This week, we dive deep with Rajive Keshup in Singapore, Investment Director at Cathay Innovation, an early and growth stage venture capital firm with $1.5B AUM across San Francisco, Paris, Shanghai and Singapore, and closely affiliated with Cathay Capital Private Equity, a global private equity firm with $3B in AUM. From the lens of a management consultant turned operator turned funder, Rajive talks about what it takes to be an entrepreneur’s first phone call in great and not-so-great times, and the real landscape of growth stage companies in SEA.

 

👊🏻 5 THINGS YOU’LL LEARN: 

– If you’re not learning, you better be earning 

– The current state of play of venture in Asia: are we drinking our own kool-aid in Asia? Inflated valuations, the hype of SPACs 

– How to actually expand into new markets 

– The arbitrage opportunity of Asia-US – Building for the long run

 

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ABOUT RAJIVE

Rajive is an Investment Director at Cathay Innovation, based out of the Singapore office. (https://cathayinnovation.com/) Prior to joining Cathay, Rajive played instrumental roles in scaling a number of Southeast Asian startups. Before moving to Singapore, Rajive was a Managing Director at PwC Strategy (formerly Booz & Co.) in New York City where he led the TMT sector for the firm’s Private Equity practice. Rajive started his career at AT&T doing corporate strategy & development in Dallas, Texas. He is also a former-founder having built, scaled and successfully exited a US-based startup in the pet services space. Rajive earned an MBA from Cornell University in Ithaca, NY and a Bachelor of Science from Bentley University in Waltham, MA.