E5: Anirudh Damani (Managing Partner, Artha Venture Fund)

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Anirudh Damani is the Managing Partner at Artha Venture Fund, an early-stage sector agnostic fund that has been investing in start-ups since early 2012. The fund is co-sponsored by Artha Group of Companies (the family office of Mr. Ashok Kumar Damani and Mr. Ramesh M Damani, both ex-Directors of the Bombay Stock Exchange) and Singularity Holdings.

Anirudh also runs a consultancy firm to facilitate investments into power projects across geographies and asset classes like wind, solar, hydro and bio-power. Prior to launching the fund, Anirudh was an active angel investor at 25 startups. He serves as a member of Advisory Board at Venture Catalysts. He has over 18 years of experience in the energy sector and in procuring energy customers. Anirudh Damani also holds a double major in economics and business administration from Austin College.

You can follow Anirudh (@showmedamani) and Artha Venture Fund (@artha_vc) on Twitter. While you’re at it you may also follow our host, Akash Bhat - @bhatvakash and visit us at thedesivc.com to know us better.

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Glossary of terms you will encounter in this episode:

1. NBFC – Non-Banking Financial Companies.

2. IRR – Internal rate of return (IRR) for an investment is the percentage rate earned on each dollar invested for each period it is invested

3. Impact Investing: Impact impacting refers to to investments made into companies, organizations, and funds with the intention to generate a measurable, beneficial social or environmental impact alongside a financial return.

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In this episode, we cover:

1. How family offices are structured

2. Why family offices have begun investing in startups

3. The value proposition of a family office

4. The investment thesis and philosophy at Artha India Ventures

5. How family office come across ‘great deals’ compared to traditional VC firms

6. Anirudh’s investment in OYO and how that materialized

7. Why micro VC firms are able to rotate their capital quicker than traditional funds

8. Impacting investing and how family offices look at it

9. Sectors Anirudh is incredibly bullish about

10. Impact of unforeseen market forces such as Coronavirus