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Ashish Dhawan is the closest thing to a bellwether for the Indian private equity (PE) industry. When the 41-year-old founder and senior MD of Delhi-based PE firm ChrysCapital Investment Advisors makes a strategic move, it usually flags an important milestone in the evolution of the industry. On 5 March, Dhawan announced his final move. He quit the game.
Dhawan, who founded ChrysCapital in 1998 with Harvard Business School classmate Raj Kondur, will formally step down next July. Until then he will handhold the firm through the process of raising its sixth fund, the corpus for which has not been announced yet. He will also lead investments up to that time. Thereafter, he will retire completely from the PE business to focus on social initiatives, notably education.
Not surprisingly, Dhawan's last move is a well-meditated one. "This was on the cards for a long time and I informed my colleagues at an internal meeting last August," he told BW. Dhawan's...