Parker Tops India Hedge Funds With No Need for a Sugar Daddy

When Nandita Agarwal Parker started her India hedge fund a decade ago, all investors in the U.S. wanted to talk about were her children and her husband.

“When I went to fund raise in 2004, a fund-of-funds guy told me ‘honey, what you need is a sugar daddy,’” Parker, 49, said in an interview at her colonial-style bungalow, which doubles as the office of Karma Capital Management LLC, on the outskirts of New Delhi. “Rather than discussing strategy, investors would question the ages of my children.”