Bloomberg- Ozi Amanat

Alibaba Success Spurs Billionaires chief

Ozi Amanat to Pre-IPO Fund
By Sanat Vallikappen and Klaus Wille Sep 26, 2014 12:05 PM GMT+0800
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Billionaire B.K. Modis chief investment officer is starting a fund to help wealthy Asian families get
allotments before companies go public in the U.S. after placing Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. (BABA) with
investors.
The fund has raised $10 million in commitments and targets $50 million by January from Asian family
offices seeking stakes as small as $5 million before initial public offerings, which banks may not be able to
provide, Ozi Amanat, who manages the existing portfolio of businesses for Modis Singapore-based Smart
Global Holdings Pte, said in an interview yesterday.
Amanat hit on the idea of starting the fund, when more than a month before the Alibaba IPO he got a block
of the companys pre-IPO shares valued at $35 million, and successfully placed a majority with Asian
families, he said. Investors who got Amanats pre-IPO shares at below $60 apiece, were sitting on returns
of at least 48 percent as of the Sept. 25 closing price of Alibaba in New York. Alibaba raised $25 billion
earlier this month in the worlds largest IPO.
Access is what Im providing, said Amanat, a U.S. citizen who previously worked in New York at
investment bank Oppenheimer & Co. (OPY) and at a family office, which he declined to name, before
moving to Singapore a year-and-a-half ago. I have connections with the startup ecosystem in the U.S. and
with Asian family offices, and I want to bring them together.
Family Offices
Family offices have caught on in Asia as the ranks of wealthy individuals in the region swelled. Asia has
about 100 family offices, compared with 24 prior to 2000, according to a report this month from Swiss
bank UBS AG (UBSN) and Campden Wealth Ltd. The number of millionaires in the Asia-Pacific region
increased 17 percent in 2013 to 4.32 million people, the highest growth rate across any region, Capgemini
SA and RBC Wealth Management said in a June 2014 report.
Singapore-based Modi, whose Smart Global has interests in sectors including telecommunications,
healthcare and financial services, is willing to commit 10 percent of the capital to the fund, Amanat said.
Whether the fund will sit inside Modis company or outside will be decided once it is raised, Amanat said.
Modi has a net worth of about $2 billion, according to his external spokeswoman Chhavi Leekha in New
Delhi.
Bed-and-breakfast company Airbnb Inc., based in San Francisco; Sunnyvale, California-based Bloom
Energy Corp. and Palo Alto, California-based software maker Palantir Technologies Inc. are among a
dozen companies Amanat is considering for future pre-IPO placements with family offices.