True North plays to its strengths, to stay away from infra and realty

True North specialises in consumer, financial, health care, and now technology sectors, and is a few months away from closing a $1.4-billion round for Fund VI

The buzz has been that Vishal Nevatia, managing partner of True North, offered to relinquish his carry when a particular fund didn’t perform. But ask him about it and the former accountant with US-based accounting firm Arthur Andersen will say it happened a little differently. Carry, or carried interest, is a share of profit that the general partners (GPs) of private equity (PE) firms receive as compensation.

“During Fund IV, for which we raised $700 million in 2010, we didn’t anticipate the economic slowdown that followed,” he says. “We waited a couple of years because interest rates were high and opportunities