Private equity major General Atlantic LLC has appointed Sandeep Naik as a managing director and head of the firm’s Mumbai office. Naik, who was co-head of Apax Partners’ India office till recently, will lead General Atlantic’s investment advisory activity in India.
As the partner and co-head of Apax’s India office, Naik led investments in healthcare, financial & business services and retail & consumer sectors. He had led and participated in a number of investments including Apollo Hospitals, Spectrum Labs, Esprit Pharma and Xanodyne. Naik was a director of the publicly listed Apollo Hospitals, which was the first healthcare services firm to see $100 million-plus investment from private equity players.
Before joining Apax, Naik was a global marketing manager at Medtronic (a leader in medical devices space), a scientist at the Mayo Clinic and a consultant with McKinsey & Co. He is also the co-founder of the medical devices startup InfraScan Inc., which helps detect bleeding inside the brain with the help of a handheld device.
Naik holds a B.Tech in Instrumentation Engineering from the University of Mumbai, an MS in Biomedical Engineering from the Medical College of Virginia and an MBA in Finance from the Wharton School of Business, University of Pennsylvania.
General Atlantic, which manages approximately $17 billion, was one of the first global private equity majors to set up an India office back in 2002. Since then, it has invested more than $1 billion in Indian growth companies, including the recent investments in Fourcee, a logistics company, and IndusInd Bank. Other portfolio companies who have recently joined the fold include Genpact, Mu Sigma, the National Stock Exchange (NSE), InfoTech, IBS Software Services and Jubilant.
The firm has also seen early exit from business outsourcing firm Daksh (acquired by IBM), followed by Sharekhan, NDTV, Patni Computers and most recently, from Genpact (partial exit).
In course of its operations within the country, General Atlantic had lost quite a few India MDs over the past few years. While Raul Rai moved to Fidelity Growth Partners, Sunish Sharma left the firm to start his own PE firm with Temasek’s Manish Kejriwal. General Atlantic also moved its long time India MD Abhay Havaldar to head its newly set up Singapore office last year.
Although General Atlantic’s India office is currently headed by managing director Ranjit Pandit, it remains to be seen what will be his next move.
(Edited by Sanghamitra Mandal)
