‘My innings as an employee is over...it’s a new twist in the road of life’

: From consulting firm Bain & Co. to PepsiCo to GE’s global CT scanner business and Wipro, 46-year-old Vivek Paul’s career has seen a meteoric rise in the last two decades. Recently, the Wipro vice-chairman announced his decision to join the Texas Pacific Group (TPG) as a partner. TPG and its Asian associate, Newbridge Capital, together manage a global portfolio of $20 billion. Rajeev Dubey interviewed Vivek Paul on his new role and why he left Wipro. Excerpts:

Has Vivek Paul, the employee, ended his innings and Vivek Paul, the investor, the advisor, begun a new innings?

Exactly. My innings as an employee is over. It’s a completely different area. It’s like going from an actor to a producer. It’s an area where certain skills you acquired as an actor will be useful. But it’s a new twist in the road of life for me.

What will be your role at TPG?

My role in TPG is a little complicated. It spans across asset classes and areas. There is a role in venture investment, information technology and life sciences. My experience of GE Medical Systems will be useful there. I will also be working with Newbridge Asia Funds to help them look at opportunities in India. Though they are already doing some deals, my role is to accelerate that. The next element of my role is to work with leveraged buy out (LBO) funds to help them in deals of business sourcing. It’s unusual for a partner to have a role that spans across so many areas, but that’s what I will be doing at TPG.

Globally, TPG has investments ranging from automobiles (Ducati) to aviation (America West) to Telecom (Tim Halles Telecom, Greece) and mass media (MGM). Would it be fair to say that as part of your role, TPG would be looking at these areas in India as well?

Absolutely. We will be looking at each of those areas. But each deal is unique and has to come its own way. Many of these investments/businesses that TPG owns, like MGM, are of the nature of recapitalisation. Which is what an LBO does. But that’s not a good idea for India. Right now, in India, recapitalisation is not the need. What we would be looking at would be investments of the nature of expansion of capital.

Don’t recapitalisation and capital expansion overlap? In a new organisation, you would end up doing both?

Recapitalisation means in some...