What next for the Indian consumer?
Rebecca Lewis, Partner and Co-CEO India has been a perennially outsized allocation for Arisaig over our 28-year history of investing in the Asian consumer. A highlight of the last three years has been the outstanding performance of Trent the Indian apparel retailer targeting the rise of middle class India. In typical Arisaig fashion, this was […]
Indonesia: the importance of home
Rebecca Lewis, Partner and Co-CEO Household visits have also been key to our research in Indonesia over the past three years and these continue to reinforce the sacred nature of ‘home’ to consumers. We expect Indonesia’s per capita spending on home improvement to rise significantly from USD27 today – a level materially lower than regional […]
Vietnam: improving sentiment, empty fridges
Rebecca Lewis, Partner and Co-CEO After a challenging two years 2024 has been more positive for Vietnamese consumers thanks to an uptick in job opportunities as the “friend-shoring” factories finally started to come online. The messages on the banners in the photographs below that we took in the industrial parks of South Vietnam in July […]
Expensive (for a reason) India
Rebecca Lewis, Partner and Co-CEO We agree that valuations in India are the key area of focusfor investors thinking about this market as a destination of capital. Havingbeen investing in consumer businesses in the country since 1999 we know fromexperience that it is market where long-term investors can be rewarded. The double-digitUSD return of Arisaig’s […]
Our focus on purpose
Rebecca Lewis, Partner and Co-CEO Everyone knows that knowing your purpose is important in life; we know it as individuals and we say it to guide our children. For the more data driven amongst us, empirical studies have shown that organisations that are clear about their purpose are more successful, and more resilient. So, how […]
Women rising – what Indian and American women have in common
Rebecca Lewis, Partner and Co-CEO In the 1960s and 1970s women’s participation in the workforce in the US increased significantly. Yes, expanding education supported and evolving societal mindsets had a part to play but it was the increased use of contraceptive pill that was particularly critical in reducing birthrates. Birth rates in the US declined […]
The big opportunity from small changes in India
We have been privileged to host many of our endowment clients and family offices in India so far this year. Given half of our investments are in India, this reflects our long-standing outsized exposure to the country but also their own growing interest in how to best reflect the world’s largest democracy and world’s fifth […]
Investing in the rise of time-poor consumers in the Philippines
Central to Arisaig’s investment thesis is that dominant consumer businesses that can compound earnings in a steady manner over the very long-term are great long-term investments for allocators looking to capture emerging Asia’s rise. These businesses sell everyday essentials to billions of people and, given consumption levels are a fraction that of developed markets, there […]
The ‘Indian Dream’
It is an incredible privilege as investors to be able to travel in emerging Asia and witness the positive change on the ground. This is especially true in India where Arisaig have been investing since the late 1990s. As we try to make sense of the world around us, one idea that strikes us is […]
Consumers in China – down but not out
Our research team made two visits to China in the last month, visiting Shenzhen, Changsha (Hunan province), Hefei (Anhui province), and Shanghai. The recurring message we heard from companies we met during our trip is that, whilst the streets are buzzing and traffic is back, consumer sentiment remains weak. Consumers are consuming but, less than […]
