The 18-year-old Indian American Rishi Bagaria from New Jersey is the youngest partner at an investment firm, Thessalus Capital.
Bagaria, who turned to be a partner of the investment firm in 2018, has come a long way from being an analyst to junior partner and director of the company. Bagaria had started out at the company, founded and helmed by his elder brother and family friends, in 2015.
Mitchell Ng, Managing Director of Thessalus Capital told CNBC that Bagaria is a “rising star in the investment world”.
Presented to the world of investment by his uncle, Bagari had every time sought to learn more. “Whenever we would go over for dinner or Thanksgiving, when I was around 10, my uncle would pull me and my older brother aside and tell us about stocks he was investing in, how cool the market was and what opportunities there were,” Bagaria told CNBC.
As both Rishi Bagaria and his elder brother, Raj, were curious in investment, their father assisted them to set up a virtual stock market account. “My dad wanted us to treat it like a real account, so we had to do proper research. We had to handle it like it was actual money,” said Rishi Bagaria, whose father runs a recycling and sustainability business and whose mother is a holistic healer.
After Bagaria’s father gave him $2,000 to invest in stocks, he started buying “blue chip stocks”, since he “didn’t want to be too risky,” the report suggests.
Thessalus Capital, where Bagaria is at present a junior partner, is run by young financiers. Aside from Bagaria’s elder brother Raj, the Ng brothers Kenneth and Mitchell, Bagaria’s family friends, are as well the founders. The firm, named after an Ancient Greek physician, is centered on healthcare companies as they feel it is their “area of expertise.”
According to the report, the firm was launched in Princeton, New Jersey, with $370,000 in seed funding. Of that, $150,000 came from the brothers’ parents. The report states that $220,000 was raised through personal networks.
Currently, the company has nine investors (including Rishi’s parents) and 15 team members. While Rishi Bagaria is the youngest member of that team, all others are either in college or graduate school.
As a part of his new position, Bagaria will now make a decision on how to invest company cash and lead an analyst’s team, reviewing their research and pitch desks before they get presented to the upper management.
-Sowmya
