Thursday, July 27, 2017

STARTUP SPECIAL .....Midas Touch Award for Best Investor Adusumalli is Right on the Money

Midas Touch Award for Best Investor Adusumalli is Right on the Money


His success in navigating venture capital & private equity markets can be matched by very few

Midas Touch Award for Best Investor
Ravi Adusumalli
Managing Partner, SAIF Partners

Ravi Adusumalli is a rarity among private equity and VC investors having successfully racked up a string of multi-bagger exits for SAIF Partners, while several others have floundered in a geography not known to be kind to risk-capital. SAIF Partners, with Adusumalli at its helm, has emerged as one of the shrewdest outfits in the Indian startup ecosystem. An instance of a left-field bet that translated into outsized returns is SAIF's investment in MakeMyTrip. SAIF invested about $25 million in the Nasdaq-listed company between 2005 and 2008, owning about a 41% stake, when it made its public market debut in 2010.

However, from the time MakeMyTrip announced its merger with smaller rival Ibibo in October, a deal that saw its stock surge, SAIF Partners shed the balance of its stake over a period of five months, reaping about $400 million, translating to roughly 16 times returns on its initial investment. And then there's Paytm. SAIF's $70-million investment is now estimated to be worth about $1.5 billion. It also earned more than $300 million selling a part of its stake in Paytm to SoftBank, as part of an investment that currently values Paytm at $7 billion. Adusumalli's success in navigating both the public and private equity markets can be matched by very few investors in the country .

For the 40-something investor, who is notoriously media shy and has rarely given interviews, his secret sauce, if it can be described as such, is believed to be his fanatical attention to research and details, according to his peers. That's something that would have weighed on the jury . “We looked at how successful the investors were in terms of early investment and value-creation,“ said Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, the chairperson of Biocon who chaired the ET Startup Awards jury .While based in the United States, Adusumalli, however, doesn't fit into the mould of a typical venture investor. he is based in Salt Lake City in Utah, a far cry from the tech Mecca of Silicon Valley. But given his investment firm's performance over the past decade-and-a-half, the decision to stay away from the glare of San Francisco, Palo Alto and the like has only paid dividends.

``I have been fortunate to work with an incredible group of founders and an amazing team at SAIF ,“ said Adusumalli.

Adusumalli joined SAIF Partners in 2002, after stints at Mobius Venture Capital, Credit Suisse, and Wasatch Funds. The Cornell University graduate, who holds a degree in Economics and Government, makes several trips to India, shuttling between his base in Salt Lake City and Delhi and Bengaluru. As always, such visits are without any fanfare, and just the way , the man likes it.

Jul 24 2017 : The Economic Times (Mumbai)


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