01/04/2022
Katalysen Ventures AB (publ) has entered a joint venture partnership with Tetrad Capital Partners with the vision of making the Europe-India business corridor seamlessly integrated for SaaS (Software as a Service) companies in both geographies. Specifically, the joint venture’s objectives are two-fold. First, to support the market entry of fast-growing Indian SaaS companies into European markets by accelerating their go-to-market initiatives in the region. Second, to expand and enhance the strategic engineering, and analytics capabilities of European SaaS companies through build-out of their own de-novo digital centres-of-excellence in India. Katalysen Ventures anticipates that this partnership likely will pave the way for new clients for Katalysen Ventures from the Indian subcontinent.
Currently, the business interactions within the US-India business corridor are vibrant and frictionless – figuratively bringing the two countries adjacent to each other, despite their geographic distance. That is not so within the Europe-India corridor. Typically, the go-to-market strategy for Indian SaaS companies, after initial success at home, is to focus on the US market, given its homogeneity, scale, and likely pre-existing relationships. As such European market entry is postponed to later stages due to its fragmentation and cultural sensitivity, notwithstanding the continent’s economic significance. Similarly, European SaaS companies have been slower than their US counterparts in tapping into the vast and cutting-edge digital talent pool based in India to enhance their strategic advantage and accelerate their business growth.
Katalysen and Tetrad appreciate the inter-regional complexities between Europe and India and are ideally suited to jointly act as venture developers to fast-growing SaaS companies in both markets. Between the two firms they offer unrivaled breadth & depth of expertise, presence & relationships across Europe and India. These attributes combined with an investor mindset that closely aligns incentives with founders & investors of these exciting growth companies makes the value proposition unique.
Tetrad Capital Partners is a special situations & growth-focused principal investment, advisory and execution firm based in London with a global presence. Tetrad was founded by Katalysen’s partner Gagik Apkarian, whose career spans principal investment, investment banking and management consulting at some of the world’s foremost firms across Europe, the US and Asia Pacific, including at McKinsey, Morgan Stanley, and Vulcan Capital. Tetrad’s presence in India is spearheaded by Aditya Sharma, who brings in 30+ years of global professional experience - both serving in senior responsibilities within leading global companies such as McKinsey & JP Morgan Chase in New York, Chicago & Sydney; as well as a successful serial entrepreneur based in Asia-Pacific.
This joint venture partnership is an exciting collaboration between two firms that while different in origin are highly complementary and share a like-minded approach in terms of an engaged mindset towards their investments and co-investors.