At Brilliant Read Media, we always strive to bring meaningful and powerful stories from India and around the world to empower and motivate our growing community. This week we invited Manish Dsouza for an interview with us. Let’s read more about his incredible journey so far and his advice for our growing community!
Excerpts from our exclusive interview with Manish:
We are aware of your contributions to the ecosystem; talk us through your background and your journey, please;
I graduated as a Biomedical Engineer in 2004 and started my career. Coming from a small town and from a middle-class family, the biggest challenge I was facing during the start of my career was to understand what I was going to do with the money that I was earning.
As is the case with the education system, the students are being extensively prepared to be the best Engineer, Doctor, etc, and start their journey towards making money and building wealth but are never trained on how to manage the money. Hence, I decided to deep dive into the world of personal finance and financial planning.
What started just as a knowledge-gathering had soon become an obsession and I had subscribed to all the money magazines and business newspapers around at that point, I read books from all the great investors like Warren Buffet, Benjamin Graham, Peter Lynch, etc, and I started building models for saving money, protecting money and investing money while I started investing in Indian stock market myself.
Eventually, I was advising my friends and their acquaintances on the same. Fast forward 5 years of theoretical learning, practical implementation and guiding others in the space of investments and personal finance, I decided to change the course of my career and move into investment management and advisory. I got the required certifications and moved to Middle East where I continued my learning in managing Global Investments and started handling clients worldwide and managing their portfolios.
With the experience that I had so far in India and the Middle East, I was eager to start something of my own which would fill the gap that currently exists in the financial planning space. In this search, I came across Capital Quotient which had a similar thought process as me and had already working on developing what I had thought of.
After a few rounds of discussions with the founders, I decided to move back to India and join the team at Capital Quotient to develop the platform which democratizes early-stage startup investing and makes investing in startups accessible to salaried professionals.
We at Capital Quotient, which is predominantly a Registered Investment Advisory firm have launched Qi Ventures this year to take up the role of advising early-stage investments to our advisory clients.
The norm was and still is that the investing in startups was only for High Networth and Ultra High Networth individuals with deep pockets. The mission of Qi Ventures is to disrupt this notion and make small-ticket startup investing accessible to the common man.
Why should one look at investing in Startups?
While building a portfolio, every component or asset class in the portfolio adds a certain element of risk and for which the reward is the returns. In a similar way, investing in Startups will add a kicker to the portfolio and give multifold returns.
Other than the returns, many use investing in Startups as a platform to mentor a group of passionate founders. Also, I’m seeing a lot of clients invest in 4 to 5 different startups to observe and understand the ecosystem before starting off with their big idea.
Startup investing is considered very risky, right?
Startup investing or angel investing is perceived to be risky and I must say it is true but there are ways to mitigate those risks. Also, the perception comes from the fact that a decade ago India had not seen many startups doing phenomenally well and the information about these was not publicly available.
However, this past decade, India has seen the rise of many Unicorns and the ones which still not Unicorns, are highly profitable.
When you say the risks can be mitigated, how exactly do you do that?
We at Qi Ventures have a 3 Step due diligence process wherein we analyze the company by having multiple rounds of discussions with the founders and looking through the financials before showcasing it to the investors.
Also, with the advent of angel networks and syndicates, the information can be cross-referenced and the due diligence can be much more efficient.
We also follow the age-old investment principle of not putting all your eggs in one basket. Small investments are spread across 4 to 5 startups over a period of time and observed and then the allocations in the winners are doubled or tripled over time. This increases the portfolio efficiency and reduces the risk.
In your opinion what are the keys to success?
a) What you think, you create.
b) What you feel, you attract.
c) What you imagine, you become
I feel being successful takes a lot of self-discipline, self-awareness, perseverance, and integrity. If you see all these qualities are in your control.
There will be many things that you will not have control over, but I feel if one is in constant pursuit of his vision and finds the right people to team up with, the success is guaranteed.
What advice would you give students and young professionals who want to have a successful career?
Building a career in investment management takes a lot of time to build yourself as an expert and requires continuous learning and adding skills. Constant learning is a must and there’s enough literature available for one to keep adding on to the knowledge base. Integrity is one of the most important skills in the industry that has huge rewards in the long term.
There is so much to be shared, but this conversation limits how much I can communicate on this platform. Students and young professionals regularly reach out to me on LinkedIn with their specific queries.
BrilliantRead is committed to bringing stories from the startup ecosystem, stories that reshape our perspective, add value to our community and be a constant source of motivation not just for our community but also for the whole ecosystem of entrepreneurs and aspiring individuals.
Note: If you have a similar story to share with our audience and would like to be featured on our online magazine, then please write to us at [email protected], we will review your story and extend an invitation to feature if it is worth publishing.
