SKS Microfinance

Premjiinvest backs about two-dozen startups and also owns equity stakes in about 40 listed companies.

One of the executives attributed the performance of the two funds to the varied approaches adopted by Murthy and Premji.

Murthy started Catamaran with an initial corpus of $120 million as against Premji who wrote a $1 billion cheque.

Secondly, Premjiinvest did not limit its investments to only India and backs both startups and listed companies in the US.

Finally, Premjiinvest is bigger in terms of manpower, employing about 40, as against Catamaran, which has half-adozen people.

“Premji got a professional in Prakash (Parthasarathy) to set up and run the fund, and Prakash managed to build it to this size where because of the size, most private deals come to Premjiinvest. This is something