India Needs Good Fund Managers To Unlock Domestic Capital: Waterfield Advisors’ Soumya Rajan

When it comes to investing in startups, family offices have their share of challenges. According to Soumya Rajan, the founder & CEO of Waterfield Advisors, one of the key things that family offices need is a good fund manager who can access and raise domestic capital.

“At Waterfield, we are able to track 90+ PE/VC funds but we find that not many best fund managers are accessing the domestic capital,” she added.

Rajan was speaking on “Family Offices Going Startup-First: The Shift Towards Private Investments” at the first edition of Inc42’s MoneyX conference in a fireside chat hosted by Ankur Pahwa, managing partner, PeerCapital.

Waterfield Advisors is India’s leading independent Multi-Family Office and Wealth Advisory Firm. Established in 2011, it advises more than 100 business families.

Rajan has worked for almost two decades with Standard Chartered Bank. She recognised the need to deliver holistic services to the ultra-high-networth individual (UHNI) community, without any conflict of interest. Thus, Waterfield Advisors was set up as India’s first pure play financial advisory company.

During her session, she highlighted that private market investments by family offices have grown from almost 1% to 12% in the past few years. She also highlighted that there has been a major change in the way family offices invest these days.

“Where, earlier, the idea was to invest the capital back into the businesses, the new generation is now looking at giving back to the ecosystem. Also, newer investment trends are sitting in the private market rather than the public market,” she added.

Further, she underlined the fact that, in the current scenario, investor education is most crucial for the family offices as startups are an illiquid and risky asset class. However, she also believes that structural changes are happening in the ecosystem, which are offering good exit opportunities to the investors.

In an earlier interaction with Inc42, Waterfield Advisory’s managing partner Rohan Paranjpey emphasised the fact that a multi-office is able to speak on behalf of more investors as they are able to work more in a sector agnostic manner with a deep insight into each sector.

Presented in partnership with Peak XV Partners, supported by Venture Catalysts, JSA, Samsung, IVCA Associates, Indian Angel Network, JIIF and Marwari Catalysts, MoneyX is aimed at bringing the driving forces of the Indian startup ecosystem under a single roof. 

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