Fisher alumnus shares international business success

Published: 2013-03-29

Riding a wave of success in international finance while pursuing his passion for public service and fencing, Sunil Sabharwal returned to the Fisher campus to give back to the place that prepared him for his professional achievements.

“It all started here,” Sabharwal said about the college, shortly before he addressed students during the Cullman Executive Luncheon Series.  

He first came to Ohio State after his family sought political asylum from communist Hungary in 1983. He was sponsored by Fisher professor David Cole and his wife, Edie, and the Upper Arlington Lutheran Church. A 1988 Pace Setters honoree for the top undergraduate scholar-athlete award, Sabharwal also won Big Ten championships in fencing.

Sabharwal, who lives in Washington, D.C., is currently chairman of the board of Ogone, a Belgium-based e-commerce services company recently acquired in a multimillion dollar deal by Ingenico, a French online payment provider.  For the last seven years, Sabharwal has worked as an independent investor and advisor in international venture capital and private equity market.

His interest in international finance began shortly after graduating with honors from Fisher with a degree in marketing and a minor in international business, he told students attending the Cullman luncheon.

Sabharwal, who spent most of his childhood in Hungary, returned to Eastern Europe in the 1990s after the fall of the Berlin Wall to work in investment banking, first for the former accounting and consulting firm, Coopers and Lybrand, and later for the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.

“There was a huge interest in the region,” he told the students. “It was completely untapped. It was kind of like China 10 years ago. So everyone was rushing to Central/Eastern Europe. I returned with that wave.”

Sabharwal spoke about taking classes at Fisher in marketing and international business as well as his transition to finance. “Marketing is a very holistic field, because you have to be able to sell products, you have to have an understanding of a number of different things, pricing, distribution, competition, supply chain, economic value. In terms of going into the investment banking business, I made a decision to go into the transaction field. I was able to do that because I had a basic understanding of other fields.”

A philosophy of “option value” guides Sabharwal’s career. “It’s not a straight line,” he told Fisher students. “There are many different lines. You work in one thing for five years and you do another thing for five years. They all kind of add up. Diversity of options is good, and it creates option value.”