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'Local boy' is worth keeping an eye on: Stepping into city to invest
(Daily Oklahoman, The (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Jul. 15--Keep your eye on Hemanth Parasuram. He may be Oklahoma City's next local boy makes good.
Parasuram attended Putnam City schools before heading off to the Oklahoma School of Science and Mathematics. After earning an engineering degree at Stanford in 1998, he went to work as a tech analyst with Goldman, Sachs & Co. In 2000, Parasuram took an executive position with a software company that he had helped through its initial public offering.
Now at the age of 30, Parasuram heads Virgo Capital, a local private equity firm that recently made its first acquisition by buying Accord Human Resources for an undisclosed amount. Among Virgo's investors are some of the leaders of the local business scene: Jeff Records of MidFirst Bank; Aubrey McClendon of Chesapeake Energy Corp.; Bill Cameron of American Fidelity Assurance and Clay Bennett, chairman of Dorchester Capital.
If Parasuram's company is successful, chances are he'll have excellent seats if the National Basketball Association returns to town.
Parasuram recently sat down with The Oklahoman to discuss his fledgling company and his experience. What follows is an edited version of that conversation.
Q: Was your intention always to come back to Oklahoma, or did it just work out that way?
A: The intention I guess was there in the very back of my mind, but really when I made that decision it was almost a hunch. It was sort of saying I want to do something entrepreneurial. I want to go out and make my own investments. My family's in Oklahoma. I feel connected in Oklahoma and there's probably a good opportunity there. It wasn't as analytic a decision as others. It was sort of saying, 'If I'm going to do it, Oklahoma City's a great place to get started.'
Q: How do you start a firm like this in a place like Oklahoma City?
A: The first tangible step is raising capital for the fund. But even prior to doing that we thought, before we go in front of a potential investor and say please invest in us we need to do our homework.
So what we did is my partner and I took about nine months to a year to basically survey the landscape and figure out exactly what the fund was going to focus on. And not only that, but go out and talk to potential investments -- go out and talk to companies that fund would invest in.
That was important because it kind of validated our idea; it validated the fact that there is opportunity in the lower-mid market, in financial services companies, in technology-enabled companies.
By doing that, that turned out to be a really good move on our part because it gave us the confidence to sit in front of an investor and tell them we've seen six deals in the mortgage space, we've seen seven deals in another space. That was Step 1 for us. That's tough because you're doing it without the capital, but it's an important kind of groundwork to lay. Kind of early fall of 2005 is when we really started our fundraising efforts. The first milestone for us was in January of 2006 when we did the first closing of the fund. We closed on about $20 million in capital.
Q: Were you happy with the amount and the number of investors you had?
A: Yeah. We said we wanted to raise a $50 million fund, so for us it was important to put down the stake and say we've raised $20 million now. The first $20 million was a lot harder than the next $30 million. It was great. We were very pleased.
Now all the deals we had looked at, we actually had the capital to go pursue those in earnest and say we've got the capital now. Let's sit down and talk.
Q: Are you in the process of trying to identify your next investment at the same time?
A: Absolutely. Yes. We're pretty close to making our next investment.
Q: Any hints about what that would be?
A: The business is in the customer care space -- the call center space. It's not local.
Q: What do you find most rewarding about your job?
A: What's been rewarding all along is helping create things. The fund itself, we created it from nothing. We talk about Accord, helping it create more value and helping grow the business. Those are the kind of things that excite me every day.
Q: What's your biggest fear?
A: I don't know that this would ever happen, but my work not being fun anymore. I'm having such a blast right now. If for whatever reason it wasn't fun anymore, that would be a pretty bad thing.
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Copyright (c) 2007, The Daily Oklahoman
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