year: 2019
      Intelligent Enterprise
      Cloud-based product information platform
      USA
      2019
      Indix is building the world’s first Product Information Marketplace. Through a combination of the web and partners, they collect offers data such as price, availability, and seller information in addition to catalog data like code-based identifiers and attributes to create the single largest source of structured product information. Indix was acquired by Avalara in 2019.

      Articles

      • Digital Lumens
      • Company: Digital Lumens
      • Theme: Intelligent Enterprise
      • Description: Cloud-based IIoT platform
      • Region: USA
      • Exit year: 2017
      Intelligent Enterprise
      Cloud-based IIoT platform
      USA
      2017
      Digital Lumens is a global supplier of enterprise-scale intelligent LED lighting to commercial and industrial customers, delivering 90% energy savings and granular building intelligence. Customers in 35 countries representing 100 million square feet of space have chosen the Digital Lumens solution. Digital Lumens intelligent fixtures and controls with embedded networking and sensors bring the Internet of Things to commercial and industrial lighting environment. LightRules facility- and cloud-based management solution is the foundation for ongoing energy and building management. Osram acquired Digital Lumens 2017.

      Articles

      • Network18
      • Company: Network18
      • Theme: Other
      • Description: Media and entertainment network
      • Region: India
      • Exit year: 2012
      Other
      Media and entertainment network
      India
      2012
      Network18 is a leading media conglomerate in India with over $500M managed annual revenues. Network18 is the partner of choice for global media groups such as Viacom, NBC, TimeWarner (CNN) and Forbes. Network18 operates India’s leading brands in television news, entertainment and home shopping network; Internet travel, financial, e-commerce and entertainment portals; films; business print media; and yellow pages. Network18 was acquired by Reliance Industries 2012.
      • Netmagic Solutions
      • Company: Netmagic Solutions
      • Theme: Intelligent Enterprise
      • Description: IT hosting service provider
      • Region: India
      • Exit year: 2012
      Intelligent Enterprise
      IT hosting service provider
      India
      2012
      Netmagic Solutions is India’s leading Managed IT Hosting Service Provider, specializing in Internet Data Center & Managed Hosting, Infrastructure Management, Managed Security, Cloud Computing, Application Hosting, Disaster Recovery & Availability and Professional Services. Netmagic Solutions delivers mission-critical hosted applications for over 900 of the world’s best-known enterprises from multiple locations in a secure and seamless manner. In 2012, Netmagic was acquired by NTT Data.

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