Companies may look alike, but people, culture, systemic knowledge and processes – softer factors that may get dismissed by financial analysts – all make a big difference.
There’s great intellectual satisfaction in my role
I was always intrigued by the sciences. My academic background is in engineering, but I was lucky enough to have a brother in private equity. Thanks to his mentorship, I realized very early on that investing would give me the space to be both analytical and intellectually curious. My stint in management consulting allowed me to work directly with a wide variety of businesses, and showed me that my strength lay in defining strategy. I like getting into abstractions and thinking about the strategic framework of how sectors and businesses evolve. All that comes together in my investing role.
Public investing teaches you to go beyond the figures
In private equity, you get a lot of bespoke, internal data as part of a due diligence process. I think public investing is a lot more about abstracting yourself to figure out what matters and trying to piece together the limited clues from the outside in. My consulting experience and my MBA helped me develop an appreciation that businesses are not just numbers. Companies may look alike, but people, culture, systemic knowledge and processes – softer factors that may get dismissed by financial analysts – all make a big difference.
My three years in Advent’s India office were pivotal
It was my first contact with the Advent culture, and how international our perspective is. Sitting in Mumbai, I was collaborating with people from Boston, London and Latin America. And it was the perfect place to learn about growth investing, because in India, almost all sectors offer secular growth. It certainly teaches you that there are negatives as well as positives to growth, such as increased competition, and that this has to be managed. My time in India stood me well for the responsibilities I have now, and I still work closely with the team there.
Even when relaxing, I like to keep my mind engaged
In my free time, I enjoy following and playing sports – especially tennis – as well as reading fiction and going to the theatre and the cinema. It allows me to disengage from the analytical side of the public markets but also feed my intellectual curiosity. Investing requires constant learning, and it can come from any source!