So excited to announce the launch of Penumbra Fund LP — a long-only global public equities program designed for long-term investors seeking to own high-quality businesses to build long term wealth.
We’re building Penumbra Fund with discipline, humility, and a long-term bias. A special thanks to our early investors and well-wishers – we are delighted to partner with you on this journey of discovery and wealth creation!
This investment vehicle is the outcome of my three decades' experience and joining the dots as a marketer, strategy consultant, CEO, and private equity investor—now applied with discipline in the public markets. I spent the last six years testing the thesis with my own capital - and will continue to have substantial personal commitment to the program!
What has shaped my investing lens? As some of my colleagues always joke, I always divide it in three buckets ....
1. Businesses are messy—look for inherent resilience.
Every business I led or was involved with in the last 30+ years faced at least one minor crisis every year, and at least one major one every three years or so – almost without exception. Despite the best leadership, the actual nature of the crisis could never have been predicted. Therefore, I always lean towards investing in companies that have a simple, capital efficient business, entrenched dominance, ideally in a boring but growth industry – these are the ones that thrive despite the inevitable chaos in markets and the economy.
2. Leadership is everything – look for the doers, avoid the talkers.
Having hired and worked with hundreds of executives across the world, you tend to develop your own proprietary pattern recognition to spot truly great leadership and teams—even from a distance. Exceptional leadership shows up in consistency and outcomes, not in polished investor decks, rosy future forecasts or impressive talk. In fact in my experience, it is quite the opposite.
3. Reducing risk ensures alpha versus the market! Textbook finance says you need to take higher risk to increase returns. Counterintuitive, but I always found the opposite worked for me while as a CEO, and in private and public investing. And there was always a lesson learnt whenever we departed from this rule!
Whether in private equity or public markets, the mantra is simple: Don’t lose money. Look only for resilient businesses run by honest and capable teams, and invest only when they’re mis-priced (just have the courage to say 'no' to everything else)—and then have the patience to play the long game to never sell unless business or industry fundamentals change against you.
The global equity universe today offers a broad canvas and multiple pockets of opportunity – especially in the era of ‘de-globalisation’. For Indian investors especially, it provides a smart way to diversify wealth in dollars across countries, cycles, and sectors.
PenumbraFund GlobalInvesting PublicMarkets LongTermCapital RiskManagement LeadershipMatters
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