General Atlantic (also known as “GA”) is an American private equity firm providing capital and strategic support for growth companies. GA is headquartered in New York, New York.
General Atlantic pioneered the concept of growth equity.
They have $34 billion asset under management with a current portfolio of 121 companies As growth equity investors, they partner with leading entrepreneurs and companies across four global sectors: Technology, Consumer, Financial Services and Healthcare.
Investment Philosophy (for firm)
- Focus on growth
The main focus for the company is to stand between the VC and buyout companies , as VC’s invest in a company at its very early stage and buyout’s invest at a later stage where the company have got its brand value , positioning in the market but GA focus in between this time period to help the companies under their portfolio to scale their business exponentially with the help of the expertise GA have. GA invest in companies which already got some size, revenues to support the investments.
- Targeting Emerging markets
CEO of the company believes that there lies huge potential in the emerging markets like China , India etc where they can help the growing companies to get scale in their business for various reasons for eg- India which is a developing country with huge labour force , less strict regulations , tremendous opportunities and government supporting FDI inflows to the country makes it easy for PE funds to tap the opportunity.
Media
Title: Davos interview with general Atlantic CEO Bill Ford Source: CNBC.com, Date: January 2020
Why private valuations figures are sky rocketing compared to public valuation. How GA is looking forward for its prime investment in Uber , Airbnb, Bytedance. Interview talks about the Concern about the data access.
The conversation about private companies going public was at the forefront of investors’ minds in 2019, as skyrocketing valuations changed the landscape of the private market. Private equity firm General Atlantic has invested $34 billion in over 360 companies since its inception 40 years ago, some of which include Uber, Airbnb and ByteDance. Bill Ford, CEO of General Atlantic, joins “Squawk Box” at the World Economic Forum in Davos to discuss.
Title: CEO talks about the 2019 IPO market, growth investing and Emerging market, Source: CNBC.com, Date: January 2019
In this interview the CEO talks about their strategy to liquidate their investments in US markets and making it in emerging markets to tap the opportunities these markets provide.
CEO of GA made it clear that they don’t sell their major chunk of investment during IPO rather they do it after 3-4 years after IPO.
Sandeep Naik of General Atlantic says India has a billion people, a billion problems and a billion opportunities. He also says India continues to be a “sole shining light” compared to the “gloom and doom” around the world. He also added that the company have Bullish perspective on India for their investments.
Analyst questions
- What do you think, how will companies that GA have invested and the ones which were looking to go public will manage this bearish trend and successfully launch their IPO?
- In the post Covid era, are you still looking India as hub a for opportunities? and if yes which sector will be your prime target?
- Why GA always try to take the minority stakes in the company? is it a conservative strategy or style of the company?
- Why the company entered a new space i.e telecomm sector , any specific reasons?
- Being a top PE fund around the globe, why GA is relying only on the HNI for funding , is there any Institutional investor as well?
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