Most investment money in South Asia comes with a timetable. A fund raises capital, deploys it over three or four years and must return it within ten. That structure has produced remarkable companies, and it also forces exits that are not always in the best interest of the business.
We invest our own capital. There are no limited partners waiting for distributions and no fund life to manage. That changes the questions we ask.
Different questions
Instead of asking what a business might be worth in five years, we ask whether we would be proud to own it in twenty. Instead of optimising for the next round, we optimise for the next generation of customers.
“Patience is not the absence of ambition. It is ambition with a longer horizon.”
In practice, that means accepting slower growth when faster growth would compromise quality. It means investing in compliance and governance before they are required. It means keeping good people through difficult years.
The obligations of patience
Patient capital can become an excuse for complacency. We guard against that with clear reporting, an investment committee that reviews every commitment, and an honest annual review of every holding: should we still own this, and are we still the right owner?
Frontier markets reward those who stay. Infrastructure improves, regulation matures and talent returns home. We intend to be here for all of it.
Ganesh Sharma
Sharma Ganesh Holdings
