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Show Summary
In this episode of the Real Estate Pros podcast, host Q Edmonds interviews Sanjay Raghavaraju, founder and CEO of 33 Holdings, a private equity firm focused on wealth creation through real estate investments. Sanjay shares his journey into real estate, his focus on innovative asset classes, and the importance of personal development and relationships in business. He discusses the challenges faced in entrepreneurship, the significance of community building, and his future goals for raising capital and expanding his ventures.
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Investor Fuel Show Transcript:
Sanjay Raghavaraju (00:00)
I spend literally every day in the morning three hours. Three hours for myself. That’s all I do. I wake up, I meditate, I go do yoga, I do exercise, I do some scribing, I do some ideation. It is my time and that is the most precious time for me. Morning from five till probably eight o’clock after which I do some things and get back to work and stuff. That is by far the most important operating system I call it.Quentin (02:00)
Welcome to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I am your host, Q Edmonds, and I’m excited. I’m excited just to be on camera, just to be able to talk, just to have this guy here with me. This guy, y’all don’t even understand. I appreciate this man so much. And listen, I think we both gonna understand this. Let’s dive right into it, right? We’re gonna waste no time. We’re gonna seize the moment. And so I thank you so much for being here. Thank you so much.for your time, for your persistence. And listen, I just wanna introduce you guys to a man who, if you wanna know about wealth, how to build wealth, this is your man. He has so many kind of ways that he can help you within real estate. And I want him to talk all about it. So I’m so excited to try to get the peek through the lens of Mr. Sanjay. Mr. Sanjay, if you wanna give him the last name, him your full government, I’ll leave that up to you.
But listen, sir, thank you so much for being here today. How you feeling,
Sanjay Raghavaraju (03:02)
Feeling good, sir. Thank you very much for having me on theQuentin (03:05)
Absolutely, absolutely. So listen, I want you to take us into your world. I want you to allow us to see things through your lens. I want you to let us know what you’re involved in. So tell us what your main focus is these days. If you want to tell us a little bit of how you got started, I think we would love to hear that. And then also tell us what markets you’re operating in as well, sir.Sanjay Raghavaraju (03:24)
You asked for three things. How we get started, what is my focus and what are the markets, right? So I’ll try to give a very brief intro of who we are and what we do. My name is Sanjay Raghavaraju. I’m the founder and CEO of 33 Holdings. We are a boutique private equity firm. We are in the wealth creation business to make sure our investors, stakeholders, partners and employees are all able to create wealth.Quentin (03:29)
You got it, yes sir.Sanjay Raghavaraju (03:53)
through investments into real estate with focus in ⁓ two asset classes particularly. ⁓ From a private equity standpoint into built to rent in the residential space where we build starter single family homes, town homes and multi-family starter homes. And on the other end, we are also focused on industrial storage, particularly truck parking, ⁓ tractor trailer parkings.⁓ and a few heavy equipment storage areas and everything, mostly industrial outdoor storage is the asset class. And through our venture capital arm, we do focus on ⁓ prop tech investments and also central AI investments. So we’re in business of creating wealth. We operate mostly in the Southeast ⁓ US region, with Atlanta being our headquarters where we are based out of. I also have roots into ⁓ India, Hyderabad in particular.
which is also a growing hub for investments from a real estate or from a data center AI perspective. So we’re heavily vested in
those areas, parts of the world. We do ⁓ go into capital raising efforts into Middle East, mostly Abu Dhabi and Dubai. So we are focused in those areas in terms of raising capital and then bringing them to the US and or to India. ⁓ As far as the focus these days, pretty much focused on trying to build the next
version of 33 Holdings. This is going to be our 3.0 version. Just like software updates, we like to reinvent ourselves every three and five years, like, you know, 1.0, 2.0, and now it’s 3.0. It’s just an interesting world we are all in with the combination of technology, real estate, everything is really coming up to massive disruptive changes, the ways we are seeing.
how people live, work, play since COVID has happened. Plus, since this AI boom has coming up, it’s changing everything. So we are at the forefront of trying to build the next generation of private equity real estate investment platform with focus on AI and technology, where we can do things smartly and we can do more efficiently ⁓ and we can go after the best deals, which will in return give massive returns to our investors.
Quentin (07:08)
I love it, man. You hit every question that I asked. And I love it, man. I love your forward thinking. I love how you’re not staying stagnant, right? You’re always looking on how can we evolve, how we can get better. And I know that’s not always easy in this climate. So what’s been the key to, like, what is part of your systems that kind of keep you running smoothly, that kind of keep you looking forward? Like, what are some of the key strategies that you use?to keep that machine running smoothly and moving forward.
Sanjay Raghavaraju (07:41)
you’d be surprised to know the strategies are not business related. They’re more personal related. But again, it’s business too. Don’t get me wrong. But I feel business is all about people, right? So it is important for me as a person, you know, I’m the key man, I’m the jockey, I’m responsible for making sure everything is running. So it is most important for me.Quentin (07:49)
Wow.Sanjay Raghavaraju (08:09)
⁓spend literally every day in the morning three hours. Three hours for myself. That’s all I do. I wake up, I meditate, I go do yoga, I do exercise, I do some scribing, I do some ideation. It is my time and that is the most precious time for me. Morning from five till probably eight o’clock after which I do some things and get back to work and stuff. That is by far the most important operating system I call it.
to really execute on a day-to-day basis, week-to-week basis across different locations, across different countries, and to ensure the returns are being returned in spite of all the challenges that we have had in the past, plus the future we are trying to build. ⁓ So that’s been key. The second thing is also very personal. It’s family, actually, and friends. ⁓ It is very important that we have a good people-supporting system.
⁓ with wife, kids who understand what’s the larger mission that we’re trying to do, why we are doing this, because it does involve some sacrifices from the families in terms of time and focus. But, you know, we do get our vacation time very, very often, every quarter, we do one or two weeks vacation to get caught up all and stuff. ⁓ So that’s family. Of course, the third is ⁓ everything about the business. It is all about systems and process ⁓ and making sure that
we are having ⁓ scalable systems because now we operate from, ⁓ are more, we call ourselves more an AI first company and a global company. So any job coming in that we have a need, we say, can we do this through AI? The answer is yes, we do it through AI. If the answer is no, we say, can we do it in any part of the world?
It has been done in Philippines, Kenya, where we have teams right now, India.
Quentin (10:32)
Mm.you
Sanjay Raghavaraju (10:38)
⁓ Or do we have to do this locally with boots on the ground and eyes on the ground and you need to operate more locally and then accordingly we’ll do the analysis, right? So making sure that you have a very good systems and process that you can turn people in and out and make sure you are, it’s a gig economy. So we’re working very much in a gig fashion with some of the global resources. We have a need to do marketing collateral. We’ll go hire somebody. The best of course, at times we may not get lucky first time.it takes a couple of iterations. But through that, we are able to keep our costs low. We are able to make sure that the partners that we engage with, both from an operations standpoint and an asset and a capital partner standpoint, we are making sure the alphas are equivalently made sure it is distributed accordingly.
Quentin (11:26)
Yeah, no, I love it. And I thank you for your process, talking about your process, because so much I learned from one of myso much of entrepreneurship is part of your personality. It’s part of who you are. You can’t separate the two. Like your business is a reflection of who you are as a person. And so you spending three hours just on you. I mean, you talk in my language. I believe I do about two hours in the morning just on myself.
Sanjay Raghavaraju (11:56)
That’s good man, that’s great.Quentin (11:56)
I doubt not yet, not quiteyet. I’m back to a workout routine, meditating. Cause you’re right. I can only go as far as my mind is going to take me. And so, ⁓ I thank you for that process and it’s shown in your business, right? It’s showing because you have the thought to think forward, to think
how you’re going to take your business forward. And that’s why you talked about the different parts that you’re in, the different parts that you’re doing and moving a business. And I love it. And I think you’re the perfect person to ask this question.
because we show people the success, but ⁓ very few times do we show people the journey, the process it takes to the success. And you’ve already touched on like your process to get into where you are. And so, let me
you this, are there ever times when kind of things get real, maybe like deals go sideways, maybe times when you have to pivot fast, like what’s your mindset?
in those moments? And can you help people understand how their mindsets can be in those moments while they’re facing adversity?
Sanjay Raghavaraju (13:00)
That’s a very great question. ⁓ I think all entrepreneurs have to go through a lot of pain and a fire drill to really get the best out of them, to really figurewhat the larger mission is, what is the real purpose is, and then go execute on it, right? ⁓
They call it battle tested, really. So that is very important. We have gone through our own sets of challenges at every level. As I told you, this is the 3.0 version of our software or platform or company or whatever you want to call it. The 3.0 version did not come just like that. It came with lot of learnings through every journey. The 1.0 version was where we’re just trying to figure it out.
I have a very technology background. I had no clue about real estate. My avenue came into real estate by luck, right? I just had a good severance pay from an exit that I had with my employer. And then I had 18 months of pay paid off. I just couldn’t work in the same industry. And then I wanted to do something drastically different that had nothing to do with computers. That’s what got me to…
more and more into the real estate side. And I met my partner, Mr. Corey Olno, who’s been a great influence and has been a great supportive founding partner with me in making sure we execute on certain theses. But we have gone through our own trouble too, as people, as partners, as a company, ⁓ and as many things. So we went through initial pain and then we morphed ourselves when our portfolios got acquired by some of the larger REITs.
⁓ in town in New York, of course, most of them are based in Austin, New York, anywhere and everywhere. And then that’s what we realized what we were doing. And then 2.0 version came about how can we be like the hedge funds? How can we be like the private equity firms?
What is that we are not doing? And very soon we realized we are boots on the ground. That is by far the most important thing you need in real estate. And we sell, we are at the very starting phase of when ⁓
Quentin (15:45)
Mm.Sanjay Raghavaraju (15:53)
Single-family rental became, started becoming a ⁓ business, right? A portfolio business. Now they call it built to rent more and more, right? So that’s what we are more. We have kind of changed the industry. We’re also in other asset classes because residential may go up and down, depending on how the market is. So then we also started our industrial ⁓ outdoor storage solutions, right? Where we build larger tracts of land and build a small ⁓ shop, like 10 to 20,000 square foot, divide up the lot.and then do outdoor stories depending on what the tenant wants. And we have exited to one of the largest reeds in the business. And that went through a lot of pain too. And now the three daughter version has, are trying to go about larger capital stacks from say the Middle East or from ⁓ continental US and everything. We are hoping that we can go embark on the larger vision that we have, learn our lessons through all the pains that we have gone through.
We’ve gone through an interesting last two years of debt cycles. We pivoted into a few things which didn’t work per our plan, like some multifamily properties. But the land play always worked for us because you’re creating value. And that’s where we’re trying to hone on more and more where we can create the value of ourselves based on the relationships that we already have and being very creative about it. We are creative folks in the end. We love design. We love to shape.
Quentin (16:53)
youSanjay Raghavaraju (17:17)
communities, environments, and create those avenues for the people that we serve in the communities. If you imagine we are in the residential built-to-rent business, and we are in the industrial outdoor solution and data center AI business, every single person touches these things. On a day to day we say they’re on their phone, their laptop, their stuff, the digital way. They stay in these homes, means they are…They’re making memories, they’re having babies, they’re marrying, they’re growing 16, they’re growing 16 and 21, various milestones. My partner once told me, we are helping them create memories through these things. Of course, we have a larger machine. Our goal is to return returns to our investors, but in the process of getting those returns, if we can create greater good and serve the future of how humankind.
communities, logistics, data center can keep moving across. ⁓ We are operating mostly in the United States, Middle East, and the India region. And that’s our focus from capital to be deployed either in the US or in India, and then focus on making sure we’re hedging those works.
Quentin (18:32)
Yeah, I love it. I just, you know, I love everything you’re doing. I love, I love you moving forward. love the advice your partner is giving you. I love how you talk about building communities. You said it so eloquently, the things that you’re involved in, people are touching these different components every single day. And so you, from an honesty, from an ethnic point of view, from a mindset point of view, want to make sure you create something that’s going to help people because they are touching these touch points every single day. And soI wanna make sure, know, I heard you clearly, you know, it seemed like your next goals is, you know, definitely raise the capital in the Middle East. ⁓ I know you said you’re in a build to rent. I mean, maybe just, let me just flat out ask you and just get it on camera. What is the next real goal? Like I wanna hear straight from you. I’ve heard and I can piece it together, but I wanna streamline it. What is the next real goal for you and what you’re doing?
Sanjay Raghavaraju (19:27)
So our goal is to raise a larger stash of capital. When I say to raise larger, we’re looking at $100 million in larger deployments, mostly into built-to-rent communities and industrial outdoor storage ⁓ asset classes. And from a venture standpoint, we are heavily invested into data center AI ⁓ through some vested companies here in the Atlanta region who are in the process of ⁓you know, making it big. So we are backing them from day zero. We’ve been had the extreme honor and the opportunity to work with some of the smarts in the data set AI business. They used to be in the real estate business. That’s how we know of them. And then, then the ventured into more this business. So we’re now kind of hand in hand with them trying to explore those opportunities in the data center. So our goal is to hedge on the physical world and the digital world.
and then also figure out how we can map the physical world to the digital world. So we’re all in a transition right now. We may not all agree, but if you see 50 years from now and 30 years from now, we will look back and the worlds are going to be very, very interesting from where we came, where we were, and where we are trying to go.
Quentin (20:47)
love it. so your forward thinking is it’s refreshing, it’s incredible. And I love how you keep talking about partnerships, you keep talking about working with people, finding with people, melding well with people. So I want to talk to you a little bit about relationships. It seems like relationships is very, very important to you. So when it comes to building relationships and growing your network, what’s made the biggest difference for you?Sanjay Raghavaraju (21:14)
Now glad you say that because if you go to our website and see our logo, everybody puts their mission and vision. We didn’t say that. We just said three words. We’re about relationships, creativity, and returns. Those are our three key blocks that we operate on about creating relationships and beingQuentin (21:26)
Mmm.Give me one more time,
relationships, creativity, and what was the last one?
Sanjay Raghavaraju (21:38)
returns.Quentin (21:39)
Love it. Mm. Yeah.Sanjay Raghavaraju (21:41)
And the order is also important, right? The relationshipscome first and creatively structuring the deals or structuring avenues of partnerships or capital avenues or whichever way or public private partnerships in the communities with local governments or with any entities and bodies is what we do at the crux of our businesses relationships, right? And then we have to creatively structure this. Everybody does this, right? We are no different.
But how can we be creative about it, figure out the objective of the partner, what is our objective too, as long as they understand and create a win-win situation creatively. And then of course the returns matter, but that’s why we get to do more and more as long as we are good financial stewards of the capital that has been invested into us, right? We have had our challenges in the past. ⁓ You know, there were some blind spots with how the debt rates increased overnight in the last
in 2022 and everything. And it definitely caught us off guard on some of our positions, but with all the trust we had and all the relationships we had and the creative ways we have structured to how we got all of our investors out from where they were, it helped. And we made sure that none of them lost their base capital and stuff like that, even through all the pain.
Quentin (23:03)
Absolutely. No, I love it. Your goals are clear. ⁓ I think you said you’re your three auto version, right? Did I say that right? You said you’re your third auto version. And so it’s no doubt in my mind, everything you try to do, you’re going to absolutely achieve. And I thank you. I thank you for sharing these nuggets. I thank you for sharing your perspective. This has been fun, man. I really, really appreciate you taking the time out to come and just share on this platform.with the listeners. so listen, Mrs. Sanjay, before we wrap, if someone wanted to reach out to you, connect with you, maybe learn more about what you’re doing, what’s the best way for them to get in contact with you,
Sanjay Raghavaraju (23:45)
Well, there’s many ways to get in touch. Go to our website, give us a link. look at usually anything comes in, but the best way is just ⁓ IR, which is investor relations. [email protected] is the best way to get in touch with me or my team. We are always looking for the right partners in anything and everything, especially right now we are on the hunt for good capital partners from family offices and institutions who wants to head John Bill to rent and industrial outdoor solutions.or data center AI avenues, either in private equity or venture capital that they can deploy in the Southeast ⁓ US is based out of Atlanta or in the vicinity. Any state that touches Georgia, we’d love to do business in.
Quentin (24:31)
Well, listen, sir, I thank you again. Thank you so much for your time, for your story, for your perspective. Thank you again for just your, one of my favorite words is stick-to-itiveness. Thank you for your stick-to-itiveness. With all the back channels that we had to go through. And so I really appreciate you being here. I know our listeners got a ton of value from what you said and what you brought to the table and just looking at things from your perspective. so again, Mr. Sanjay, thank you so much for being here.Sanjay Raghavaraju (25:00)
Thank you sir, thanks for having me and I look forward to engaging more here.Quentin (25:04)
Absolutely. Well, listen, there you go. Y’all heard Mr. Sanjay, you got the value. We want to make sure you come back. So go ahead and just hit subscribe that way when you know, you know, when our shows is dropping, you can just come in and just get all of this great content from these great people who are just doing business just in a fantastic, creative and successful way. so, Mr. Sanjay, I thank you again and listen to everyone else. We will actually see you on the next time.
