Mala Gaonkar - SurgoCap Partners की Founder | पॉडकास्ट | In Good Company | (Hindi version)

Risk equals permanent capital loss, not volatility

Gaonkar defines risk strictly as the loss of capital rather than market volatility, aiming to beat the market over a 3-5 year cycle while preserving downside protection through selective concentration.

Durability as the core differentiator

The strategy focuses on identifying 'truly great businesses' with long-lasting models that are difficult to dislodge, recognizing that such opportunities are extremely rare and require deep, patient analysis.

Four vertical concentration strategy

SurgoCap concentrates exclusively on enterprise data/technology, financial services, healthcare services, and industrial technologies, enabling thematic offense while avoiding factor rotation risks inherent in passive market structures.

Every business is a technology business

Gaonkar emphasizes that whether analyzing aerospace, medtech, or financial data companies, understanding the underlying tech stack is essential, particularly in sectors traditionally viewed as non-technology.

Old technologies drive new disruptions

Major disruptions often stem from mature technologies finding new applications, such as lithium-ion batteries invented in 1976 now transforming the auto industry, or GPUs originally designed for video games becoming the engine for AI.

The 'one pizza box' team philosophy

SurgoCap maintains an investment team smaller than Bezos' 'two-pizza' rule, operating as a single collaborative unit to foster cross-border thinking and creative idea generation that large structures cannot replicate.

Data science as a debiasing tool

Leveraging open-source machine learning and automated tools like survey bots and web scraping, the firm conducts robust third-party data checks at low cost to eliminate cognitive biases that manual research methods (common in the 1990s) could not address.

Medical imaging accuracy jumped 70%

AI has improved the accuracy, clarity, and speed of MRI, CT, and PET scans by approximately 70% in recent years, enabling better preventive care and reducing healthcare costs for aging populations.

Robotic surgery transforming 300 million annual procedures

With roughly 300 million surgeries performed worldwide annually, AI-powered robotics (via companies like Intuitive Surgical) are reducing surgical errors, accelerating medical training through haptic feedback, and improving therapeutic outcomes.