IF global private equity (PE) and venture capital(VC) funds are queuing up to invest in India, it’s not only because the country offers a compelling investment opportunity. It is also because most of the funds have Indians at the top. According to independent estimates, as much as 15-20% of the team members of some of the global funds are Indians. We are not talkign about the usual top names like Ram Shriram, Vinod Dham, Promod Haque and Vinod Khosla, but of a new crop of PE and venture capital investors who occupy senior roles in firms like Blackstone, Permira, Carlyle, General Atlantic, Warburg Pincus, Apax, Battery Ventures, Bessemer Ventures and Sequoia. Take the US-based buyout fund Blackstone, for instance. The world’s largest PE house has about 11 Indians in its team of 148-odd members. Some of the top names who serve as senior managing directors of Blackstone include AJ Agarwal, Akhil Gupta, Punita Sinha, Prakash Melwani and Manish Mittal. Similarly Carlyle, which has a large global team of more than 400 people, has close to 30 executives of Indian origin. In General Atlantic Partners, there are 15 Indians out of the 87 team members. Warburg Pincus, which hit a jackpot with its early investment in Bharti Airtel, has 25 Indians among the 150-plus member global team. Besides these top PE firms, there are ex-bankers like Arshad Zakaria, who has set up New Vernon Capital, and Vikram Pandit, who recently sold his hedge-cum-private equity fund Old Lane to Citicorp. […]