In the 2022 symposium we covered trending topics in private equity and venture capital. The session discussions included the pros and cons of being listed on a stock exchange, investment strategies, latest impact investing and ESG research and findings, fundraising innovations in private markets, opening private markets to individual investors, the journey of a unicorn founder, VC investing and corporate VC.
Luisa Alemany, Associate Professor of Management Practice in Strategy and Entrepreneurship; Academic Director of the Institute of Entrepreneurship and Private Capital, London Business School
Florin Vasvari, Professor of Accounting; Academic Director of the Institute of Entrepreneurship and Private Capital, London Business School
Fireside chat
Jonathan Lavine, Co-Managing Partner, Bain Capital
Ilya A Strebulaev, The David S Lobel Professor of Private Equity and Finance; Founder and Director, Venture Capital Initiative, Graduate School of Business, Stanford University - See slides
Moderated by Gary Dushnitsky, Associate Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship
Session 2: Venture Capital Investing
Rob Moffat, Partner, Balderton Capital - See slides
Ramana Nanda, Professor of Entrepreneurial Finance, Imperial Business School
Eli Talmor, Professor of Accounting at London Business School
Fireside chat with the founder of a unicorn
Tushar Ahluwalia, Co-Founder and CEO, Razor Group
In conversation with Luisa Alemany
Fireside chat: Opening Private Markets to Individual Investors
Rashmi Madan, Senior Managing Director, Head of EMEA Private Wealth Solutions Group, Blackstone
Moderated by Siddarth Trivedi MBA2018, Principal at Blackstone
Born and raised in Germany with Indian roots, Tushar is a serial entrepreneur and has built market-leading consumer tech companies throughout the last decade. Tushar completed his Bachelor’s degree at the European Business School in Oestrich-Winkel in 2010 and graduated from London Business School in 2011 with a Masters in Management. After he graduated from LBS, Tushar was recruited by Rocket Internet to take over India country operations for Westwing, Europe’s leader in home and living e-commerce. Thereafter, Tushar founded StalkBuyLove, one of India’s largest fashion D2C businesses with a unique tech-enabled supply-chain advantage. In 2017, he was included in the Forbes 30 Under 30 ranking in pan-Asia including China for e-commerce and retail. After StalkBuyLove, Tushar founded Razor Group in August of 2020, a rapidly growing Berlin-based Amazon FBA aggregator. Razor Group is on a mission to build a new consumer goods conglomerate by partnering with e-commerce merchants to acquire and scale winning brands. Only 15 months after founding, Razor Group became a unicorn and has become home to over 150 brands and roughly 450 employees with offices in 5 countries, across 3 continents. Tushar loves the process of building a team, building a company, executing ideas and working with a group of people to create value together.
Mr. Banga joined CD&R's London office in 2010 after a 33-year career at Unilever, where he served as an executive board member and president of Global Foods, Home & Personal Care businesses. He was also responsible for Unilever's sustainability agenda. Previously, Mr. Banga served as president of Home & Personal Care Asia and as chairman and managing director of Unilever's operating company in India, Hindustan Unilever Ltd. Mr. Banga played the lead operating role in CD&R's investments in Diversey and Mauser Group and helped establish the Firm's joint venture in India. He serves as Chair of UK Government Investments, appointed by the Economic Secretary to the Treasury. He served on the Council of Trade & Industry of the Prime Minister of India from 2004 to 2014. Mr. Banga is the senior independent non-executive director on the board of GlaxoSmithKline plc and was previously the senior independent director on the board of Marks and Spencer plc. Mr. Banga was appointed chairman of Marie Curie in 2018, non-executive director of The Economist Group Board in 2020, and a director of the International Chamber of Commerce (UK chapter) in 2021. Mr. Banga has an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management and a B.Tech. in mechanical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology.
Suzi leads the research team at the BVCA, ensuring that the BVCA is at the forefront of crucial analysis of trends and issues surrounding venture capital and private equity and the impact of the industry on the economy.Suzi is a Chartered Financial Analyst who previously spent over 15 years at PwC working across valuations, pensions and consulting. She works closely with external researchers and builds relations with industry trade bodies, member research teams, think tanks and research consultancies to identify areas for partnership and enhance the BVCA’s research offering for their members.
Suzi and her team also delivers the BVCA’s two annual flagship research reports – the Report on Investment Activity and Performance Measurement Survey.
Nowi Kallen is a Managing Director at Salesforce Ventures, based in London, UK. He focuses on multi-stage companies addressing big pain points, particularly in dev ops, data, cybersecurity, and product-led growth companies in software and fintech. Investments he (co-)led include Aiven, Leapwork, Mews, Miro, and Wiz. He also works with Appsflyer, Contentful, Gong, Hopin, Monday.com (Nasdaq: MNDY), OpenClassrooms, Process Street, Qatalog, and Snyk.
Having lived on three different continents, Nowi is a strong believer that great companies can be built anywhere. He can often be found looking for investment opportunities in less charted territories or remote-first companies. He thinks we are still in the early innings of enterprise automation and is optimistic about how this will transform companies and improve people’s lives in the future.
Before joining Salesforce Ventures, Nowi was an investor at tech investing firm Vitruvian Partners where he focused on software and fintech. He started his career advising software companies on M&A and IPOs at Barclays in London and New York City. He holds Master’s and Bachelor’s degrees in Economics from Erasmus University Rotterdam, the Netherlands.
Jonathan Lavine is Co-Managing Partner of Bain Capital, a top global private investment firm headquartered in Boston, MA. Lavine is also Chief Investment Officer of Bain Capital Credit, which he co-founded in 1998. Lavine first joined the firm’s private equity business in 1993. Since its founding in 1984, Bain Capital has grown to hold approximately $160 billion in assets under management with over 1,400 employees across four continents. Bain Capital’s 11 business units allow the firm to leverage its global shared platform and strategic focus areas to provide value to businesses, employees and communities. Prior to Bain Capital, Lavine was a consultant for McKinsey & Company. Lavine received an MBA with Distinction from Harvard Business School and graduated from Columbia College, Phi Beta Kappa and magna cum laude.
Jonathan Lavine is dedicated to a wide variety of philanthropic causes and organizations. Together with his wife, Jeannie, he founded the Crimson Lion Foundation, through which the Lavines provide financial support to numerous nonprofits. The Lavines are dedicated supporters of medical research and patient care, with support for Cycle for Survival, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Brigham & Women’s Hospital. Lavine is also very involved with his alma maters, serving as Co-Chair of the Board of Trustees for Columbia University and funding key campaigns for Harvard Business School and Harvard School of Public Health. The Lavines are dedicated supporters of organizations like City Year, Combined Jewish Philanthropies and the Anti-Defamation League, which work to make the world a better place.
Senior Managing Director, Head of EMEA Private Wealth Solutions Group, Blackstone
Experience
Rashmi Madan is a Senior Managing Director and Head of EMEA in Blackstone’s Private Wealth Solutions Group. Private Wealth Solutions’ mission is to bring institutional quality products across a broad spectrum of alternative asset classes to individual investors and their advisors.
Ms. Madan joined Blackstone in 2011. Prior to her current role, she was Chief Operating Officer of Institutional Client Solutions (ICS) in Europe, as well as Head of ICS Europe for Blackstone Credit.
Before joining Blackstone, Ms. Madan worked for eight years in Credit Sales and Structured Credit at JPMorgan where she focused primarily on raising capital for CLO managers, hedge funds and private credit funds from European institutional investors. Prior to that, Ms. Madan spent five years at Morgan Stanley working in Leveraged Finance and Debt Capital Markets in London and New York, respectively.
Ms. Madan received a Bachelor of Science Degree from Cornell University where she majored in Industrial and Labor Relations.
Rob Moffat joined Balderton Capital in 2009 and was promoted to partner in 2015.
Companies he has worked with at Balderton include Carwow, Zego, Cleo, Wagestream, PlayPlay, Primer, Dream Games, Mojiworks and Wooga. Rob's focus sectors are fintech and insurtech. He also has experience in games, marketplaces and SaaS.
Prior to joining Balderton Rob worked for Google in London, as a Manager in the European Strategy and Operations team. He started his career with five years in strategy consulting at Bain, holds an MBA from INSEAD and a Masters in Statistics from Cambridge.
Ricardo Morales is Executive Chairman and Co-Founder of HMC Capital, a global alternative investment firm with $16.5 billion in assets under management and advisory from institutional and private investors. Mr. Morales has been involved in all phases of HMC’s development since its founding in 2009. The firm has invested across alternative assets classes, including Private Equity, Venture/Growth, Credit and Real Estate. Mr. Morales oversees the advisory business and third-party products of the firm.
Prior to HMC, Ricardo was Partner, Managing Director and Head of Latin America Institutional Sales at Larrain Vial, a Latam investment bank. During his tenure, this company enjoyed market leadership in offshore distribution from third parties within the Latin American Institutional Market. He was solely responsible for the internationalization of the company and opened offices in the whole region. He created the asset management division where he was Board Member and dedicated its efforts to placing the first regional Private Equity and Real Estate funds, opening doors for alternatives in the region. From that experience, he closed exclusive agreements with firms like Blackstone and Goldman Sachs to develop business in Latin America. He previously worked in CNA Insurance Company as a portfolio manager and initiated his career in 1997 as an equity research analyst.
Mr. Morales holds a Masters in Macroeconomics and Financial Economics from Pontificia Universidad Catolica, Chile. He has an Executive Private Equity Diploma from Harvard and London Business School.
Professor of Entrepreneurial Finance at Imperial Business School
Experience
Ramana Nanda is a Professor of Entrepreneurial Finance and Academic Lead at the Institute for Deep Tech Entrepreneurship at Imperial College London, a Research Fellow in the Financial Economics Programme of the CEPR and a Visiting Scholar at Harvard Business School. His research examines financing frictions facing new ventures, with an aim to help entrepreneurs with fundraising and to shed light on how financial intermediaries, corporate R&D and policy makers can improve the odds of selecting and commercializing the most promising ideas and technologies in the economy.
For the academic years 2007 through 2020, Ramana was on the full-time faculty of Harvard Business School, most recently as Sarofim-Rock Professor and co-director of the Private Capital Project. He received his Ph.D. from MIT's Sloan School of Management and has a BA and MA in Economics from Trinity College, Cambridge, U.K. He is a recipient of the 2020 ERC Consolidator Grant and 2015 Kauffman Prize Medal, which is awarded annually to one scholar under the age of 40 whose research has made a significant contribution to the literature in entrepreneurship.
Prior to starting his Ph.D., Ramana was based in the London and New York offices of Oliver, Wyman & Company, where he worked primarily with clients in global capital markets as well as in small-business banking. He continues to advise startup ventures on their financing strategies and also works with philanthropists and investors looking to back "deep tech" entrepreneurial solutions to global challenges.
Managing Director, Funds at Kroll Bond Rating Agency
Experience
Gopal Narsimhamurthy is a Managing Director within the Funds Rating Group at KBRA. Gopal has been with KBRA since 2014 and has worked across a number of analytical areas including structured finance, public finance, and project finance.
From September 2017 to August 2019, he relocated to Dublin, Ireland, to provide analytical coverage for European structured finance transactions and support KBRA’s growth initiatives across the region. Previously, he was an associate analyst at Moody’s Investors Service, where he specialized in higher education and health care credit analysis.
Gopal holds a Bachelor of Arts in Economics from Rutgers University and a Master of Public Administration with a concentration in finance from New York University.
Head of ESG and Sustainable Finance, EMEA, Jefferies Group LLC
Experience
Luke leads ESG Strategy for EMEA at Jefferies, an investment bank. Previously, Luke spent 4 years covering ESG at Kepler Cheuvreux, a mid-cap stockbroker. Prior to that, Luke was the second member of staff at the Carbon Tracker Initiative, which coined the term’ stranded assets’ in relation to the energy sector. Luke holds the IMC, an MSc from Imperial College London and a BSc from Nottingham University.
The David S Lobel Professor of Private Equity & Finance, Founder & Director, Venture Capital Initiative, Stanford University
Experience
Ilya Strebulaev is an international expert in venture capital, private equity, financing innovation, and strategic financial decisions. He is the David S. Lobel Professor of Private Equity and Professor of Finance at the Graduate School of Business (GSB), Stanford University, where he has been a faculty member since 2004. He is also a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. He is the founder and the faculty director of the Stanford GSB Venture Capital Initiative.
Ilya’s work has been widely published in leading academic journals. He has been awarded a number of prestigious academic awards, including the First Paper Prize of the Brattle Award (Journal of Finance) and the Fama-DFA Prize (Journal of Financial Economics). His research has also been featured in a variety of media, including the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.
Professor Strebulaev developed a Venture Capital class at Stanford that he has been teaching to hundreds of students for many years. He has taught classes to MBA, MSx, Ph.D., and executive education participants at Stanford GSB and has been awarded the Stanford MBA Distinguished Teaching Award, the Sloan Teaching Excellence Award, and the inaugural Masters in Management Best Teacher Award at the London Business School.
Professor Strebulaev has led many workshops and executive sessions on new innovation trends, venture capital, the ecosystem of Silicon Valley, corporate innovation, and strategic decision-making for senior business and government leaders around the world. He also has been consulting for companies and investors around the world on the valuation of VC-backed companies, corporate venture capital, corporate innovation, selection of VC investments and managers, and portfolio allocation. He is a non-executive director of Yandex. He also serves as an expert witness in litigation matters.
He graduated from the London Business School with a doctorate in Finance and also holds degrees from Lomonosov Moscow State University (BSc Economics) and the New Economic School, Moscow (MA Economics).
Professor Talmor is lead lecturer and a world expert in private equity and venture capital. He is Founder of Private Equity at LBS.
Recent Clients
Eli serves on the advisory boards of the African Venture Capital Association, and ETV (a leading European venture lender) and was also on the Board of Governors of London Business School.
Experience
Eli was formerly Professor of Finance at the University of California (UCLA and Irvine), and Wharton School (University of Pennsylvania). He is a serial business angel, and regularly delivers keynote speeches to business executives worldwide. He has advised the UK Prime Minister’s office on private equity matters and co-authored International Private Equity with fellow faculty member Florin Vasvari.
Professor of Accounting; Academic Director at the Institute of Entrepreneurship and Private Capital at London Business School
Experience
Professor Florin Vasvari is Chair of Accounting Faculty and Academic Director of the Institute of Entrepreneurship and Private Capital at London Business School. He also serves on the School’s management board and finance committee. Florin teaches two electives, Private Equity and Venture Capital as well as Distressed Investing, to MBAs, Executive MBAs and Senior Managers. He also teaches executive programs on Private Equity and Mergers and Acquisitions in London and Dubai to global senior executives.
Florin is actively pursuing research on private equity topics and credit markets and has published over twenty articles in top-tier business academic journals. He has been invited to present his research work at major business schools and serves as an Editor at the Accounting Review, having previously served as an editor at the European Accounting Review and on the boards of two other top journals. He co-authored a book entitled "International Private Equity" in 2011 and two volumes of a new textbook entitled “Private Capital (Vol1: Funds, Vol 2: Investments)” in 2019, which has been endorsed by key private equity industry figures (Helen Steers, Henry Kravis, David Rubinstein, Stephen Schwartzman and Jeremy Coller).
Florin holds a Ph.D. in Accounting and Finance from the University of Toronto, Rotman School of Management and a Masters in Economics from the University of Toronto, Department of Economics. Florin is a British, Canadian and Romanian national.
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