As private equity (PE) investments, followed by venture capital (VC), grow in India, the men and women who manage these pools of capital are getting younger.
A random survey by Mint indicates that the average age of fund management teams at PE and VC firms in the country today is below 40 years.
This is true across mega leveraged buyout shops and mid- to small-sized outfits. Many of these teams are, in turn, led by equally young individuals—faces that emerged barely two years ago and, in some cases, maybe less.
Some have moved back home from overseas jobs in consulting or investment banking. Others have changed lanes, moving out of domestic sectors such as information technology, manufacturing and financial services.
Compared with PE, the VC space, which is PE’s early-stage variant, perhaps has more new and young faces—the segment started coming into its own in India only last year.
In the absence of a local base of professionals, most of the people in this space hail from Silicon Valley in the US—Americans of Indian origin who have moved base to India to earn their wings in what is now widely seen as one of the world’s most promising and yet under-exploited venture markets.
We picked six young protagonists, three each from VC and PE, who represent the new face of the business today. Each, in his or her own way, represents how the business has changed in the country.
Suvir Sujan from Nexus India Capital and Manik Arora from IDG Ventures India are part of a growing breed of successful, home-grown entrepreneurs who are taking to venture capital to mentor new entrepreneurs.
Vish Narain at TPG Growth and Rahul Khanna at Clear-stone Venture Partners moved back home from the US to lead the India operations of their respective firms.
Dimple Sanghi at Indivision Investment Advisors, born and bred in the country’s financial capital, changed lanes from conventional investment ban-king to play a decisive role in a still emerging asset class.
Harshawardhan Sabale’s Lauris Capital Partners was born of a decision to continue concentrating on small- and medium-sized enterprises in India, which caught his attention when he was the director at a Malaysian PE firm.
All six investors co-founded or helped set up India operations of their respective funds. Nexus and Indivision were home-grown.
IDG, TPG and Clearstone are among the many firms that have arrived from the US. And Lauris is an India-focused start-up fund that was conceived in Hong Kong, with French backing. So, these six investors are also co-creators of India’s increasingly diverse PE and VC industry.
The hands-on entrepreneur
RAHUL KHANNA, 36
Clearstone Venture Partners
He is known for his unconventional approach, but he has been cautious in a market overflowing with capital