Divya Nettimi Is Set To Become The First Woman To Start A Billion Dollar Hedge Fund

Indian-origin investor Divya Nettimi is all set to script history by becoming the first woman to start her billion-dollar hedge fund. With more than $1 billion of commitments, Nettimi’s Avala Global becomes the most significant launch of a woman-led firm in the industry’s history. 

Nettimi, while studying at Harvard Business School played the role of co-manager and managed the premier institute’s Alpha Fund, which helped her a lot in her career and boosted her confidence. 

For four years, Nettimi worked as an associate for Goldman Sachs, focusing on its internal hedge fund. She also worked as a portfolio manager for seven years for Ole Andreas Halvorsen’s Viking Global Investors. Nettimi’s work at Viking as the head of global technology, media, and telecommunications investment is an anecdote of her skill, as she managed over $4 billion. In addition to this, she was also in charge of the company’s investments in Microsoft, Amazon.com, ServiceNow, and Singapore-based Sea Ltd.

Nettimi will become a part of an exclusive club of women leaders in an industry dominated by men as her debut is coming almost a decade after Leda Braga took the helm of Systematica Investments, then an $8.3 billion collection of quant funds that was spun out from Michael Platt’s BlueCrest Capital Management.

While Avala Global’s launch should be applauded, “it’s also damning that it’s a historical first in 2022” for a $4 trillion industry with 12,000 funds, said Dominique Mielle, a former partner at Canyon Partners.

by Shyma