Mistry announces startup fund on 2nd anniversary of his ouster

Mumbai: The billionaire brothers Cyrus and Shapoor Mistry have announced formation of Mistry Ventures LLP to incubate and fund the startup ecosystem.

The announcement on Wednesday comes on the second anniversary of Cyrus' unceremonious salving by the Tatas as the group chairman.

The new firm is jointly promoted by Cyrus and his elder brother Shapoor, both promoters of the Shapoorji Pallonji Group, which owns 18.4 per cent stake in Tata Sons.

Promoted by the fourth richest Indians (collectively), the new venture is flushed with cash.

According to Forbes 2018 ranking, the Mistry family is the fourth richest in the country with a wealth over USD 18.7 billion, most of which is the notional value of their stake in the Tata group.

The new venture aims at providing strategic insights and advice to businesses, incubate new ventures and provide seed, early stage and growth capital to startups in the country as well and globally, a statement from the office of Cyrus Mistry said.

It is learnt that the Mistrys are ready to pump in hundreds of crores into the new venture, which will personally be handled by Cyrus himself.

The new company also announced appointment of Ashish Iyer, senior partner and previously global leader for strategy practice at the Boston Consulting Group, to lead the firm as the chief executive, the statement said.

"Iyer has worked with companies across sectors globally and brings deep expertise across domains and capabilities such as strategy, go-to-market, digital, innovation amongst others and I am very excited to have him on board," Cyrus was quoted as saying in the statement.

Outlining his vision for Mistry Ventures, he said, "The intent is to deliver profit with positive social impact, which will be embedded in each of the ventures we promote or partner with." 

Mistry Ventures will do more than just invest in companies. By interpreting some of the major global and local trends and understanding their impacts on industries and companies, we will incubate new businesses, forge partnerships and make investments across sectors, he added without outlining the areas of interest.

Cyrus further said the company will focus on providing mentorship and infusing unique capability sets to help startups craft appropriate business experiments needed to validate, scale and bring products and services faster to market.

It can be noted that in a surprise move, the board of Tata Sons had on October 24, 2016 sacked Mistry as its chairman, barely two years into office.

He was selected as the chairman a few years back but was under mentoring by Ratan Tata, the group patriarch.

He took over the reins in December 2012 and was the second non-Tata chairman of the 150-year-old group after Nowroji Saklatwala who was the chairman during 1934-38.

Both Mistry and the Tatas have dragged each other to the courts and the cases related his sacking from chairmanship and also from the board of Tata companies are pending at the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) in New Delhi, after the Mumbai bench of the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) dismissed Mistrys petition. The NCLAT is likely to deliver its verdict on October 31.