Ramakrishna KV (Ramki) is an NIT Warangal and IIM Bangalore alumnus with more than 3 decades of industry experience. Barring a short stint with Tata Motors early in his career, he has been primarily in Venture Capital and Private Equity with organizations such as ICICI, Carlyle, and Kotak. He is currently an advisor to Kotak PE and has served as the CEO of Kotak PE as well.

In this Podcast, Ramki shares with us his perspectives on the people's side of the business that influence his decision making and his experiences as an investor and key stakeholder in his quest for understanding the 'person behind the paper' as he calls it. Ramki believes in a balance of understanding the qualitative (people, organization, culture) aspects as much as quantitative (product, growth, market) when making investment choices. In this podcast, he touches upon insights on why it is important to understand how leaders and entrepreneurs treat their people, how they demonstrate trust and confidence in their everyday conversations and understand/preserve the culture of an organization.

He also shares perspectives on how an investor looks at investments vs. M&A situations and understanding cultural nuances that can impact investment decisions, how senior lateral hires can integrate and build teams within a new organization, how expectations need to be matched when a professional joins an entrepreneurial venture, promoter and professional alignment during growth (alignment of shared interest or finding common ground), the decision process for onboarding a leader, how allowing new senior hires who bring their teams can be risky and how culture shifts and dilution can be managed through an open dialogue. He also speaks about interesting inflection points for an entrepreneur with investors such as Growth vs Dilution of stake and how with an alignment of interest it can be achieved and about entrepreneurs willing to build an organization both in terms of depth and breadth of management.