Gaurav Bansal

Holt is a global VC Fund and a growth accelerator. Over 3 years, we have invested in 27 companies across 10 countries. I lead the investment and portfolio management activities at Holt and also manage the global portfolio growth program.

• 2nd full-time employee at Holt, wearing multiple hats: business operations, strategy, tech & business product roadmaps, AI-use-cases, investment & portfolio management, accelerator program management, fund-raising, etc.
• Successfully executed 9 tech investment deals in 7 countries (after reviewing 720+ start-ups across 87 countries)
• Positioned our firm’s value with 400+ outbound scouting calls and investment interviews across the globe
• Successfully assisted a portfolio company on the fund-raise from a well-known global investor w.r.t investment presentation, investment terms negotiation, cap table management and coordination with other investors
• Set up the firm’s investment evaluation & due diligence process: qualitative and quantitative grading matrix, feedback process from the global advisory network, a dashboard for consolidated preview across parameters, etc.
• Led the end-to-end digital investments: global scouting, screening, evaluation process, due diligence, contract negotiation, legal term-sheets, cap table management, and deal closure including follow-on investments
• Efficiently managed the business operations for the global growth accelerator program (100% digital)
• Managed existing relationships and expanded the network of partners including deal flow sources, global advisory network, and service providers

Pentathlon Ventures is a B2B SaaS focused VC Fund (formerly Alacrity India Fund - Wesley Clover, Canada)

• Built a framework to rationally evaluate AI/ML startups, evaluated 700+ tech startups, presented investment recommendations to the investment committee, and secured 5 investment approvals
• Built an automated sourcing and screening process to reduce internal turnaround time to 7 days• Managed Fund operations, sourced startups from multiple channels, managed the investment pipeline, and prepared detailed notes and deal summary for internal team meetings
• Performed detailed due diligence including business analysis, unit economics, business plan feasibility, reference checks of company founders, interviewing customers, competitor analysis, valuation, etc.
• Prepared and negotiated documents including term-sheets, shareholder agreements (SHA), etc.
• Leveraged strong communication/presentation skills and spearheaded all stakeholder meetings including investment committee, portfolio review and fund operations review meetings
• Assisted portfolio companies by defining key business metrics and building templates including MIS variance analysis, performance metrics tracker, thus ensuring focus on key metrics and action plan
• Undertook official training on the startup Venture Builder/Incubation model in Alacrity France
• Set-up the Incubator Model (entrepreneur-hunt, ideation, incubation) to build startups from scratch

Business development, client management (CXO-level), industry research, competition benchmarking / mapping, business plan / business strategy, financial analysis, due diligence, financial modeling, valuation (DCF, trading, transaction), sensitivity analysis, exit IRR, pitch books

• BFSI (Housing Finance): Analyzed the mortgage finance sector landscape, profiled companies on performance metrics and advised one of India’s Top 5 business conglomerates to acquire a USD 42Mn housing finance company
• BFSI (Micro-finance): Executed the capital raise (sell-side) for a client from a private equity fund
• BFSI/FinTech: Growth strategy for a leading insurance distribution player using technology for lead management, customer acquisition and retention via data analytics
• HealthTech: Investment research/rationale including analysis of overall industry, tech-enabled pharmacy business models (including O2O hybrid models), unit economics, use of technology to acquire and retain customers via data analytics, valuation and financial modeling
• Food & Beverage: Investment research/rationale including analysis of the overall industry, value chain (procurement, production, and distribution), competition mapping, business strategy, financial metrics, valuation, and financial modeling
• Prepared a proposal for setting-up a Fund with hybrid capital structure, aimed at PM Modi’s vision of Financial Inclusion

Industry research, competition benchmarking / mapping, business analysis, financial analysis, due diligence, build financial model, valuation (DCF, trading, transaction), sensitivity analysis, exit IRR analysis, pitch books, client interaction (CXO-level)

Deals Completed:
• BFIS: $145 Mn sale of Au Housing Finance to private equity players Partners Group and Kedaara Capital
• BFSI: $1, 600 Mn QIP (NCD + Warrants) for India’s largest housing finance company, HDFC
• BFSI: $335 Mn IPO of Equitas, India’s most product diversified micro-finance institution (small finance bank) (subscribed 17x)
• HealthCare: $94 Mn IPO of Narayana Health, a private healthcare services company in affordable healthcare segment (subscribed 9x)
• BFSI: $185 Mn Pre-IPO & IPO of Ujjivan, India’s most geographically diversified micro-finance institution (small finance bank) (subscribed 41x)

>Experience in conducting industry analysis, exploring business opportunities (M&A) for clients, analysing the business divisions for balance sheet stress, improving the top-line and bottom-line and business restructuring
>Created pitch books involving industry research, client profiling, valuations, strategic alternatives, M&A scenarios, etc.
>Hands on experience in FactSet, Thomson Reuters, CapitalIQ, Bloomberg
>Attended Nomura’s training on investment banking: theory coupled with practical sessions

• Worked as an SAP Business Intelligence (ERP) consultant
• SHELL client - SPOC for SAP BI interfaces - managed and assisted the offshore and onshore interface and process monitoring teams
• Responsible for managing critical month end business submissions and round the clock resolution of business issues from SAP BI perspective
• Communication focal point for the IBM SAP BI team. POC for all mail communications to the client regarding business operations
• Business Value Addition - Initiated and implemented complete automation for the business critical interfaces
• Conceptualised and documented the in-depth working of various interfaces for future reference