COVID-19 changing conduct as much as tech usage

Neeraj Bharadwaj, an India-based managing director for The Carlyle Group, told the Hong Kong Venture Capital & Private Equity Association’s (HKVCA) Asia Forum that the shift to video meetings has been a welcome change, especially in jurisdictions where infrastructure shortcomings make travel difficult even in normal circumstances. The experience helped prompt a global IT build-out.

“We have hired a chief digital officer, who is focused on digital initiatives within the portfolio as well as across the firm,” Bharadwaj said. “We have CIOs [chief information officers] in each of our major regions, focused internally but also focused on driving digital initiatives across the portfolio in terms of security, personalization, salesforce effectiveness. That’s become a much more focused initiative for us now. It started pre-COVID-19, but it definitely got accelerated post-COVID-19.”

This has coincided with a deeper and more detailed level of communication with LPs regarding scenario planning and portfolio risk assessments. While the format of the dialogue has become increasingly virtual, the more consequential change could be behavioral. “There is much more frequent interaction with the investors, and I think that’s something that will continue in some shape or form post-COVID-19, or when things settle down,” Bharadwaj added.

China-based GGV Capital worked fast to react to COVID-19, realizing an audit of some 200 portfolio companies within two weeks of the first outbreak and finding that more than 90% had at least 12 weeks runway. The tech-focused investor saw seven portfolio IPOs during 2020 and has added two more so far this year while continuing to build out its team with investment professionals vetted and interviewed on an entirely virtual basis.

Jenny Lee, a managing partner at GGV, which also operates across bases in the US and Singapore, noted that this success had as much to do with staff relations as tech. Team coordination across geographies allowed the firm to maximize its capacities when lockdowns inhibited operations more severely in any given place. Attention to working conditions has been highly granular, going as far as helping individual employees recreate their office cubicles at home.

“They are all allowed to bring back their desk and chairs and screens because it’s not just about working from home. It’s about making sure that you have the right environment. You can be on the Zoom with no screaming kids – maybe they are partitioned off. We want to make sure it’s not just the IT infrastructure, it’s the physical infrastructure,” Lee explained.

“We have care packages. We have food delivered to them if they’re having meetings at 5 pm or 6 pm for dinner. I think that’s one area which is to ensure that the communication stays very current and very frequent. The employee still feels that culture and hears from us about everything that’s happening.”

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• Topics
• GPs
• People
• Greater China
• South Asia
• Asia
• China
• India
• covid-19
• Investor relations
• The Carlyle Group
• GGV Capital
• HKVCA