Businessworld had an interview with Charles R. Kaye, co-president of Warburg Pincus, who is credited with hiring the highly successful India team.
Arun Natarajan is the Founder of Venture Intelligence, the leading provider of information and networking services to the private equity and venture capital ecosystem in India. View free samples of Venture Intelligence newsletters and reports.
We have got 15 people on the ground here and a portfolio well in excess of $1 billion. India represents the largest single exposure we have outside the US. It is probably 10 per cent of the firm’s investments. However, despite some success today, it is still pretty early. The money required to build the infrastructure — residential and commercial — is huge and the number of manufacturing industries that are going to migrate here, especially those with engineering intensity, is also significant. Broadly, the opportunities for investment are huge. It dwarfs anything the private equity industry could ever think about.
...The opportunity in real estate was greater than what we could cover within the scope of our existing private equity fund, especially in the Asian region. So, we have created a separate real estate entity. It will house all our real estate activities in the US, Europe and Asia. We expect it to have an Asian bias, since roughly half of it will be in Asia. Particularly in India and China, real estate is still in its infancy. Take tourist infrastructure, for instance. There are fewer hotel rooms in India than there are in Orlando or Las Vegas or New York. It is still very early in the game.
Arun Natarajan is the Founder of Venture Intelligence, the leading provider of information and networking services to the private equity and venture capital ecosystem in India. View free samples of Venture Intelligence newsletters and reports.