Profile: Squadron Capital's Anand Prasanna

Anand Prasanna got his first taste for business selling lemons and vegetables in his school playground. Around 17 years later, Prasanna - or Anand RP as he's known in the industry - helps manage approximately $2 billion of private equity assets for fund-of-funds Squadron Capital.

A lesser known fact is that he is also a keen angel investor, and maintains close contact with a number of the business angels he used to source deals from at his previous place of work, Sequoia Capital. In May, for example, he injected INR2.5 million ($45,000) in Indian car rental booking portal Taxiguide.in.

"Since Sequoia times and even before, I used to like supporting people who are starting an enterprise," says Prassana. "Mostly I've supported them by giving them free advice or putting them in touch with investors but sometimes people I know very well have wanted capital, so I've participated in friends-and-family rounds."

He typically mitigates the risk by co-investing alongside experts in particular sectors - and by knowing when to say ‘no.' "Whenever it comes to investments, I just put a work hat on," he explains.

"In my job, we say no much more than yes, so you know how to say that. It's really tough to do that with friends, but when I see a flaw, either I explain it to the person so they understand, or I put them in touch with someone who knows the space well so that they can tell them what the issues are."

Small beginnings

Prasanna grew up in the sleepy coastal town of Trivandrum, the capital city of Kerala, which is located around 90 kilometers from the southern tip of India. Born into a typical middle-class family (music teacher mother, government health worker father), he resisted his parents' pleas to go into medicine or engineering and applied to study business administration at his state university.

When he graduated in 2000, Prasanna found himself in one of the toughest job-hunting environments India had known, following the onslaught on the Asian financial crisis in 1997. As a result, his only option was to start his own business.

Teaming up with a friend he describes as a "techie," Prasanna spent a year buying computer hardware components and selling them to businesses. After the year was up, the enterprise was dissolved - but not before they had raised enough money to fund a third of the cost of their desired postgraduate degrees.

In 2001, Prasanna embarked upon a two-year MBA in marketing at the Fore School of Management, which required him to relocate to Delhi. "Delhi was like a different country for someone who comes from the Deep South," he recalls. "You don't speak the language [Hindi as opposed to Malayalam in Trivandrum] and culturally it's so different. You have to spend some time integrating to the local challenges, such as the road rage."

Prassana completed his MBA and, after a short stint as a marketing consultant at Vertebrand Management Consulting, the opportunity presented itself to work as an energy consultant for McKinsey & Company. He was handed assignments across the whole of Asia Pacific, including Australia, China, Malaysia and the Middle East. Tasks ranged from the mundane - dealing with companies' balance sheet or P&L problems - to the exhilarating, such as national security issues.

"One thing I took away from it is that business is not just about thenumbers," says Prasanna."It's about how to get comfort from people... and involves a lot of softer aspects than harder aspects. If you are in Asia, the ability to work with people in a multicultural sense is so important."

Three years after he joined McKinsey, Sequoia Capital arrived in India and decided that the global consulting firm was an ideal hunting ground for new in-country staff. Prasanna was one of five executives who left McKinsey in favor of a role at Sequoia focused on the sourcing and due diligence of transactions. Back then, business plan-clutching entrepreneurs would walk in to the investment firm's offices in their droves, but few made the cut.

In the short time since Prasanna worked there - four years - this dynamic appears to be changing, however. "No-one who was any good to back walked in without an appointment at that point because the best youngsters did not want to beentrepreneurs. Now, a lot of bright minds out of the country's best business schools are starting their own businesses... so we've seen a significant change in people's mindsets."

Into asset management

Prasanna, meanwhile, made a significant change of his own in 2008, when he realized he could count on both hands the number of LPs that were focusing on India, Southeast Asia and Australia - the three markets in which he had the most experience. Determined to carve out a niche in these regions, Prasanna decided to move into asset management and joined Squadron Capital in Hong Kong.

There he feels he's found an area in which he's one of 10 specialists, rather than being one of 2,000 GPs injecting capital into India. He's also satisfying his interest in angel investing, as Squadron recently became an LP in an angel network and is monitoring venture capital funds run by angels across India.

Fund-level investing will remain the day job, though. "I intend to be a person that continues to manage money for large institutional investors who need an experienced team in Asia," he stresses. "I'm excited to be doing fund investments because it's a people business. The more you know people closely, the easier it is to make the right decisions."

• Tweet  
• Facebook  
• LinkedIn  
• Google plus  
• Save this article  
• Send to  

• Topics
• South Asia
• People
• Greater China
• China
• India
• Sequoia Capital
• Squadron Capital Advisors
• Southeast Asia