Need for family offices to work together under a co-investment structure: Jahnavi Kumari Mewar

Jahnavi Kumari Mewar recently joined NewsX for an exclusive conversation as part of NewsX India A-List. In the exclusive conversation, she spoke to us about her business firm along with insights on internationalism, effective global governance practices and the way forward for the post-Covid world.

Jahnavi commenced her talk by speaking about the creation of Auctus Fora and its uniqueness. She said “Auctus fora was born with a need to work with family offices (preferably) without a fund structure in place. If I take a small step back, I initially worked for JP Morgan from where I decided to set up a boutique investment bank and as that business developed and progressed, I had developed very meaningful relationships with family offices globally. We found that there was significant need for family offices to work together under a co-investment structure rather than that of a fund. Moving on we decided to set-up a co-investment platform, entirety focused on private acuity and private structure credit working with family offices globally. It’s a unique model because we work on ‘reverse origination methodology’ developed in 2011. We use this methodology to make investment decisions and direct our investment philosophy.”

When asked about how pandemic months have been for her and her firm, she responded “I think based on facts that firstly we are directed to asset. Number 2, we don’t do listed securities and are a private acuity focused and private structure credit which organically give you a lot more control over your investment decisions. I am very rigid when it comes to investment decision making process. For example – we’ll never chase dues or get into a bidding war as I believe that if you get your buying price wrong then you already made a big mistake in terms of capital allocation and investment process. In such disruptive times when others have faced upheavals, we have ramped up because of our decent decision making. Based on that what we have done over the past 15 months is that the assets which we felt will continue to give long term returns and are relatively resilient to the disruptions caused by global pandemic and lockdown, we have reinvested capital or added additional capital into those assets and portfolios. So, at a macro level we have reinvested capital into our portfolios and at micro level, into select asset portfolios. I mean not to say that we haven’t felt pain but we have been more resilient.”

Explaining the post-Covid global economic changes, she expressed “What we are seeing globally is unprecedented crisis for which a lot of nations have lacked institutional memory because they have never experienced something like this before. In the absence of institutional memory there is institutional unpreparedness. I think that responsibility and accountability of this crisis doesn’t solely sit with the current government because there has been decades of under-investment in the public healthcare infrastructure. Instead the present government has put concentrated efforts towards formulating new public policies. It is my personal opinion that unfortunately the government lacks sophistication in its policy making. Therefore they come across significant opposition to their policies.”

When it comes to changing global supply chains, Jahnavi described “let’s look at global supply chains from both political and economic perspectives. Politically speaking, we have fallen short on collective action and there has been a crisis of global governance. Supply chains and global governance can work hand in hand. A good small scale example is of QUAD members who have been working together and have been multilaterally more effective. So when we talk of re – engineering global supply chains, we have to look at from the perspective that are we going to create an incentivising engagement that affects better global governance practices.”

Lastly speaking about the importance of institutions like QUAD as representative of the changed world over institutions like UN and WHO, she said “QUAD is a great example of a force for global good. WHO has been less effective than QUAD as it has been dispersing contradictory information globally, it along with UN have failed to garner collective action for a global solution to the pandemic. QUAD is representation of way forward. We need to re-engineer a pragmatic form of internationalism which meets the needs for today and future.”