Renuka Ramnath, a name synonymous with private equity also known as the Mother of Indian private Equity. She currently heads Multiples Alternate Asset Management and has also held some notable positions at ICICI group. She has three decades worth of experience in banking, eCommerce, and private equity ventures.
Renuka was MD & CEO of ICICI Venture for close to a decade. Under her management, ICICI ventures emerged as the largest private equity fund in India and had an asset under management (AUM) of $2.5 billion back in 2009. She led ICICI to identify the best and the brightest companies such as Infoedge, Pantaloon, Biocon. Later, after leaving ICICI in 2009, she started Multiples. She has achieved tremendous success in her field. Currently, Multiples has $1.5 billion AUM, across 21 companies and two funds. With investment in notable names such as PVR, Delhivery, human resource technology startup PeopleStrong. Multiple’s recent deals include the sale of a stake in Dream 11 for a healthy profit and investment of $20 million in the US and India based AI startup called Quantiphi.
She holds a graduate degree in textile engineering from V.J. Technological Institute (VJTI), University of Mumbai. And an MBA from the University of Mumbai. She has also completed an Advance Management Program from Harvard University. Recently, Renuka was also appointed as the Chairperson of Indian Private Equity & Venture Capital Association (IVCA) and she’s also on the board member of Emerging Markets Private Equity Association (EMPEA).
Renuka’s Investment Philosophy:
Renuka Ramnath and her team at Multiples, are activist investors. Her investment strategy is not just investing in good business but also make those good businesses better, by actively helping businesses through a partnership between entrepreneurs and investors. This gives business better possibilities and stronger trajectories and investors are benefited by wealth creation. She doesn’t believe in quick wins but long-term prospects of the venture. She believes that for an investment to work out, there should be 2 proxies i.e. the Marcos of the industry and the Team building the business. In her mind, there is no substitute for a great team. She can live with broken Marco proxies if the team building the venture is great.
She’s wary of entrepreneurs who are charismatic and as they can articulate their story very comfortably. Most investors get carried away by the storytelling tactfulness of the entrepreneur and don’t look at the holistic viewpoint of the deal. She also believes that the investor and the entrepreneur both are the partners in a deal. She values past of every entrepreneur she works with. She contemplates that past tells a story of how the entrepreneur-investor partnership will pan out.
Post Pandemic view about the PE and VC world:
Renuka Ramnath and her team at Multiples aim to identify value companies. As value creation also can help fix errors such as wrong entry strategy, market corrections and other uncertain endeavors. She believes that it’s a tough time, as investors invest with a vision of prosperous future in mind and it’s very difficult to imagine the future in a pandemic which might or might not change social behaviours. Investors also have to assess the damage done in the current portfolio.
She says that the role of relationships highlighted in troubled times like these. And she and her team are helping companies to raise debt as well as more equity and she is also giving a financial backing of the troubled companies in her portfolio. She also believes that there will be more entrepreneurs in the market looking for funding due to business erosion and obvious capital demands. And investors will most likely avoid building a business on a debt and they will be risk-averse. Her projection is that road to recovery will be long as investors will have muted expectations moving forward. And we’ll witness muted growth rates for industries. Even though equity demand–dynamics have changed along with the correction in valuations contributing to an increase in the demand for equity. She doesn’t expect any major deals to go through in young companies even when the liquidity of the market is high. She expects the VCs to check the revival scenario, balance sheet and vision to invest. The important aspect is the recovery scenario which is highly dependent on the industry.
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