Divya Nettimi Is World's First Woman To Start A $1 Billion Hedge Fund; Know About Her Journey

Divya Nettimi, on October 3, began her day with over $1 billion of commitments, making it the most significant launch of a woman-led firm in the history of the industry and among the biggest to debut in 2022.

Avala Global has started investing most of the cash, with the remaining expected to arrive earlier in the first quarter, as per the people familiar with the matter, who requested to stay anonymous as the fund's inception was until then had not been publicly announced. A representative for the New York-based outfit refused to comment.

Know About Divya Nettimi

Nettimi studied Biomechanical Engineering at Stanford University from 2004-2008 and Masters of Business Administration (MBA) at Harvard Business School in 2014, where she also co-managed the premier institute's Alpha Fund as a student, reported The Quint.

She has four years of experience working as an associate for Goldman Sachs, focusing on its internal hedge fund. Further, she has worked for seven years as a portfolio manager for Viking Global Investors of Ole Andreas Halvorsen, where she worked until 2021.

In 2016, the 36-year-old was named among the Forbes' '30 Under 30 - Finance' list for "[i]nfluencing billions of dollars of stock investments at $30 billion hedge fund, focussing on the e-commerce and retail sectors." Last year, when she quit Viking Global, she was named in another Forbes article on the welcome spate of women launching hedge funds.

Women Leader In A Male-Dominated Industry

Nettimi, a portfolio manager who tended over $4 billion at the Viking Global Investors at Andreas Halvorsen prior to leaving last year, will bet against and on stocks in the consumer, business services and technology, media and telecom sectors while also supporting private corporations, the people said, reported Bloomberg.

The money collected so far doesn't include investments from Viking clients due to anti-competition agreements forbidding her from soliciting them until next month, November.

The portfolio manager's ability to drive now is exceptional, as a keen plunge in equity markets has made fundraising more challenging, with some of the most profuse tech-focused stock-pickers in the industry experiencing their worst year on record.

Nettimi and Gaonkar will be a part of an exclusive club of women leaders in a male-dominated industry, with their debuts coming almost ten years after Led Braga administered Systematica Investments, then an $8.3 billion collection of quant funds that were long drawn out from BlueCrest Capital Management of Michael Platt.

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