In 2009, with just a single investor backing him, 25-year-old Nalin Moniz, CFA, left his job at Goldman Sachs to pursue his entrepreneurial dream in his home country of India.
There, he started Forefront Capital, a company that married his previous experience with a then-unexplored sector in India: alternative investments. Three years later, Forefront Capital became the first licensed domestic hedge fund in India. Moniz had been a key player in founding a new financial subsector.
Moniz was born in India and lived there until he moved to the United States to attend the University of Pennsylvania on a scholarship. He graduated magna cum laude with degrees in finance, statistics, and computer science in 2005, after which he joined Goldman Sachs to work in their asset management business. But in 2008, the financial crisis cast an uncertain shadow over his career prospects and the asset management industry as a whole.
Moniz founded Forefront with this transformation in mind, but founding the company was just the first step. India's market liberalization had not yet caught up in the alternative investment management space: there was no formal regulatory category, investors knew little about the asset class, and infrastructure was lacking.
Moniz didn't wait for these problems to solve themselves. He lent his hand in efforts to address them one by one. Working alongside India's government, he helped draft asset management regulations. Forefront became the first alternative investment fund in history to receive a Category III license from the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI). Along with CFA Institute and other global collaborators, he helped to introduce best practices, talent, and technology to India.