I'm Manu Arya. I operate businesses — including in renewable energy — and I invest my own capital in Indian private markets. Yaami Partners is the structure I built around a rule I refuse to break: I don't put anyone into a deal my own money isn't in.
That rule sounds obvious. In practice it's rare. Most of what reaches HNIs in India is distribution — someone earning a fee for passing paper along. The person forwarding the deck carries none of the downside. I've sat on the receiving end of that machine, and I built the opposite of it.
I have invested my own capital — and facilitated investments for members — in rounds alongside prominent Shark Tank India investors, one of India's most celebrated sportspersons, founders of India's largest retail broking house, a leading D2C founder, and institutional early-stage investors including a well-known micro-VC fund and one of India's largest angel networks.
On the founder side, the same instinct applies in reverse. I've watched too many good companies burn months with introduction brokers who add a name to a CC line and call it value. When I take a mandate, I work the way a cofounder would — on the numbers, the narrative, the sequencing — because my name and often my own cheque are attached to the outcome.
What I am not: a stockbroker, a wealth manager, or a distributor of financial products. What I am: an investor who shares his deal flow with a small circle of people who value discipline over noise — and a working partner to a handful of founders a year whose businesses clear a deliberately high bar.