Impact’21 | Manish Gupta, Co-Founder & Co-Chairman of Techne Infiniti Ventures
Transcript of Alan Olsen interviewing Manish Gupta, Co-Founder & Co-Chairman of Techne Infiniti Ventures at Impact’21:
Alan Olsen: I’m visiting here today with Manish Gupta. Manish, Welcome.
Manish Gupta:Thank you!
Alan Olsen: So Manish you’re with the Shashi Group. What brings you to the conference today at Impact?
Manish Gupta: Well, I have known Eric for a very long time, Eric is a good friend, we actually went to school together, same business school. So then very, you know, kind of aware of what he’s been doing. And last year, I came in as a venture partner on the group. With impact venture, I’m fascinated by the stuff these guys are doing some of the companies they’re investing in, and just the team that’s there. So I’m very, I’m a big believer in Impact and trying to see what I can do to help.
Alan Olsen: So it just says, you know, for the listeners here, you have a background in not just venture capital, but also hospitality industry.
Manish Gupta: Yes! It’s kind of an interesting thing. I’m a computer engineer, by training. I actually kind of did the Silicon Valley life; I started companies, sold my companies, and then actually started investing in hospitality. It was supposed to be just a passive investment, which it was a small kind of a lot next to Apple, a company called Apple in 2007 when that just launched the iPhone. Actually did very well, so we ended up making a lot more investments. Today, we have a portfolio of about 10, hotels, mostly in Silicon Valley. So that just kind of was an interesting journey, from technology to hospitality. And then back to technology, because I’ve just launched a venture fund, where we’re actually going to invest in hospitality technology, which we expect to be about one to $3 trillion value creation over the next 10 years.
Alan Olsen: What do you see the hospitality industry going? When you’re looking at hospitality technology.
Manish Gupta: We actually believe it’s going to be dramatically different from what it is today. And it’s there’ll be some sort of leapfrogging. This industry ranks pretty much kind of at the bottom of the list when it comes to digitization. It’s behind mining, it’s behind government, it’s behind construction, it’s like one of the last industries to get digitized. So there’s a lot of work that needs to be done, the technologies are most of the technology is already there. So we got to adapt this to hospitality. So we think that is the hotel of the future would look very, very different. A lot of the touch points that you see today are going to go away, like the front desk, the check ins, the concierge, and all of that, and all the touch points will be around food and beverage is what we believe. And that’s what the subsequent be automated and on demand.
Alan Olsen: You know, bring us up to date through this last 12 months to COVID. How has that impacted this industry?
Manish Gupta: Well, it’s been quite interesting. Initially, we thought everything’s gonna come to a standstill, and it did for a few months. And then all of a sudden people, you know, just wanted to go out and travel. So the leisure market just took off significantly. To the extent that the prices have actually were just unbelievable. There was some people have told me that they’re getting prices today that they would have expected to get 10 years later. It’s just been that dramatic of a shift in the leisure market. The business market has been a little bit of a different story, because of a lot of the large corporations still not open. And business is being impacted in the suburban open markets. So we expect that to come back as well. Getting to about 80% in 2023 and about 100% in 2024.
Alan Olsen: Manish, it’s been a pleasure having you with us today.
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This transcript was generated by software and may not accurately reflect exactly what was said.
Alan Olsen, is the Host of the American Dreams Show and the Managing Partner of GROCO.com. GROCO is a premier family office and tax advisory firm located in the San Francisco Bay area serving clients all over the world.
Alan L. Olsen, CPA, Wikipedia Bio
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Manish co-founded Techne Infiniti Ventures and serves as the Co-Chairman & Managing
Director of the company. Techne is a venture fund focused on investing in next generation
hospitality technology startups and platforms. Manish also co-founded Shashi Group and serves
as its Co-Chairman. Shashi owns and operates one of the most premium hospitality asset-
portfolio in Silicon Valley.
Manish has worked extensively in the technology industry before venturing into hospitality &
investments. He has experience as a founder & CEO, and has led & structured joint ventures,
acquisitions, partnerships, sales, operations, and Investments across technology and hospitality
industries. He has led over a billion dollars of deals and has structured debt and equity
transactions with some of the leading private equity funds, hedge funds, pension funds, credit
unions, banks and other financial institutions in the country.
Prior to Shashi, Manish was the founder and CEO of Panache Services. Manish built Panache
from a power point concept to a profitable global technology company spanning three
continents. Panache provided software engineering & platform solutions to some of the leading
software, telecom, biotech, technology infrastructure, opensource, database, and
semiconductor companies in the world. Previously, as an officer and EVP Operations at Zamba
Corporation, a publicly traded technology company, Manish helped transform Zamba from a
niche technology player into a leading integrated CRM and data analytics solutions provider in
the US. Under Manish’s leadership Zamba was recognized for the first time by leading industry
analyst (Gartner Group and IDC) as a leader for CRM services, challenging the incumbent “Big
5” consulting companies. Manish also worked with KPMG Consulting as the Global Director and
led the CRM solutions for North America and worked with Ernst & Young LLP, New York office
in a variety of management roles. Manish started out writing artificial intelligence & expert
systems code for microprocessors.
Manish has a BS in Computer Engineering from the National Institute of Technology, Karnataka
and an MBA in Global Service Operations Management from William E. Simon School of
Business, University of Rochester, New York. Manish lives with his wife and 2 daughters in
Saratoga, California and enjoys hiking, biking, travel, cooking and California reds.
Bio Courtesy of techneinfiniti.com
Alan is managing partner at Greenstein, Rogoff, Olsen & Co., LLP, (GROCO) and is a respected leader in his field. He is also the radio show host to American Dreams. Alan’s CPA firm resides in the San Francisco Bay Area and serves some of the most influential Venture Capitalist in the world. GROCO’s affluent CPA core competency is advising High Net Worth individual clients in tax and financial strategies. Alan is a current member of the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (S.I.E.P.R.) SIEPR’s goal is to improve long-term economic policy. Alan has more than 25 years of experience in public accounting and develops innovative financial strategies for business enterprises. Alan also serves on President Kim Clark’s BYU-Idaho Advancement council. (President Clark lead the Harvard Business School programs for 30 years prior to joining BYU-idaho. As a specialist in income tax, Alan frequently lectures and writes articles about tax issues for professional organizations and community groups. He also teaches accounting as a member of the adjunct faculty at Ohlone College.