“At what point do you rationalise that response, Ravi?” Mahesh Muralidhar nudges me. He is grinning like someone who has just been asked the same riddle twice, as I question his life’s mission with scepticism.
A young millionaire who quits the rat race and returns home to give back to society. And he chooses to become a politician (with the National Party) to bring about that change. It’s a story your heart wants to believe but the mind doesn’t. It’s suspiciously spectacular.
“Remember what drives somebody,” the 45-year-old points out, as I remind him how made-to-order his story appears to be for a politician. Every time he tells it.
“I understand my irrelevance,” he reasons, sitting across from me at a cafe in Auckland Central. “I'm extremely lucky for what I have.”
Mahesh was born in the southern Indian state of Kerala and later moved to New Zealand. “My father told me my only job is to leave the world better than he had. That's the job to be done.”
Mahesh isn’t dealing in stories alone. He believes his work is the evidence for his vision. His venture capital firm Phase One Ventures recently successfully closed its $2.1 million early-stage fund, investing in 14 high-growth technology companies in New Zealand.
The firm, founded in 2021, is being credited with helping ignite a new generation of Kiwi startups. Nearly 85 per cent of its portfolio companies have secured follow-on institutional funding from A-list funds.
Mahesh was among the founding team of the popular graphic design platform Canva, and he is a creature of the start-up world. He returned to New Zealand from Australia in 2020, and started offering free support and advice – out of his house in Parnell – on how to build a huge powerful startup.
“Every Thursday, I would have these strategy sessions where entrepreneurs would come in and I would breakdown their business. Twenty to 30 other startup founders would be sitting around while I did that on a whiteboard,” Mahesh recalls.
The companies he helped found have drawn between $80 million and $100 million from such global giants as Blackbird, GD1, Icehouse and GTM Fund.
“Collectively, these companies have created more than 100 new jobs in the country’s tech sector, underlining the fund’s impact on both innovation and employment.”
This, Mahesh says, is both a passion and purpose for him. Breed the next generation of Kiwi entrepreneurs and create wealth that will lift New Zealand’s economy and create opportunities. That promise, he says, also speaks to his political vision.
Mahesh was the National candidate from Auckland Central for Elections 2023. He won nearly 38 per cent of the candidate vote, more than the 34 per cent party vote National polled. The fact he lost to Green Party star Chloe Swarbrick would have offered him some solace.
Having successfully closed the initial round of funding for Phase One Ventures, Mahesh is hoping his prodigies will carry the spark of innovation he has lit. “How many years do you think before these 14 [entrepreneurs] can, you know, go out of there and want to mentor more?” he points out.
“My goal was to make sure that they are nurtured such that they get to a point where the market starts pulling. Once the market starts pulling, as I experienced with Canva, the market teaches.”
So what’s next for him? “I'm keeping myself open to the political journey,” says Mahesh.
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