According to a top official at the company, PremjiInvest, the biggest family office in India and manager of over $10 billion for software mogul Azim Premji, would increase its investments in artificial intelligence startups while improving its exclusive AI investing tools.
TK Kurien, the business's Managing Partner and Chief Investment Officer, stated in his first interview following his appointment in 2017 that the firm is currently 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 techniques in the private equity industry. According to him, asset management would increase its investments in the AI field as it has witnessed "exponential returns."
Global investment firms, such as BlackRock Inc. and SoftBank Group Corp., are aiming to increase their investments in artificial intelligence (AI) as a means of obtaining real-time market insight from data streams. Thirteen AI developers were employed by PremjiInvest when it began creating AI tools three years ago, according to Kurien. Simultaneously, it began providing support to companies that were entering the emerging technology market.
The asset management company is using AI to search through more than 10,000 firms worldwide based on 600 criteria in order to find potential investments. According to Kurien, the company anticipates that the entire process will provide it with an overview of new trends and technologies that might enable it to maintain an advantage over competitors.
PremjiInvest has previously sponsored companies in this industry, including Cohesity Inc., a data-management software company, Holistic AI, an enterprise software company located in London, Ikigai, and Pixis.
Some of Kurien's AI technologies will be accessible to open-source developers. According to him, the fund's engineers are also creating platforms to assist governments in providing services more efficiently and to speed up case resolution in India's overworked courts.
Investment Plan
According to Kurien, the two main industries that PremjiInvest would focus 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 Premji, the reclusive billionaire founder of Wipro Ltd., as an ongoing investment vehicle with the goal of making money to fund his charitable initiatives. The majority of his fortune has been given to charitable initiatives in India.
Having spent over 16 years honing his operational skills at Wipro, Kurien is currently searching the US for investment opportunities involving cutting edge technology that might be introduced into India. The 120-person staff of PremjiInvest manages investments from its offices in Bengaluru, India, and Menlo Park, California.
According to Kurien, the firm donates around 5% of its annual revenue to Premji's charitable foundation; however, he did not elaborate.
Also, as per the Kurien, PremjiInvest's assets are distributed across publicly listed stocks, private investments, and investments in other funds. In the past eight years, the 18-year-old business has witnessed a fourfold increase in assets under management. He declared, "We are patient capital without a time limit for exiting."
