According to a senior executive at the company, PremjiInvest, the biggest family office in India and manager of over $10 billion for software tycoon Azim Premji, will increase its investments in artificial intelligence startups while improving its exclusive AI investment tools.
TK Kurien, the company’s managing partner and chief investment officer, stated in his first interview following his appointment in 2017 that the firm is now developing an AI quant model for its public market bets as well. The company was one of the first significant Indian asset managers to employ AI tools in the private equity space. The asset manager, which has seen “exponential returns,” will also invest more in the AI space, he said.
Global investment firms, such as BlackRock Inc. and SoftBank Group Corp., are looking to increase their investments in artificial intelligence (AI) as a means of obtaining real-time market intelligence from data streams. Mr. Kurien claims that PremjiInvest hired 14 AI engineers and began creating AI tools three years ago. Simultaneously, it began providing support to companies that were entering the emerging technology market.
ALSO READ: “Baby Is On The Way”: Sakshi Dhoni’s Post During CSK’s Win Over SRH Viral
The asset manager is using AI to search through more than 10,000 companies worldwide based on 600 criteria in order to find potential investments. According to Mr. Kurien, the company anticipates that the entire exercise will provide it with an overview of new trends and technologies that could enable it to maintain an advantage over competitors.
Holistic AI, a London-based enterprise software company, Cohesity Inc., a data-management software company, Among the companies in this industry that PremjiInvest has previously supported are Ikigai and Pixis.
Mr. Kurien intends to make some of its AI tools available to open-source developers. According to him, the engineers of the fund are also creating platforms to assist governments in providing services more efficiently and to help India’s overworked courts settle cases more quickly.
Investment Plan
According to Mr. Kurien, the two main industries that PremjiInvest will bet on are technology and financial services. The other two areas in which the company makes investments in India’s private markets are consumer and health care. The technology and healthcare industries are the main targets of investments in the US.
The family office was founded in 2006 by Mr. Premji, the reclusive billionaire founder of Wipro Ltd., as an ongoing investment vehicle with the goal of making money to fund his charitable pursuits. The majority of his fortune has been given to charitable causes in India.
Mr. Kurien is searching for investment targets in the US that have the newest technologies that can be brought to India. He previously spent more than 16 years honing his operational skills while working with Wipro. The 120-person staff of PremjiInvest manages investments from its offices in Bengaluru, India, and Menlo Park, California.
According to Mr. Kurien, the group donates roughly 5% of its annual revenue to Mr. Premji’s charitable foundation. He declined to provide more specifics.
According to Mr. Kurien, PremjiInvest’s assets are divided among publicly traded stocks, private investments, and investments in other funds. In the past eight years, the 18-year-old firm has witnessed a fourfold increase in assets under management.
He declared, “We are patient capital without a time limit for exiting.”
ALSO READ :- No Gill, Sanju But Veteran Returns In Ex-AUS Star’s India Squad For T20 WC
2 thoughts on “Azim Premji’s Company Bets On AI To Prop $10 Billion Fund”