Interview with Priya Shah, General Partner of Theia Ventures (‘07)
Interview Conducted by Isabela Segarra, Alumni Engagement Committee Member
Formatted by Sophie Jaeger, Marketing and Communications Committee Member
Priya Shah is the General Partner of Theia Ventures, which is a seed-stage fund operating in India with a focus in investing in climate technology businesses. She has 15 years of experience working in the social impact finance field across US, UK, and Indian markets. Prior to working at Theia Ventures, she was a founding member of the Indian Fund arm of Yunus Social Business (YSB), a global venture debt fund founded by Nobel Laureate Dr. Muhammad Yunus. Before YSB, she worked at clean-tech company Simpa Networks. She began her career at Bloomberg LP and later worked for think-tank Asia House. She holds a Masters in Business Administration from Cambridge Judge Business School and a Bachelors of Arts in History from Brown University.
Q: I’d love to hear more about your career background and trajectory: how and why you started in the industry, what other roles you have had in the past, and what led you to where you are now.
A: I started my career about 17 years ago at Bloomberg in capital markets in New York. I graduated from Brown in ‘07 having studied history, but took a lot of International Relations and Economics classes as well. I was excited about building my technical skill set in finance and being able to apply that as a transferable skill later on in whichever career path I would choose. For me, it was an interesting time in finance because it was right around the ‘07 mortgage crisis and global financial recession so while I was excited about climate and ESG, no one else was at that time. I found myself looking at what next after spending several years in finance and it was an interesting role working with clients in the Bloomberg platform helping to sell our products and dive deeper into new products as well.
I ended up then wanting to work for a Think Tank, so I worked for Asia House which is a policy-based think tank based in the UK. There I got interested in emerging economies and the kind of corridor we could create around business between Asia and the rest of the world.
Then I went to do my MBA at Cambridge, so I did the one-year program and got excited about impact investing; which is using capital to invest in companies that are early-stage unlisted companies that could eventually have a large capitalistic impact on society both on an economic level and a larger social impact level. So I worked at a development finance institution called British International Investment while I was in my MBA program and then decided to move back to India, which is where I’m from in 2014.
For 7 years in India, I worked across different impact investing funds. I got good exposure on how to select companies to invest in, what are the different sectors, whether it’s health care, agriculture, education, energy, waste, mobility, and built a strong network in the ecosystem. I also worked in a solar distribution company while there which did asset financing for last-mile solar.
So all of this was leading up to a culmination of my career where I felt like I wanted to start my venture, combine my skills I learned in capital markets early on in my career, as well as create an impact and work in a startup. I created my fund which would eventually be focused on investing into early stage companies and I saw that climate was one of the most exciting spaces to be in and it was a very interdisciplinary sector, not just transition but also mobility, carbon. materials, food, agriculture, and all sorts of things. I felt it was a very opportune time, in India, to create a fund focused on this space and be a thematic fund. So I launched it in 2021.
Q: How do you manage the demands of your multifaceted career—covering venture capital, board duties, and sector advocacy?
A: I think the reason I love what I do is that my day is very diverse. My average day starts with a team call on what are the new updates on our pipeline, new companies to invest in, what the portfolio looks like, where we need to jump in and help them, and what kind of ecosystem events we want to kinda run. Also, we’re actively fundraising and asking what new investors that we should be speaking to. So it suits my personality and work ethic because I like to do a lot of different things and blend them into one.
Balance is always a challenge and I also have two little kids, a 5 year old and a 9-month-old. So it's a lot of juggling, but luckily I have a supportive family and I think it’s good for young kids to see their mom actively working, which is something that keeps me going. A larger purpose climate is such an important space, I think it’s important to do a service for the next generation and help save whatever we can, and encourage new technologies into the space to create more commercially viable businesses in the future.
Q: In what ways has being a female in a primarily male-dominated field positively and negatively impacted your experiences in the industry?
A: When I was working in finance there were a lot of women entering as analysts in my class. So I never felt like I was any kind of minority, per se. I think that’s testament to the company I was working at and the great programs they were running, women mentorship programs, and encouraging women to speak up. The only drawback I felt, which I wasn’t there long enough to feel it fully, was that the more senior you get the fewer women there are. It’s sort of for reasons other than the workplace and more other responsibilities that come up and the demands on time and kind of dedicated work-life balance etc become too difficult for women to take senior roles in these organizations. That’s something I’d like to at some point champion and be someone that looks at change in that sort of dynamic.
Looking at that trajectory has made me positively excited to be one of those women who hopefully does trailblaze and encourages women who have families and who have the pressures of raising kids to continue working. I also work in India which is a completely different market compared to here. There are much fewer women working in India at this level so I’m part of various different groups, such as a women in investing group a women in private equity group and a few others, who are actively looking at bringing women's voices in venture capital and finance where especially at the senior level is heavily dominated by men. Also being a sole fund manager I’m hopefully setting an example for other young women to believe that this is a role they can do.
Q: What is your biggest piece of advice for young women wanting to work in financial services?
A: My biggest piece of advice is to keep an open mind and also make a lot of connections with others. What I was told earlier is you should have an 80-20 mentorship network, 80% within your firm and 20% outside. When I joined Bloomberg I met a lovely Brown alum who was 5 or 6 years older than me, she was at a director level, and was a huge help especially during my first year when I was trying to find the ropes, where to go, and how to take up different projects. I would say have as many of those mentors as you can in a particular organization. It’s obviously a plus or a bonus if that person happens to be a Brown alum, but also have mentors who you chat with frequently that are outside your organization but in the same sector. You never know where those connections can end up.
Actually, I’ve kept in touch with my previous boss at my solar distribution company for about 8 years and now he’s a big part of my investment committee at my current fund. That has been a really big kind of relationship building exercise and shown that it’s important to build your credibility, especially if you’re someone who wants to do something entrepreneurially. Now it’s especially easy to build relationships through phone, WhatsApp and all these social platforms. So yea, cast a very wide net and think about preserving your relationships, keep in touch with your Brown network as well.
Q: Looking ahead, what long-term goals do you have for your work with Theia Ventures and your other engagements?
A: I’ve started out my career now as a hedge fund manager, so for the foreseeable decades I will continue to be the fund manager and I would like to have multiple funds under this one umbrella, so it’s kinda like a franchise of different funds. In addition to that I want to take up a lot of advisory positions because as part of the fund we do partnerships with a lot of universities, R&D labs, and Think Tanks, located in India, UK and the US. So I would like to continue that, but maybe amplify it even more and deepen my relationship with Brown. I would say keep building and keep having a voice for India climate and early stage investing. Also, keep encouraging young women to keep coming into the space and work for us as well.
*This interview has been edited for length and clarity.