When former Wipro CEO Abidali Neemuchwala moved to the Dallas area with his family in 2007, it was intentional.
Neemuchwala, who was born in India and emigrated to the United States in 1997, chose North Texas for its family values and warm weather — and people.
In June 2020, Neemuchwala, 53, left his top post at the $8 billion-a-year, India-based technology company, citing family commitments. For the next phase of his career, he wanted to do something different. He wanted to give back to the community and spread the word about Dallas.
“It’s more than what you see in the TV series,” he said. “To me, it’s an untold story: The real Silicon Valley of the United States was in Dallas.”
He’s referring to Richardson’s telecom corridor, but he’s also describing his vision of the region’s future.
That’s why his next stop after WiPro is a partnership with longtime entrepreneur, investor and former technology executive Dayakar Puskoor to create Dallas Venture Capital.
Neemuchwala calls Dallas’ combination of talent, potential customers, business climate and wealth a “perfect storm to create a venture capital ecosystem.”
Puskoor, 58, has a rich history of venture capital locally. In 2012, he started Naya Ventures, a venture capital firm that has invested in 22 companies with five successful exits. The company he founded in the mid-1990s, JPMobile, was sold in 2005 to Good Technology for $500 million.
Despite their stature as D-FW tech leaders, Puskoor and Neemuchwala actually met through a surprising mutual friend: Neemuchwala’s son. While in college at the University of Texas at Austin, his son landed an internship at Puskoor’s Naya Ventures. He was the one who connected the dots between the two entrepreneurs and made the introduction.
It obviously went well. The pair launched Dallas Venture Capital in September and have already set to work. They won’t say how much of their own money they put into the fund, but Puskoor says the total partners’ contributions amount to 7%.
They are targeting a very specific type of portfolio company: early-stage business-to-business companies specializing in emerging technologies like cloud-based software, artificial intelligence/machine learning and extended reality.
They are singularly focused on this arena — if other companies approach them that don’t fit the criteria, even if Puskoor and Neemuchwala have confidence in the product, they turn them away.
In December, the firm announced its first investment: $3.5 million in Austin-based PLNAR, an artificial intelligence and augmented reality company that documents property damage through a smartphone in an immersive and interactive way.
Dallas Venture Capital’s target investment is between $2 million and $5 million — a spokesperson calls it their “sweet spot.” The firm will only invest in companies bringing in at least $1 million in annual revenue, though they have informally mentored companies lower than that threshold.
Like many things in the business world, COVID-19 has upended how the venture capital firm interacts with potential portfolio companies. In some ways, Puskoor thinks it has changed things for the better.
“COVID-19 created an environment right now where there’s no more monopoly for the Bay area,” he said. “You can be sitting anywhere in the world as a venture capitalist and as a startup.”
Then again, it does take the intimacy out of investing, he added.
“I never thought I would invest in a company without meeting them and having a coffee or a dinner.”
There’s a reason it’s important for Puskoor and Neemuchwala to have face time with portfolio companies — they view mentorship, not just an unfettered investment, as a big part of the job.
Puskoor has adopted the same motto at Dallas Venture Capital that he used for Naya Ventures: “entrepreneurs investing in entrepreneurs.”
In a world that is becoming increasingly saturated with venture capitalists, many of whom started out as investment bankers rather than in the technology industry, Neemuchwala says startups will get to decide which capital they want to accept.
They say Dallas Venture Capital’s holistic approach to business sets it apart: It means help with messaging, with mentoring, with talent and with connecting two companies to each other.
It’s also about strategy and growing a company. Puskoor puts it in terms of steps. Once a company gets to $1 million annual revenue, he says, the next step is getting to $10 million, and from $10 million to $15 million.
That process is not always intuitive — Puskoor and Neemuchwala know from personal experience.
“I used to see that just getting an introduction was not enough,” he said. “It’s not only mentorship, but how do you help them close the deal? To close the deal, you have to work behind the scenes.”
Despite the name, Dallas Venture Capital has two offices — one in Irving and one in Hyderabad, India. In total, the firm has close to 10 employees, with four in India.
In general, Puskoor says the goal is to invest in both U.S. and Indian companies, but adds that most of their previous investments have been companies based in the United States. And when it comes to Indian companies, they hope to help them prove their product in India and then come to the U.S. and base their companies in Dallas.
They often use the term “cross-pollination.” Over the next 10 years, they plan to invest in five to six companies in the U.S. and the same amount in India each year.
The two entrepreneurs view India as a country ripe for investment. Puskoor describes India as a changing landscape, going from more of a services country to product and technology.
Neemuchwala sees D-FW and India as similar regions with a lot of talent. He points to the number of unicorns, or startups valued at $1 billion or more, in the two countries. He sees India’s numbers steadily rising to compete with countries like the U.S., China and the United Kingdom.
U.S.-India Chamber of Commerce DFW president Neel Gonuguntla knows Puskoor’s and Neemuchwala’s work. In fact, Puskoor serves on the organization’s board of directors. She echoes their assessment.
“There are many of us who believe the U.S.-India trade relationship, and particularly the Texas-India relationship, is full of opportunity waiting to be tapped,” she said.
Texas receives the largest amount of Indian investment in the U.S., Gonuguntla said. Indian direct investment in U.S. companies totaled $5 billion in 2019, according to the U.S. Trade Representative’s office. American investors put $45.9 billion into Indian companies the same year.
And Texas boasts the second-largest community of Indian-Americans in the U.S. It’s a connection that state leaders have fostered.
In 2018, Gov. Greg Abbott led a trade mission to India, visiting Mumbai, Bengaluru, Agra and New Delhi. While there, he visited Wipro’s innovation labs in Bengaluru and announced that the company would be creating 150 jobs at a new cybersecurity and advanced technology hub in Plano.
That trip also yielded a $500 million investment by JSW Group in a Houston-area steel mill.
Aside from their Indian heritage, entrepreneurial spirits and love of chess, what Puskoor and Neemuchwala also share is a love for Dallas so strong it’s palpable. The men both raised their children here.
As Puskoor’s wife once told him: “I’m not moving anywhere else.”
Elizabeth Djinis is a special contributor who formerly wrote for the Tampa Bay Times and Sarasota Herald-Tribune. She also is a former Dallas Morning News reporting intern.
