Asia’s emergence as a private markets fundraising destination is best described as gradual. In the past decade, it has become more noticeable: local LPs expanding global alternatives programmes; sovereign wealth funds opening outposts overseas; global asset managers hiring investor relations talent region-wide; and US mid-market GPs adding more Asian stops to fundraising roadshows.

Hemal Mirani predates this uptick by 20 years. She was part of a HarbourVest Partners team assigned to back Asia’s emerging GPs that ended up cultivating the LP side as well. The region now accounts for about 20% of the firm’s global assets under management (AUM) – with new fundraising often relying on longstanding institutional relationships initiated through early outreach.

“This was the first exposure for many LPs to private equity. You’d be talking about funds you’ve invested in, the market, the industry. If they were travelling to the US, we would arrange to have them meet our team in Boston, do some translation, offer some insights into how to go about building a portfolio,” said Mirani, now a managing director and APAC head at HarbourVest.

“Investors would often ask for case studies, so we provided those. When it came to understanding how to conduct due diligence, we would host a lot of knowledge sharing sessions. And if they wanted to invest on their own, we would provide references, explaining why we had invested with someone or why we were no longer invested with someone.”

Those relationships have evolved as the LPs have become more sophisticated, shifting from commingled fund-of-funds to tailored separately managed accounts (SMAs). HarbourVest’s client list has grown as well, leveraging the flywheel effect in which one recommendation led to another. But it started small, with even a USD 10m commitment out of Japan moving the needle.

“Australia and Japan were the two markets where initially we had a lot of success,” said Mirani. “During the Asian financial crisis, we were not deploying as much capital in the region, so I had a lot of opportunities to talk to institutional investors about how we could help them with their global private equity programmes. Learning that side of the business was fabulous for me.”

Starting point

An appetite for adventure – entwined with a desire for professional challenges – is what brought Mirani into Asian private equity and made those meetings in Tokyo much more manageable.

Her proficiency in Japanese, for example, is the byproduct of a father-daughter dispute. Mirani grew up in India at a time when women were generally expected to settle down early and start a family. Unenamoured by this path, she proposed studying overseas instead, only to meet with a less than enthusiastic response from her more traditionally minded father.

“After many long arguments, I said, ‘One year overseas, country of your choosing.’ He looked for a place where I didn’t know the language and wouldn’t be able to do anything – thinking that I would come home after a few months of struggle,” said Mirani.

“That was Japan. I showed up in 1990, not speaking a word of Japanese. I was a language student initially and then got a job with a local bank. I was no different from any local employee. I wore a company uniform, engaged with customers in Japanese, and in the canteen, it was ladies on one side, men on the other.”

This was followed by business school in the US and a summer placement with Lazard’s investment team in Hong Kong. Private equity was still nascent in the region, but full of intriguing possibilities. Hong Kong was the hub, so Mirani returned on graduation in 1997 to work for CLSA Capital Partners.

Three months after that, Philip Bilden sold her on the prospect of helping build HarbourVest’s Asia footprint. The firm had previously addressed the region on a fly in-fly out basis. It wanted to establish an investment team on the ground to back managers more systematically. Early portfolio GPs included H&Q Asia Pacific, Transpac Capital, PAMA Group, and AsiaVest Partners.

The 1997 Asian financial crisis was a watershed moment, not just because it encouraged HarbourVest to target the region’s LPs as well, but for the surge in opportunities on the GPs side as distressed corporate parents started divesting assets. Asia witnessed its first feeding frenzy as global buyout investors arrived and searched for footholds in a fast-evolving environment.

“Returns were good, but conditions changed quickly – more groups were coming in, prices were going up, Australia had been discovered, everyone wanted to do more in Japan,” Mirani recalled.

During this period, some of the earliest country-focused managers were established, from Pacific Equity Partners in Australia to Advantage Partners in Japan to ChrysCapital Partners in India. It was also when the first generation of China-focused venture capital firms broke through, a development that suffered its own blip with the dotcom bubble.

A key challenge for HarbourVest and other allocators was that most managers lacked track records. Many reference calls and a degree of creativity were required – for example, looking at the value creation capabilities demonstrated by founding teams in prior careers as consultants. Underwriting efforts were emboldened by applying what HarbourVest had learned elsewhere to Asia.

“We could take what we had seen in the US and Europe, and say there are certain fundamental truths about achieving success such as the sharing of GP economics, the decision-making, and the vision the GP is trying to realise,” said Mirani.

“By then, we had several decades of experience and data operating in global markets so we could tell GPs what we’ve seen in terms of best practices, how you go about building a business.”

LP to GP

The combination of strong macro themes and evolving private equity infrastructure – helped by global managers ramping up their activity, and ultimately, spinouts from those firms – sent Asian private equity into an early bloom. During the five years through 2007, annual fundraising, investment, and exits grew 9x, 7.5x and 11.5x, respectively, according to AVCJ Research.

Inevitably, the region was hit by the global financial crisis, although not all markets were impacted equally. Mirani saw the fallout through the prism of a GP rather than an LP, having joined CVC in 2009 as head of investor relations in Asia and chief administrative officer.

During this period, large-cap GPs busied themselves with triage, reviving investments or writing them off, retrenching to core markets and repositioning. CVC was no exception and these accumulated dynamics contributed to a disappointing Fund II and challenging conditions for raising Fund IV.

It’s to Mirani’s credit that the fund closed on USD 3.5bn in 2014, smaller than the prior vintage but above the USD 3bn target. This coincided with CVC shifting its geographic focus and ultimately rebuilding its track record.

Sitting on the other side of the LP-GP divide was instructive in two other respects. First, it was an opportunity to establish relationships with more institutional investors. While the product was different, some of the skillsets were not – specifically, adapting a narrative in response to changing circumstances and communicating it in a way that built confidence in the mission.

Second, Mirani gained firsthand knowledge of what it takes to be a GP. Having spent years talking to managers about deal pipelines and conversion rates, she witnessed the process of conversion and the efforts that go into value creation and exit planning.

“It brought home how culturally different these global firms are in terms of how they invest, how they hire, how they operate,” Mirani explained. “This experience of working for a GP helped me refine my own investment and due diligence process.”

The return

The stint at CVC lasted six years as Mirani considered her own motivations. Returning to HarbourVest wasn’t part of any grand career plan, but as discussions progressed, the notion became increasingly appealing. She was excited about shaping HarbourVest’s next phase of development in Asia.

The firm’s evolving profile reflected the maturation of the Asian ecosystem. On one hand, the number of LPs willing to allocate to private markets, and the size and sophistication of their engagement, was increasing. On the other, Asia-based private equity firms were more aware of the role co-investment and secondaries could play in their business.

An early landmark co-investment came in 2009 when HarbourVest served as co-underwriter of a privatisation of Australia-based MYOB alongside Archer Capital. Since then, the pace of co-investment in the region has risen from one or two transactions a year to more than a dozen, with deployment consistently topping USD 500m.

In 2011, the firm was one of the anchor investors in the region’s first GP-led secondary transaction as the team that ultimately became TPG NewQuest spun out from Bank of America Merrill Lynch. HarbourVest is now one of the most prolific secondaries investors in Asia and has led some of the largest deals. Across co-investment and secondaries, establishing credibility is key.

“You must find the best investment opportunities, convince your global investment committee, and generate attractive returns,” Mirani said. “Secondaries stayed niche for a while longer than co-investment. But we knew we needed to invest in talent and train those individuals in the HarbourVest way of investing and approach to underwriting deals.”

The firm’s physical footprint grew in line with the business opportunity in terms of fundraising and investment. In the past 10 years, offices have opened in Seoul, Singapore and Sydney, complementing existing bases in Hong Kong, Tokyo, and Beijing. There are currently 30 investment professionals across all strategies region wide.

Evolving Asia

At the GP level, Asian private equity has institutionalised across multiple facets, from an emphasis on value creation to sector specialisation, albeit with the same kinds of geographic idiosyncrasies. Other issues continue to loom over the industry, notably exit planning and succession planning, which tap into broader LP concerns about the region’s ability to deliver sustained outperformance.

Consequently, HarbourVest’s dialogue with GPs revisits key tenets of fund management: ensuring portfolio companies are exit-ready because windows open and shut quickly; deploying as much as possible of one fund before launching the next, because capital efficiency ultimately benefits GPs and LPs; focusing on retaining and incentivising team members to build for the long term.

Succession has yet to play out in a meaningful way in Asia because many private equity firms are still young. However, it’s a conversation HarbourVest has whenever underwriting a new fund, conscious that generational change is a wrench in founder-led or founder-built operations.

“Will they bring new equal partners into the partnership, or will the firm always be led by one individual?” said Mirani. “There’s nothing wrong with being led by an individual – some private equity firms set up like that have created a lot of value for us – but you want to understand how they are thinking about building the business and ensuring talent stays with them.”

This feeds into the notion of perpetual evolution. The case for Asia’s inclusion in a global private equity portfolio, despite recent performance lagging North America and Europe, is underpinned by the need for diversification because one cycle doesn’t necessarily set the pattern for the next. Beyond that, it is about picking the best ways to get exposure.

“You need primaries, secondaries and co-investment. As a firm, you need to have a diversified investment platform, recognising that at certain times one of the strategies may not be generating the returns you expect,” said Mirani.

“If a market isn’t good for primaries, you can wait it out. Get your resources for secondaries and co-invest going, and then there will be a time when the market swings back for primaries.”

The relatively wide dispersion in returns between top-quartile managers and the rest in Asia means manager selection is also crucial. But all geographies encounter periods of difficulty that may drive turnover within their manager communities. This can be a healthy development, Mirani observed, facilitating the emergence of new teams, strategies, and skillsets.

LPs must therefore stay on top of trends and think about what they want to be doing in the next cycle. In this context, Asia remains a challenging – and interesting – proposition.

“You know the old proverb: may you live in interesting times. In the almost 30 years I’ve been in the industry, I’ve never had a dull day,” said Mirani. “Just looking at the wide range of economies, companies, and entrepreneurial talent, I have great confidence in the future growth of our industry in Asia.”

Hemal Mirani won the Special Achievement Award at the AVCJ Private Equity & Venture Capital Awards 2025. The award recognises an Asia-focused investor who has distinguished themselves over a long period of time in facilitating the growth of the PE and VC industry.