Sahil Lavingia, CEO at Gumroad, invests in the employee wellness platform Nova Benefits

Mumbai, India: Nova Benefits today received an undisclosed amount from SHL Capital, a fund by Sahil Lavingia, CEO at Gumroad, Author & Investor.

Lavingia chose to invest in Nova Benefits based on the company’s mission to build happier and healthier workplaces, and high hiring velocity. In February 2022, Nova became the first Indian investment of the Naval Ravikant-backed AngelList Early-Stage Quant Fund.

Nova Benefits enables companies to avail customized health insurance plans for their employees and add additional health & wellness benefits around physical and mental health. Nova is making health insurance & benefits simple to use, wellness-oriented, and personalized for each individual within a company.

SHL Capital, run by SahilLavingia, Founder of Gumroad, invests in companies that solve complex problems with easy-to-use, elegant solutions. SHL Capital also takes into account the understanding founders have of the space they are operating in. The fund has invested in HelloSign, Lambda School, Notion, Jam, and Figma to name a few.

The investments and hiring velocity at the burgeoning start-up prompted Lavingia to invest in Nova via SHL Capital. It is interesting to note that Nova’s hiring volumes have consistently been on par with American company DoorDash (now a billion-dollar company) when it was an early-stage startup.

Speaking on SHL Capital’s investment in Nova Benefits, SahilLavingia, Founder at Gumroad, says: “Nova Benefits is well-positioned to crack the code of employee wellness in India. I believe in what Nova Benefits is doing, and I am excited to see them execute.”

Speaking on receiving funds from SHL Capital, SaranshGarg, CEO & Co-founder of Nova Benefits said, “At Nova, our mission is to make happier and healthier workplaces. We want to focus on holistic wellbeing encompassing physical and mental health while making sure that employee insurance is disseminated seamlessly. We ensure we take care of people when they’re hospitalized but also prevent them from falling sick in the first place. ”

He further added, “We are excited to have Sahil as a mentor and advisor. It’s an exciting time to be in the employee wellness space. The definition of wellness now stands much beyond the terrains of insurance, and Nova Benefits is constantly exploring ways to make it about holistic well-being. We are stoked to have SahilLavingia aboard the rocket ship of Nova Benefits.”

Sharing his thoughts, Yash Gupta, CTO & Co-founder, of Nova Benefits said, “We are building a platform that will enable HRs to provide personalized benefits across physical health, mental health, and financial wellness to families of 10 million employees in the next 5 years. Sahil’s expertise in designing products that work at scale will be instrumental in shaping this platform. Nova’s unique position to be able to leverage the vested interest of companies in addition to the employees themselves wanting to be happier and healthier is a huge opportunity. We are just beginning to explore interesting ideas like social fitness and mental health programs that leverage network effects within the organization.”

Nova Benefits hiring highlights:

• Focus on eNPS (Employer Net Promoter Score) as a performance metric for the HR team internally. The candidate NPS for the month of March stands at 85.25%
• Tight recruiting process, offers are rolled out within 2 weeks, 3-day SLA between rounds
• Significant hiring for tech roles with an acceptance rate of over 85% in the current quarter.

Since its launch, Nova Benefits has on-boarded more than 300+ companies, and 100,000+ members on its platform. Some of the companies that have insured with Nova include DTDC, Taco Bell, MyGate, PharmEasy, CoinDCX, Chumbak, HomeLane, TeachMint, and Zenoti.