Ankur Bansal, Co-Founder, BlackSoil, a new-age Venture Debt platform

Ankur Bansal, Co-Founder, BlackSoil, a new-age Venture Debt platform

• Ankur is the Co-founder and Director of BlackSoil Group.
• He leads the execution efforts across our large corporate clients in strategic discussions, idea origination, M&A execution, investment thesis, and negotiations.

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Ankur Bansal has shifted from equity to debt after being in equity for a long time. He never planned on getting into debt but one thing led to another, and eventually, he got into debt investment. One should always have a portion of debt in their portfolio to diversify its risk. Today we talk to Mr. Bansal about his journey and how one can incorporate debt into their portfolio for risk aversion.

About Ankur Bansal

• Ankur is the Co-founder and Director of BlackSoil Group.
• He leads the execution efforts across our large corporate clients in strategic discussions, idea origination, M&A execution, investment thesis, and negotiations.
• Ankur is a CFA and a CA with a large network of venture capitalists, private equity investors, institutional investors, and investment bankers and has extensive investment banking experience with major banks such as J.P. Morgan, Citi, and JM Morgan Stanley.

07:44 – How do you reduce your risk on the debt?

• Security on your money is more of a mental comfort. The more you know where you are putting your money, the more comfort you get.
• We have to take a comprehensive view before deciding to lend the money.
• We focus on who the other investors are and how much skin do the founders have in the game.
• We also try to target the companies that are in the growth stage and not in the initial phases where they are typically still trying to figure out the product or the market.

12:36 – Do you get involved in the governance of the company that you lend to?

• We are not active investors, and we do not try to get into the daily governance of the companies.
• From a debt investor’s perspective, we are very active. We try to assess the company, and we keep monitoring the company because that is critical for us.
• We get regular monthly or bimonthly updates from the companies that we lend to so that we have a good track of how the company is doing.

16:12 – How important is the leadership team when you evaluate any company?

• It is one of the most critical aspects that we look into because ultimately we are betting on the people of the company.
• The company performs as well as its members only. We also look for how passionate the founders are and how good they are at taking feedback.
• We look for how much the founders are close to reality and if they consistently deliver what they say. We have to deal with people in the company, so it becomes very important to look for good people.

19:21 – What kind of work are you doing at BlackSoil advisory?

• BlackSoil Capital is our main firm which is our NBFC space from where we operate all our lending activities.
• We have this unique structure where we are an NBFC and a credit fund also. This helps us to finance the startups and also leverage our equity like a typical bank.
• So the equity that we have raised from our sponsors gets utilized for financing the startups, and also it is leveraged to function as a typical bank.

RESOURCES:

You can connect with Ankur Bansal | LinkedIn

• Ankur is the Co-founder and Director of BlackSoil Group.
• He leads the execution efforts across our large corporate clients in strategic discussions, idea origination, M&A execution, investment thesis, and negotiations.
• Ankur is a CFA and a CA with a large network of venture capitalists, private equity investors, institutional investors, and investment bankers and has extensive investment banking experience with major banks such as JP Morgan, Citi, and JM Morgan Stanley.