“Social Impact Is The True Calculation Of Profit” – Rishi Vaidya Says Investment Banker Turned Entrepreneur

Rishi Vaidya, a lawyer turned investment banker has been known to turn around companies through stress and bankruptcy. In the recent past Rishi has successfully facilitated acquisition of a Hotel Chain in India to an International pension fund for over half a billion dollars. His experience of working across industries like steel, telecom and hospitality is noteworthy. However, the young entrepreneur shifted focus during Covid and is looking at more exciting opportunities in blockchain and sustainability. We caught up with Rishi to know more about his recent ventures.

What is it that you look at in a project before associating with it?
Any venture comprises of 3 key elements – People, Product and Paisa. I take care of the money bit, so it’s the first two that I dig my nails into before getting onboard. Meeting and connecting with the right people are essential, just because skill sets of different individuals are complimentary or someone has superior subject knowledge doesn’t mean that the team could work well. In some of my past ventures, I have acknowledged the dearth of expertise, but the venture thrived because of the bond and respect between people. The product on the other hand must be simple, it must cater to one of these criteria – it must make life easier, or it has to make life cheaper or make it faster for the consumer. If these conditions are satisfied, there is an abundance of money. We bring in the right sort of finance and help businesses achieve their goals.

You are known for your work in IBC, what was the most challenging part of those projects?IBC has been framed and implemented to secure the optimum value of assets. The law itself facilitates asset value retention. Due to the lack of precedents, professionals and industry struggled to ascertain the likely outcome. Our job was to find predictability in chaos, find value where others failed and achieve high speed of execution. With a young and excited team, we were able to find resolution for clients, close long-standing debts and facilitate key mergers and acquisitions in a short span of three years. That early movers advantage helped us cement our position in the industry.

What are the key challenges you face while raising funds for stressed assets?
We raise funds for all types of organizations – private as well as public, so our scope is not limited to stressed assets only. We have extensive experience in raising finances from international private equity firms, sovereign funds as well as family offices for projects spread across various industries in India. Each project comes with its unique set of opportunities and challenges, so there isn’t a cookie-cutter formula. However, with stressed assets lenders tend to be wary and prefer doing multiple rounds of due diligence as they should.

What made you shift focus to blockchain projects?
Web3 is an exciting space to be in for us. There are countless possibilities of blockchain application in our day-to-day lives. From medical records to payment gateways, to education and the list is endless. In the past year, we have started participating with Defi, metaverse, DLT projects. We believe that we are at the early phases of the growth curve; just as India benefitted from the IT services boom since the late nineties; blockchain will add value to the Indian economy and society exponentially. We interact and try to meet as many project proponents as possible in the blockchain space to figure if we can add value to their venture. Lucky for us, a large chunk of fresh IT graduates from India are exploring this space. We try to provide these minds with not just the capital allocation required for their projects but extend access to the international ecosystem of project incubators and experts. We are actively looking for partners in Web3, DeFi, metaverse space with innovative ideas and a passion for executing these projects.

You mentioned working in the field of sustainability, could you tell us a bit about your work in this space?
We have only one planet for now and the time to save it is running out. We are passionate about sustainability and climate change and believe that each one can do their bit for contributing towards emission reduction and bringing down global temperature. As we do our little bits in our homes and personal lives, we decided to make this a priority in our business as well. Our projects combine elements of blockchain, tokenization and carbon credit trading to make it far more accessible than it ever was. Our effort is to make carbon credit trading authentic, accountable, easier as well as cost efficient for countries, corporates, and communities to participate. We would like to bring a choice to everyone to make a difference at the click of a button and have the entire process certified authentic as per the United Nation Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). We have the know-how, we have the framework, and we have the skills for execution, we are open to partnering with anyone who has the same passion and shared goal.

Sustainability is usually linked to Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), how do you plan to make it a financially feasible venture?
Sustainability is not an option anymore. ESG guidelines are mandatory for publicly listed enterprises, however in times to come their compliance is expected to be stringent. Internationally, lenders check ESG compliance as a prerequisite for issuing advances. Plus, as awareness of sustainability percolates through society, corporates and individuals would need an avenue to channelize their efforts towards reduction of CO2 and green house gases. Understanding climate change, the right technology and deployment of capital is needed to provide such a platform. This will have a far deeper impact on emission reduction, something beyond rupees and dollars. We believe Social impact is the true calculation of profit, rather than bottom line of our balance sheet.