Star Mountain Capital announced that Ravi Ugale has joined as a Managing Director and member of the firm’s investment committee for its secondaries strategies. With ~$4 billion in assets under management, alignment of interest is a core value of Star Mountain’s investor-centric business, including being 100% employee-owned and sharing investment profits with 100% of its U.S.-based full-time team. Star Mountain is a purpose-built business with one of the largest teams focused on investing in established, profitable, small and medium-sized private U.S. businesses (the “lower middle-market”) which represents approximately 50% of U.S. GDP.
Ravi Ugale has over 30 years of private capital fund and direct investment experience, business operations, governance, and leadership experience. His alternatives investment experience includes private credit, secondaries, private equity, venture capital and real assets.
“With over 10 years of success in private credit and private equity secondaries, and with growing opportunities in these asset classes, we’re thrilled to welcome Ravi to join our team.” said Brett Hickey, Star Mountain Capital Founder & CEO. “Having known Ravi for over a decade, I have always been impressed with his knowledge, thoughtfulness, passion, and values. We are excited for the additional leadership, capabilities and expertise he will bring to the enterprise, our team, investors, and portfolio in an aligned manner.”
“I was intrigued with Star Mountain’s distinctive business plan to provide investors with high quality, customizable and diversified access to one of the largest and most inefficient markets targeting attractive risk-adjusted returns and low market correlation as a potential benefit to an investor’s portfolio. Having witnessed Brett and Star Mountain execute against their purpose-built business plan creating what is now I believe a world-class business, I am excited to join at this inflection point where we can deliver compelling value for global institutional and individual investors,” said Ravi Ugale. “Over the past 30 years, I am convinced that the highest performing fund managers across economic cycles focus on economic alignment, steadfast values and governance which Star Mountain exemplifies. As the investment industry has matured, I find specialized businesses like Star Mountain to be a compelling value proposition and am excited to be a part of the team.”
Mr. Ugale has 30+ years of private credit, secondaries, private equity, venture capital, investment banking and business operations experience. He was a YPO member for 10 years and has substantial board and c-level executive operating experience. He was also an active member of the governance and thought leadership Institutional Limited Partners Association (ILPA) alternative investment organization where Star Mountain Capital is a signatory to ILPA’s Diversity In Action Initiative.
Most recently Mr. Ugale spent 12+ years from GenSpring Family Offices through to Truist via various mergers and acquisitions where he was a Managing Director and Head of Manager Research for Private Capital Strategies. Mr. Ugale led the investment advisory group team responsible for sourcing, underwriting and portfolio monitoring of alternative investment funds across private credit, secondaries and private equity at Truist Advisory Services, Inc. a wholly owned division of $500+ billion in assets Truist Bank (NYSE: TFC). In addition, he oversaw selection and coverage of illiquid and semi-liquid long dated assets within private equity, private credit, private real estate, and private real assets. Additionally, Mr. Ugale provided client advisory, education, and subject matter expertise to Truist advisors and clients on the private capital asset class which included endowments, foundations, family offices and high-net-worth individuals. He has evaluated and underwritten hundreds of private credit, private equity and secondaries fund managers.
Prior to joining the Investment Advisory Group at GenSpring Family Offices in 2011 (which was later acquired by SunTrust Bank which subsequently merged with BB&T to form Truist), Mr. Ugale was a Managing Director at Catalyst Financial focused on principal investing and M&A for private small and medium-sized businesses and public micro-cap companies.
Prior to Catalyst, Mr. Ugale spent 10 years as a Partner & Investment Committee Member at Crossbow, a private investment firm where he sourced, led and successfully exited several of the firm’s direct investments in the information technology, business services and healthcare sectors.
Before moving into the alternative investments industry, Mr. Ugale spent nearly 12 years gaining substantial hands-on business operating experience at leading organizations including IBM, Xerox and Siemens in the United States.
Mr. Ugale graduated from Pune University in India with a degree in instrumentation engineering with a specialization in biomedical instrumentation. He received an MS in Computer Science & Electrical Engineering from Marquette University and an MBA in Finance & International Business from Florida Atlantic University.