Homegrown private equity firm True North has appointed former Infosys veteran Prasad Thrikutam as an operating partner to help it foray into technology investments, a space it has stayed away from so far.
Thrikutam, with more than 25 years of experience in the IT industry, worked with India’s IT sector bellwether Infosys between 1995 and 2014, holding many senior positions, including head of Americas and global head of strategic sales. He was the president and global head, applications and digital business, at Dell Services from 2014 to 2017.
So far, True North has largely focused its investments on sectors, such as financial services, consumer and healthcare, over its two decades of existence.
“In the long run, over a 3-5-year period, we want to balance our portfolio. We want technology to be a key sector for True North. Technology is going to drive major transformation in every industry vertical. Software is the business. Whether it’s healthcare, consumer-packaged goods or manufacturing, technology will decide how successful companies are,” Thrikutam said in an interaction with Mint.
“The more we know about how technology is shaping and disrupting various industries, the better our decisions will be for investing in them. It is a two-way street. We want to build tech industry capabilities to influence our investments in other sectors and vice-versa.”
To invest in the technology sector, True North will look at various businesses ranging from tier 2 and 3 IT services companies with significant digital revenue, B2B software as a services (SaaS) companies, as well as engineering research and development companies.
“Fundamentally, we looked at companies that have a differentiated story and have a focused approach to the market based on a specific service or vertical specialization, say, in healthcare, banking, financial services and insurance, hitech, and manufacturing…the industries that are in the throes of major disruptions led by advances in areas such as cloud computing, wearables, 5G, electric vehicles, and artificial intelligence, mostly tier 2-3 companies with at least 30% real digital revenue,” Thrikutam said.
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