“Knowledge, experience and the support network are the three ingredients you need in order to succeed," says CEO of PillboxCapital 3 Fund Sachin Nandha. These are the very seeds, that nurtured the 38-year-old from Wirral into the entrepreneur he is today.
Set up in 2005, PillboxCapital is a small private equity firm with businesses in law, medical properties, dental, pharmacy and technology, with approximately £15 million worth of assets under their management. Its co-founders are Manish Patel, the group CFO and Parthiv Patel the group Chairman.
“I knew after completing my doctorate in Philosophy at The University of Nottingham, I didn’t want to be an academic, I wanted to go into business”, says Sachin. Sachin had the ability to understand the way in which markets shift. “Not only could I calculate, but I could predict the key leavers that would be moving and what the outcome of those leavers would be. I ended up doing a lot of research, learning and networking, to really develop my knowledge set and support network," he told the Asian Voice.
Sachin has built businesses in hospitality and healthcare, advising numerous private equity firms on capital growth and strategy. His business ventures began at the age of 27, where he sold his advisory services during the financial crisis to businesses and helped them navigate through turbulent times with their acquisition strategy. In 2018, Sachin was recognised as being within the top 100 most influential global Indians.
What is Private Equity and what does PillboxCapital do?
Private Equity, is a medium to long term investment asset finance, provided in return for an equity stake in potentially high-growth unquoted companies – “It is an asset class like no other, it has outperformed everything, including property and stocks and shares over the last 10 years returning over 11% per annum growth," says Sachin. What private equity does is it brings together investors and talented entrepreneurs and management teams, connecting capital with opportunity.
“We seek opportunities in the market where we can give capital to these management teams or entrepreneurs and actively support them to scale their business up rapidly.. We invest in businesses for five to seven years, scale quickly and then we exit through a sale of the business," Sachin explains.
Their business model Sachin explains is “We want to take money that is being held in people’s saving accounts, where it is not being made use of, and deploy it into the real economy – where there are entrepreneurs and management teams with good businesses, but they just need the money and our expertise to grow."
“We seed our own businesses, with our own money and risk. The ones that show potential, are the ones in which we will deploy capital of up to 50 million pounds."
The company are due to launch ‘PillboxCapital 3’ fund this year, which would leverage their experience and networks to build a private equity fund which can take advantage of the global Indian growth story.
Brexit and financial markets
Trade wars, rising US central Bank interest rates and Brexit, the fourth quarter of 2018 was a tough time for the financial markets. So how does PillboxCapital reduce risk in such uncertain and volatile markets? It is through seeing the world with a ‘VUCA’ vision which stands for volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous. At PillboxCapital, Sachin and his partners don’t just invest in the stock market and hope it goes up, they invest in real businesses. “We decide who will manage the business, and ultimately control the direction in which the business will grow," says Sachin.
Where Brexit is concerned, the Partrners see it as an opportunity. Their global reach runs across the Indian diaspora, whether they be in the US, Middle East, East Africa, India or Singapore. “Our role in all of this is how do we take advantage of the distress which is currently being felt in the British healthcare sector and help our businesses capture more market share throughout this period. We are preparing for Brexit in the sense that we are getting ready to deploy some serious capital and money into the health sector which we think is actually going to grow over the next decade regardless of BREXIT as the government turns on the NHS ‘funding tap’," explains Sachin.
Pillbox and the Global Indian story
For Sachin and his partners, their Indian heritage is of upmost importance, “We are all very proud of our Indian heritage and the three of us believe that the culture we come from coupled with the education we’ve had and the experience of being British, perfectly sets us up for having the best of all worlds."
The Indian story is visibly a bright and growing one into the next few decades. “We want to use the British law which is respected all over the world and then we want to be able to connect with wealth from all over the world, and connect them to real entrepreneurs and management teams – people with great ideas and businesses, if we can back these people they’ll be able to build more value for society”, explains Sachin. As India grows, the ambition of Pillbox is to become the number one private equity firm over the next 10 years, connecting global investors to the global Indian growth story.
Sachin’s most memorable achievement is where he is today, to have jointly with his partners created and built their own private equity firm. “Before the age of 40 to have built a private equity fund is definitely the most memorable and something which I am immensely proud of."
