Novus, a New York-based company founded by former portfolio managers, engineers and data scientists to help institutions and investors generate higher returns, has received an investment from Bain Capital Ventures and Index Ventures.
The investments will be used to help Novus continue its growth by investing in its technical infrastructure, analytical platform and talent across technology, data and finance. Financial terms of the commitments were not disclosed.
Novus was founded in 2007 by a group of investors, engineers and data scientists to build a foundation that transforms how the world invests. Today, Novus works with top hedge funds, sovereign wealth funds, endowments, pensions and other institutional investors managing almost USD1trn to help them generate higher returns.
The company collects disparate data from both public and private sources, enriches it with market, economic and fundamental data, and provides it on a full distributed technology platform. In addition, Novus supports clients with some of the industry’s top analytical minds, helping them source new ideas, monitor existing behaviours and investments, and structure portfolios that minimise risk and maximise upside.
The Novus platform gives investment managers and allocators access to unparalleled insight into portfolio holdings, exposures, attribution and risk at any complexity level – from multi-manager portfolios to single manager funds and position-level analytics.
"Novus is revolutionizing the way investors see their portfolios and how they invest. When we launched the company in 2007, we set out to find a better way to fundamentally analyse portfolios and better predict future behaviours and returns," says Basil Qunibi, founder and chief executive of Novus. "We help our clients take control of their investments and improve their returns in a day and age when old-school chatter, gut-feelings and simple rear-view mirror return analysis is consistently letting investors down."
"We believe that Novus has developed the first platform of its kind to combine data, technology and analytics with real insight to drive performance for investors," says Matthew Harris (pictured) of Bain Capital Ventures. "We clearly have a significant opportunity to scale the business even further as other investors recognise the power of Novus. We look forward to working with the management team over the coming years."
Jan Hammer of Index Ventures says: "The Novus management team has created a business which solves the issue of transparency in an industry with increasingly complex data sets that can be mined and analysed systematically. Their truly disruptive platform equips investment managers and allocators with the means to aggregate and sift this data in a way which translates into better returns and greater control over their investment risks. We are extremely impressed with the vision and commitment of the founders.”
