Paiso: How Sindhis Do Business by Maya Bathija

Author:Maya Bathija [Bathija, Maya]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9789386815927
Publisher: Penguin Random House India Private Limited
Published: 2017-10-27T04:00:00+00:00

Avendus Advisors

Gaurav Deepak came across as an unassuming man at the meeting I had with him. From his humble and down-to-earth demeanour, one cannot tell how well this man has engineered his future since he met Harish Fabiani.

In the summer of 1999, ICCI’s sister-unit, ISEC, which was a broking arm of ICCI, had taken on the work for the IPO of HCL Technologies. The main analyst on the project had excused himself to go on a holiday. Gaurav, who had never written a research report before, found himself not only writing it but also presenting it. The HCL head, Shiv Nadar, watched him present it and approved it.

Gaurav found himself meeting with Harish in Madrid. He was immediately awed by Harish’s style and his home. They hit it off well, and the respect and regard each felt for the other was mutual. Harish offered Gaurav a job which he refused, since he was happy where he was. That was when Harish offered to back Gaurav in any venture he might start.

Six months later, Gaurav called him up. He wanted funding for his own start-up. There were three founding partners, and Harish had been offered a 33 per cent stake in the start-up. Harish immediately obliged, and invested Rs 1 crore, transferring a small amount that Gaurav had asked for to start with. Harish was very confident about Gaurav and did not ask any questions at all.

Initially, Gaurav’s company, CoolStartups.com, helped Harish with some of his investments. After the dotcom bust, they changed their name to Avendus Advisors Pvt Ltd. Gaurav remembers Harish introducing them to his company in New York, Ecom Server. They did a phenomenal job with that mandate. But one of their biggest success stories was Indiabulls. Sameer Gehlaut was an IIT batchmate of Gaurav’s partner, Kaushal Agarwal. Gaurav believed Sameer had a distinctive personality even in college, and is that person even today.

Sameer expressed a need for $3 million for his new start-up, and Avendus agreed to help him. Gaurav, in the meantime, met Rishi Khosla, who was working with the Mittals through a mutual friend. It was a really interesting time, when many young IIT graduates had big dreams and were realizing them at an amazing speed. Gaurav eventually got Rishi to meet Sameer, and Sameer found himself in a meeting with Laxmi Mittal’s son, Aditya. Unfortunately, Aditya was interested in investing only $1 million, also only if the remaining $2 million was already available. Meanwhile, Gaurav also introduced Sameer to Harish Fabiani on the same trip. Harish led the investment with $2 million and cemented the deal by getting a 20 per cent stake in the company. All the other investors, including the Mittals, followed.

Avendus needed to first institutionalize the firm for longevity and needed to scale up. They did not want to end up running a boutique-type of business when they were in their forties. So in February 2016, Avendus made a deal with KKR (one of the largest private equity funds in the world) who gave them $100 million for a 51 per cent stake in the company.

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