Professional private markets investor, personal public equities investor in India/US. Focused on investing in compounders for the long run.
Singapore
Joined September 2020
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While the recent @dwarkesh_sp article has invited lot of discussion on X, wanted to point out this exceptional piece from @gndbrkr that draws concerning parallels of where we are today vs GFC.
groundbrkr.com/p/the-teaser-…
Interesting data from Evercore ISI - ~81% investors still long semis, and ~48% expect 1H 27 to mark the peak for $SOX.
(1/2) Mixed opinions on this one. Pros being he knows how to capture high intent Indian consumers which seems to be $meta WhatsApp’s biggest market, but cons that Cred is still a $325m annualized rev biz on $900m cap raised and another $900m otw;
It’s been a minute.
2015–2018
- Exited FreeCharge. Spent time learning and investing.
- Pondered about: Why can't trust be rewarded? Started with $1M of personal capital.
- Launched CRED to reward people for paying credit card bills on time.
2019–2025
- Built a system run by a team that values ownership, judgment, and craft.
- Grew from 0 to 17M members by aligning incentives with behaviour.
- Built several products during COVID lockdowns.
- Raised $900M+ from global investors. Did 4 ESOP buybacks.
- Made Indiranagar and IPL ads slightly more interesting.
- Received a full stack of regulatory licences.
- Lost 35 kilos.
- Scaled from 0 to ~$325M ( ~₹3,200 crore) in annual revenue across payments, lending, insurance, commerce, wealth, and credit cards.
2026
- First profitable quarter (yet occasionally asked what our business model is)
- Raised another $900M from Meta in primary and secondary capital.
- Announcing our 5th ESOP buyback.
Today
CRED is ready for its next phase. I am stepping back and @miten steps in as interim CEO, partnered with an incredibly talented team. He has been heading strategy and finance and suffering me since 2020. I’m stepping away from the operating role and will continue as a shareholder. My commitment doesn’t change. Just the role.
Extremely grateful to our members, partners, regulators, and investors who made this possible. And to our board, Shailendra, Micky, Saurabh for their extraordinary conviction.
Team CRED, I’ll still expect you to be a 10x version of yourselves.
As for me, I’ll be joining Meta to lead WhatsApp globally.
Meta comes in as a minority investor in CRED. No access to member data.
While it’s come very far, the delta between WhatsApp today and its full potential is massive. I look forward to working with Mark, Chris, and the leadership across Meta for the next step in WhatsApp’s journey. Will, thank you for scaling something the world relies on quietly, and for making this transition smooth.
Onwards.
A must read!
Is India an AI loser?
In one form or another, it’s the question we get asked the most. And if you look at India’s performance relative to other major stock markets, it’s a fair one. India is down in dollar terms since we launched in September 2024.
Meanwhile, KOSPI has more than tripled on the back of two memory stocks. The natural conclusion is that India missed AI. We think that’s wrong.
India has plenty of AI winners. It’s just that their weight in the index is either too low or they are absent from the index altogether. You have to go find them.
So, we went looking. We sorted the market by what AI does to a company – you build it, you deploy it, or you defend against it – and calculated total return for each name since we launched Persistence Capital. The builders are up about 64% at the median.
The defenders, mostly IT services, are down about 32%. This issue of our quarterly addresses the key question: which companies are AI winners, how has AI impacted their business and how is IT services getting impacted by AI (so far).
It also raises a fair question for any India manager you evaluate (us included): in September 2024, how much of the book was in these names?
Link: docsend.com/view/9dfuscbqqsn…
Disclosure: This is not a buy / sell recommendation. Please conduct your own due diligence before investing in any financial instruments.
Good reminder, can't deny I had 2nd thoughts about my position given the sentiment on $META here recently
He may be right eventually but as long as narrative is compute scarcity leading to bigger backlogs, multiples will re-rate up
Jim Chanos is short the neoclouds.
"It gets back to the point that we've made to clients that anybody that's just a middleman in this chain, like the data center guys are either as rights or equipment leasing companies should never trade at higher multiples than the company that controls their supply."
$CRWV $NBIS $IREN
Blew past my estimates of ~855k in just over a month! Guess I didn't factor what IBKR accessibility for Korean stocks could mean for this name KRX: 402340
Sharing my thesis on SK Square, which I think continues to be the best risk - adjusted way to play the AI memory boom (and no, TurboQuant does not impact HBM demand). I am up ~132% on this but think there is at least ~41% upside next year itself:
medium.com/@helixcapital/sk-…
Great article - had invested in TD at 325 and still holding at 851. One of the few bright spots in Indian equities this year
Sharing my thesis on SK Square, which I think continues to be the best risk - adjusted way to play the AI memory boom (and no, TurboQuant does not impact HBM demand). I am up ~132% on this but think there is at least ~41% upside next year itself:
medium.com/@helixcapital/sk-…
But then why did $CRCL drop too? lol
Up ~12% just today. HKG: 8637
Am long this one - growing ~15%, trading at <10x PE and a key supplier to $AMAT. Don't agree with Fawkes that it can re-rate to 30-40x (although that isn't crazy for this space), but think this can ~2x from these prices on continued execution nonetheless.
Typically a fan of @Citrini7's work but this seems a bit dramatic. IT is ~11% of NIFTY, ~7% of GDP, so imp but not doomsday. Agree the abour cost arbitrage model is over, but that is (worst) case a ~30% hit to revenues, not a decimation of one the fastest growing consumer markets
My favorite part of the @Citrini7 piece
India is going to be absolutely decimated due to their entire economy being reliant on providing cheap white-collar workers to the West.
Probably spot on, actually.
Exactly - so much to look forward to vs making a random tier 3 university fair the topic of discussion.
Not sure why cyber gets lumped with application SaaS, it's core infra that should only see acceleration due to AI? Maybe I'm missing something, but I thought $PANW had a good q.
$FRSH wow.. don't think Indian SaaS companies are gonna list on the Nasdaq going forward when on local indices you can get paid 10x sales for ~20-30% growth
Am long this one - growing ~15%, trading at <10x PE and a key supplier to $AMAT. Don't agree with Fawkes that it can re-rate to 30-40x (although that isn't crazy for this space), but think this can ~2x from these prices on continued execution nonetheless.
Fawkes Capital Management pitch on $8637.HK – Metasurface Technologies Holdings 🇭🇰
-Singapore based company.
- Manufacturers components used in semiconductor equipment.
- Supplies Advanced Materials and possibly Lam Research.
- Global chip shortage/long term demand.
- Barriers for entry.
- Traded on P/E 6.
Superb results. Zoom out and one can see that wealth management in markets like India are on a secular uptrend despite minor blips along the way.
