Avnish Bajaj
Managing Director-Matrix Partners
Avnish Bajaj is the Managing Director of Matrix Partners. Matrix Partners India is an investment firm with Rs.3,000 crores under management. They invest in companies primarily targeting the Indian market and have a sector independent investment strategy focused on generating exceptional returns.
The firm invests up to $30 million in each new investment and aims to be a trusted, long-term partner in building market leading companies. Matrix Partners India in partnership with Matrix Partners, a 30 year-old investment firm with a consistent track record of delivering exceptional returns and partnering to build market leaders. Some of the portfolio companies they invested in are Apple Computer, FedEx, Sycamore Networks and Veritas.
Trends
There are two trends that separate early investment to early growth investment. One can observe that the data usage has finally taken off both on the Internet and mobile. There are significant convergence of mobile and PC internet around the tablet, and this would be the next big trend. 2012 is the third big year when the shipment of tablet is much higher than those of PC and in fact PC shipments are starting to decline year over year whereas tablet is exploding. In the next three to five years, there is going to be far more viable company creation and investment based on these trends which will help such businesses that earlier did not work in India to move forward.
We have a few in our portfolio like Ethiopia Mobile and Asklaila, all of these have relied on USSD protocol, which is SMS based protocol. Unlike the early days, Gaming and data based application are expected to take off.
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