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Industry BITES
 
“Industry Bites”, brings to the ISB community, the wisdom and perspectives of business leaders and industry experts from across the globe by means of a short interview. The central idea is to help students gain from the insights senior leaders across a range of industries bring, while transcending all geographical barriers, time and space!

Knowledge is hence, only a click away! So, here grab your bite- any time of the day, whenever you need that quick ‘prep-up’ and food for thought!

An initiative of the General Management Club, Class of 2010, ISB

Industry Expert in Focus

Radhakrishnan Visweswar

Managing Director of Jambhala Capital Private Limited

Radhakrishnan Visweswar, CFA, is currently the Managing Director of Jambhala Capital Private Limited, a private-equity firm that provides mezzanine funding for projects in the Indian real estate and infrastructure development sector and provides expansion capital for projects in the real estate and infrastructure development sector including investments- bridge financing, bullet loans and short to intermediate term collateralised debt-equity hybrid instruments. At Jambhala, Visweswar is involved with leading a host of activities.

Visweswar holds an MBA from the Wharton School of Business, the University of Pennsylvania, USA.

Quick points about the interview:

The set of questions below have been designed keeping in mind the interests of as diverse a student pool as possible, given that we at the General Management Club belong ‘everywhere’. So there are pointers drawing from Visweswar’s expertise in the Real Estate and IT sectors –for those of you who would like a bird’s eye view into these arenas, while there is a significant amount of food for thought for the PE/ VCs in us! Finally, the bulk of the interview is around his view of an ‘ideal’ general manager, what it takes to transition from a GM role into a VC role et al, based on his industry experience and based on his interactions with his stellar alumni network at Wharton.


Down to Business now… Grab Your Bite!

1. Based on your experience with investing in the real estate space, what are the key challenges associated with private investments in this sector?
   
   The most critical aspect of financial investments in general is to evaluate the intrinsic value of the project and the value of the project as it progresses through its lifespan. An important dimension, particularly relevant to this sector, is the legal and regulatory framework within which projects and investment decisions are to be structured. Hence once the project is identified to be investible, a keen legal review has to be one. Investing in the real estate space hence requires thorough financial and legal sense to evaluate the feasibility and returns on the project.
   
    
2. You have been involved in both the IT and the Real Estate Sectors. For someone who is relatively new to both sectors, what in your opinion are the key differentiating shades of these domains?
   
   The IT sector is strongly focussed on human capital, given that it is primarily a services-based domain. The success of an IT enterprise depends on the people that are hired, how well they execute projects and tasks towards the goals of the organisation. It hence necessitates good technical as well as people skills.
   
   The real estate industry requires a lot of financial capital and is relatively less dependent on human capital. Key activities will be negotiating integrative deals with developers, ensuring that projects clear on timelines and to ensure repayment of dues and loans that are relevant. It is hence important to develop skill-sets that will enable successfully managing and leading these activities.
   
   The similarities between the IT and the Real Estate domains though would be the contract-based nature of the industries, the pertinence of legal review and a focus on drafting good agreements and deals, from an investor’s standpoint.
   
    
3. In the throes of the current downturn (hopefully picking up again!), how do the investment opportunities in the real estate sector look?
   
   Believe it or not, I would say that the investment opportunities are pretty good in this sector. In fact, there is more business than we can handle!
   That said, there is a lot of development and several projects going on, though some of them, midway, are in a dire need for further investments to reach completion.
   
    
4. What, according to you, is a good career path towards a career in Private Equity/ Venture Capital?
   
   The typical moves into the PE/ VC space happen when people work some place, rose through the ranks and in the process, learn and qualify themselves well enough to be able to judge projects in the industry and thus make wise investments. Several management consulting professionals move into the arena because of the breadth of industries they are exposed to. General management professionals get themselves deeply involved in certain industries and thus get a thorough understanding of an industry, which they could potentially look at for investments going forward.
   
    
5. Is it possible to transition from a General Management role into a role in Private Equity/ Venture Capital?
   
   In general management, people who have been at the top management level are already involved in several investment decisions day in and day out- whether to invest in a new product or service, whether to take up a new acquisition and so on. Hence general management skills related to top-level managers are particularly useful and quickly transferrable to a role in PE/ VC.
   
   While individual roles in operations may provide a good deal of experience, it usually helps to have a holistic picture of an organisation vs. a piecemeal view –where the investment decision is made with a view of the company as the sum total of all of its operations.
   
    
6. Based on your experience across industries and further to your interactions with top-notch managers during your career in the corporate world and at Wharton, what would you describe as the characteristics of a good General Manager?
   
   I would break down the task of a General Manager into three salient steps:
   First, a general manager working towards a certain goal/ set of goals for an organisation would make for himself and the organisation a Statement of Objectives identifying the targets, order them by priority, keeping in mind the assumptions and critical elements of the project.
   
   Second, he/ she would need to make a decision about delegation vs. execution of the task at hand himself with the sole objective being to ensure that it gets done with as much value-added inputs at each stage and that it moves as fast as possible through the process.
   
   Finally, every general manager should be adept at working with teams. Understand what people are made up of, where they come from, managing expectations and tying up the team into a homogeneous unit that collaboratively achieves the highest value for the organisation in the most optimal timeframe possible.