ChrysCapital founder to retire from PE

In a first of its kind, ace dealmaker and one of the original poster boys of private equity (PE) in India, Ashish Dhawan, has decided to hang up his boots and move on from the world of PE. Dhawan is the founder and senior managing director of ChrysCapital Investment Advisors.

Dhawan, however, will be heading the fund in his current capacity till July 2012. After that, his association will be part-time where he will continue to be involved in the investment committee of the fund and be responsible for monetising the past investments. Dhawan will not be involved in the sixth fund that is being raised by mid-2012, the size of which is expected to be between $450 million and $900 million.

 

Malaysian citizen Brahmal Vasudevan, another managing director of the fund, has also announced his decision to leave the organisation. Vasudevan will quit in August this year and move out of India to set up an Indonesia focused fund abroad.

The 18-month transition will ensure a smooth handing over of responsibility to the other remaining six managing directors of the fund.

ChrysCapital was founded in April 1999 as one of the earliest independent PE franchises, which today manages over $2 billion of investments across five funds. Its past investments include Mphasis, Spectramind, Suzlon, Axis Bank, Bazee, Centurion Bank, ING Vysya Bank and Shriram Group. Its current portfolio includes Mahindra Finance, Idea Cellular, Intas Pharma among others.

Dhawan said he intends to focus on non-profit ventures in the primary and secondary level education sector.

Dhawan, who according to PE grapevine, has always nurtured political ambitions, will set up a scholarship-driven liberal arts college in Noida.

Dhawan, who co-founded ChrysCapital, was formerly at GP Investments, a $1-billion private equity fund in Brazil.

Prior to that, he worked at McCown De Leeuw & Co., a $1.2-billion private equity firm focused on middle-market buyouts. He served in the Mergers Group at Wasserstein Perella. He had invested proprietary capital in the Risk Arbitrage Group at Goldman Sachs. Dhawan received an MBA from the Harvard Business School.

Dhawan’s move marks a significant development in the Indian PE landscape, given that he is a veteran — almost synonymous with the evolution of the industry in the country. The Harvard pass-out, who founded ChrysCapital with classmate Raj Kondur, is credited for raising the return expectations of institutional investors from an Indian private equity portfolio.

What has made Dhawan’s ChrysCapital hold such an enviable position in the industry is its boutique approach to PE investing and customised investment strategies over time for what is best to its institutional investors along the way. For one, he has kept the team very close-knit.

Apart from some initial members — Kondur, and other executives like Luis Miranda and Shujaat Khan who left the firm in the early days — the senior management has been relatively intact with Vasudevan, Gulpreet Kohli, Kunal Shroff, Ashley Menezes and Sanjiv Kaul having been with the team for more than eight years now.

As a fund, ChrysCapital has also looked beyond the usual calls to take its investment bets. From venture to growth, to now a public markets approach, a move that has raised many eyebrows, the fund has been quick to discern and be ahead of its peers in evaulating a sector like IT & ITeS and financials, adopting a strategy or even taking an unprecedented call on reducing the fund size by returning capital to its limited partners.