In November 2025, I hosted a fireside chat at Columbia University with Deepak Gurnani, founder of Versor Investments, a $1.4 billion [1] quantitative hedge fund based in New York with offices in New York and Mumbai. Deepak spent two decades at Investcorp, where he built and led the firm’s hedge fund division.

In 2013, he stepped away to found Versor with a singular goal: to build a research-driven quantitative firm focused on leveraging alternative data. This conversation is a continuation of the story we began on Odds on Open with Nishant Gurnani and DeWayne Louis, two of Versor’s partners. In that episode, we explored the systematic strategies that Versor runs. In this fireside chat, we go upstream to understand how it all began.

We talk about:

– Deepak’s journey from IIT to Citigroup to Investcorp

– How the hedge fund industry looked in the 1990s versus today

– What it really takes to spin out and build a quant firm from scratch

– Why Versor adopted cloud computing and alternative data years before most peers

– How small firms compete with giants like Citadel, Millennium, and Jane Street

– What Deepak looks for when hiring researchers

– Why “value proposition” is the starting point for any new fund

– The mindset required to build something that lasts

Versor LinkedIn Page: https://www.linkedin.com/company/versorinvestments/

Research Repository (“Athenaeum”): https://www.versorinvest.com/athenaeum/

1. Data as of December 31, 2024. AUM as per SEC definition for the purposes of item 5F on the ADV Part 1a. For important disclosures, please visit: https://www.versorinvest.com/terms-and-conditions/