Transcript
A (0:02)
Welcome to the Investor, a podcast where I, Joel Palo Thinkle, your host, dives deep into the minds of the world's most influential institutional investors. In each episode, we sit down with an investor to hear about their journeys and how global markets are driving capital allocation. So join us on this journey as we explore these insights. Okay, looks like we're live here. So Athin, thanks again for joining. You know, super excited to have somebody from the other side of the world. I'm in New York City. Atins in Hong Kong, right?
B (0:40)
Yes, absolutely. Thank you for having me, Joel. It's good to catch up.
A (0:44)
Yeah. So, you know, I've had some good conversations with Tin. He's actually met some of the people on my team. He's at 27 VC and from what I've learned, he's been focused on ed tech and just wanted to catch up with him. And I think there's some really interesting trends that we can talk about, not only with ed tech, but just VC in general. So I can tee up some of those questions. But before we do that, why don't we get to learn you a little bit more, Kind of learn about your background, where you're from, what did your parents do and how did you kind of navigate into venture and then we can just take it from there.
B (1:20)
Sure. So I guess if I have to start the earliest. Born brought up in India, my parents are actually just working class. You know, they worked for the government of India in different departments. They really instilled a work ethic, you know, just work hard and sort of try and be the best you can in whatever you're doing. So that's, that's always been the mantra that I've had, you know, growing up and try and live up to. I've always been a little bit of a non conformist in the sense that I was usually spending more time outside of class than in it, which at some point just ended up me being, you know, let's, let's do something entrepreneurial, let's do something different. And so funnily enough, I left a fairly stable job after my MBA. Maybe about 18 months into the job, I said, no, you know what, I'm going to go and do my own thing. And so that's, that's really the turning point in my life. I went and became an entrepreneur. And as if that wasn't tough enough, I actually also moved outside of India for the first time, moved to Hong Kong and you know, established myself here. So it was, it was a fun time. Did that, learned very quickly I wasn't really, I wasn't a very good entrepreneur and realized that it was a better use of my time to actually help other people be successful. And so I jumped across the table and became an investor. And my first foray into investing was actually as the head of corporate accelerator here in Hong Kong. So it's part of the Swire Group, which is one of the largest conglomerates, 200 year old group here in Hong Kong. And they were running a corporate accelerator and I was hired to run that for them, which is a great experience because we were recruiting companies from all over the world, really early stage, and bringing them to Hong Kong and connecting them with potential customers and vendors here. So that was amazing. Worked with those companies. Really what people call the ground level, I'd say, like we were at the basement. It was really early, a lot of fun.