Meet the investor: Aditi Sharma
Aditi Sharma is an investor in B Capital’s Singapore office.
Aditi Sharma is a Singapore based Associate at B Capital Group. Prior to joining B Capital Group, Ms. Sharma spent 2.5 years as a management consultant with McKinsey & Company in Mumbai where she advised clients in the financial services, media, infrastructure, logistics and pharmaceuticals industry on a range of topics across sales transformation, product development, cost optimization, organization design and go-to-market strategy. Prior to McKinsey, she spent some time at Citi, where she worked with the risk modeling team for the retail partner cards portfolio.
Ms. Sharma completed her Bachelor of Engineering in Agricultural & Food Engineering and Master of Engineering in Financial Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur.
What investing areas do you focus on?
I focus on high-growth technology companies across fintech, enterprise software, B2B e-commerce and consumer enablement in India.
What did you do before you were an investor?
Prior to investing, I was a management consultant at McKinsey & Company in India. I advised corporates across financial services, media, infrastructure, pharmaceuticals on digital strategy, sales acceleration and operations improvement. I completed my undergraduate degree in Engineering at Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur.
What attracted you to venture investing?
At McKinsey, I spent a majority of my time advising clients on their digital strategy and also got a chance to interact with tech companies globally as a part of the Consumer Tech Practice. Seeing the potential of technology to transform traditional businesses and industries, I was keen to get an up-close view of the journey of tech companies from inception to scale — and venture investing seemed the perfect way to do that. I have thoroughly enjoyed my time as a venture investor so far — everyday I get to learn something new through my conversations with exceptional founders, fellow investors, industry experts and end-customers. With India on the cusp of a digital transformation and so many India-born companies going global, it truly is an exciting time to be partnering with entrepreneurs as they build ground-breaking technology companies for consumers and corporates.
What do you look for in a founder or an executive team?
In my conversations with founders, I first look for how well do they understand the market and how do they leverage these insights to build a product that customers will love. Customer obsession is key for founders to build a successful company — customer trust and loyalty can be one of the biggest moats for a business. Next, I try to assess the execution capabilities of the founding team. It is critical for founders to not just have a clear long-term vision but also have a deep understanding of the challenges they may face along the way and the persistence to tackle them. With markets evolving at a rapid pace, I feel it is necessary for founders to be agile and constantly innovate to stay ahead of the curve. Finally, founders should have the ability to attract great talent as they scale their companies.
If you weren’t in this career, what would you be doing?
If I were not in this career, I would have liked to work at an early-stage startup. Seeing founders build their businesses from the side-lines has been really inspiring and I would love to be a part of that journey from ideation to execution.
What’s something many people may not know about you?
I am a huge movie buff and wanted to be an actress while growing up. I trained in dance and dramatics for a number of years and never missed out on a chance to perform on stage when I was in school and later in my undergrad. While I do miss the stage now, I never let go off an opportunity to break into a dance.
Connect with Aditi on LinkedIn today!
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