Building Investment Research Primers for the D. E. Shaw Ventures Desk

Ektha supports the D. E. Shaw ventures desk by building research primers for companies the New York team is actively evaluating. When the NY analysts identify a potential portfolio company, typically at Series A or B stage, they brief the India team to produce a comprehensive research output that gives them a full picture of the company before they decide whether to pursue the investment.

Ektha's primers are one-stop research packages: they cover what the company does, how it performs, how the market perceives it, who its competitors are, and what the addressable market looks like. She uses a range of financial data platforms and public sources to pull together information, and she collates customer sentiment to give the NY team a read on how the market actually feels about the company.

For competitive situations, where multiple companies are raising at the same time, she maps the competitive landscape across all of them so the NY team can compare directly. The primers are designed to be self-contained: an analyst in New York should be able to read the primer and form a view on whether the investment is worth pursuing without needing to go back for more context.

She has built these primers across multiple sectors, with particular depth in cybersecurity and SaaS.