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)
No comments:
Post a Comment