PREMJI Invest, the largest Indian family office that manages over US$10 billion for software tycoon Azim Premji, will invest more money into artificial intelligence (AI) companies while fine-tuning its proprietary AI investment tools, a senior executive at the firm said.

The company, among the first large Indian asset managers to use AI tools in the private equity space, is now working on an AI quant model for its public market bets too, said TK Kurien, its managing partner and chief investment officer, in his first interview after taking the role in 2017.

The asset manager, which has seen “exponential returns”, will also invest more in the AI space, he said.

Investment firms worldwide, including BlackRock and SoftBank Group, are relying on AI to analyse data streams in real time to glean market intelligence and are looking to invest further in the sector.

Premji Invest started developing AI tools three years ago and hired 14 AI engineers, according to Kurien. At the same time, it started backing firms venturing into the nascent technology space.

AI is helping the asset manager scour more than 10,000 companies globally on 600 parameters to identify investment opportunities. The firm expects the entire exercise to also give it a bird’s-eye view of emerging technologies and trends that could help it stay ahead of peers, Kurien said.

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Cohesity, a data-management software company; Holistic AI, an enterprise software business based in London; Ikigai and Pixis are among firms in the sector that Premji Invest had backed so far.

Kurien is planning to allow open-source developers to access some of its AI tools. The fund’s engineers are also developing platforms to help India’s overburdened courts resolve cases faster and to also aid governments’ efforts to offer services more effectively, he said.

Investment strategy

Technology and financial services will be the top sectors that Premji Invest will be betting on, Kurien said. In private markets in India, the other two sectors in which the firm invests are consumer and healthcare.

In the United States, the investments are focused on the healthcare and technology sectors.

Premji, the reclusive-billionaire founder of Wipro, established the family office as a perpetual investment vehicle in 2006 to generate profits to support his philanthropic endeavours. He has donated most of his wealth to humanitarian causes in India.

Kurien, who earlier worked with Wipro for more than 16 years building up his operational chops, is scouting for investment targets in the US with the latest technologies that can be brought to India. Premji Invest’s 120-member team, working across its offices in Menlo Park, California, and Bengaluru, India, oversees investments.

The outfit returns about 5 per cent of its capital to Premji’s philanthropic foundation every year, Kurien said, declining to provide further details.

Premji Invest’s assets are allocated as private investments, publicly traded equities and investments into other funds, according to Kurien.

The 18-year-old firm has seen a fourfold surge in assets under management in the last eight years. “We are patient capital without an exit timeframe,” he said. BLOOMBERG