TOMORR OW’ S TITANS 2023


Misha Sanwal, Managing Partner and CIO Sasha Sanwal, Managing Partner Millingtonia Capital India


of digital public infrastructure and per capita income simultaneously crossing important thresholds. “New India” digitally driven businesses are leapfrogging legacy models, enabling new use cases, and lifting “old India” businesses by digitizing manufacturing and organizing informal sectors with technology to achieve scale. Despite established careers in the U.S. at leading financial firms and degrees from Ivy League universities, the two brothers chose to return to their roots to seize what they see as a “once in a generation” investment opportunity. Millingtonia Capital launched in January 2022 as an India dedicated equity long short fund with a focus on digitization and technology transformation. This is Misha’s second time setting up an India focused venture – he was part of the founding team of Blackstone Private Equity’s India office in 2005.


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India’s rising investability India’s growth story needs no introduction. Its demographic dividend, rapid urbanization and expanding middle class are powering consumption and economic growth. India is expected to grow its GDP per capita from about $2,300 to about $5,000 by 2030. With a mobile first, technologically savvy, growing workforce, it will soon have the second largest base of online shoppers in the world. This growth is being supported by an increasingly business-friendly tax and regulatory backdrop, maturing pro-growth reforms as well as an English- speaking common law legal system. India’s reform agenda has seen it greatly improve its ranking for ease of doing business as the bankruptcy and tax codes have been simplified and regulatory processes streamlined.


Millingtonia believes India will be one of the biggest beneficiaries of a multi-polar world. This includes significant economic benefits from a diversification of global supply chains away from China as well as deeper partnerships between India, the United States and Europe. The government’s well-timed policy support through PLI schemes (Production Linked Incentive schemes) in high technology, export-oriented sectors has spurred large scale capex investments to develop local supply ecosystems, and global bellwethers such as Apple and Samsung have begun shifting some production to India.


Despite this, India still punches below its weight as a destination for foreign equity capital. India


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isha Sanwal and Sasha Sanwal see digital and technology driven growth stories in India at a tipping point with mobile penetration, deployment


Misha Sanwal + Sasha Sanwal


India’s digital and technology tipping point


(L-R): Misha Sanwal and Sasha Sanwal


was historically seen as an “allocation” within emerging market funds. Millingtonia believes this is set to change as these new growth drivers enhance the “investability” of India. “We see a shift in approach to India when we speak to potential investors,” says Misha. Millingtonia publishes a lot of material on topics such as regulatory changes, technology developments, private company conversations and other aspects of investing in India. “As we build our fund, one of our goals is to help illuminate interesting aspects of the evolving Indian investment landscape for our investors,” says Sasha.


Global lens combined with local context The duo have refined their investing toolset over 20 years. Their backgrounds include stints at firms such as Blackstone, Bain Capital, Jericho Capital, UBS and JP Morgan. They have been investing in India for over 15 years. Misha was a


founding member of Blackstone’s India private equity business in 2005. Sasha helped take some of India’s biggest IT companies public in the early 2000s. Through these experiences, they built a vast network of relationships in India at board and senior management levels. Misha has also invested across the technology and payments value chains in Brazil, Japan, Russia and other markets globally.


This experience leads them to view India through the lens of a global investor and they also understand the local context and cultural nuances of investing in India. This is a powerful combination. Their language fluency in Hindi (the national language) is essential for primary due diligence on customers, suppliers and competitors; an important differentiator in a market where expert networks are much slower and significantly less helpful than Millingtonia’s own extensive network.


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