Boris Kawohl

Boris Kawohl is a Partner at 3i Group, where he serves as Managing Director of the firm's Benelux business and heads 3i's global Consumer sector from Amsterdam. He joined 3i in 2005 and has spent nearly two decades building and running 3i's consumer investment franchise, which has produced several of the firm's best-known holdings — most notably Action, the European non-food discount retailer that became one of the most successful private-equity investments of the past decade.

A German national, Kawohl has lived in the Netherlands since 2000. He studied Economics across three countries — in Groningen (Netherlands), Knoxville (United States), and Kiel (Germany). Before joining 3i, he worked in the M&A department of ABN AMRO and earlier at Dutch gas group Nederlandse Gasunie, giving him a corporate-finance and dealmaking foundation ahead of his private-equity career.

At 3i he has led or co-led a string of consumer transactions and sits on the boards of multiple portfolio companies. He was part of the 3i team that acquired Action in 2011 and joined the Basic-Fit board when 3i invested in the discount gym operator in 2013. He continues to hold non-executive board roles across the consumer portfolio, including Action, BoConcept, nexeye (Hans Anders / Eyes + More), Konges Sløjd, and VakantieDiscounter.

It is worth flagging a correction to the source stub: Boris Kawohl is not an angel investor and does not write seed-stage checks. He invests institutional private-equity capital on behalf of the publicly listed 3i Group into mature, scaling consumer companies.

• Invests through 3i Group's proprietary balance-sheet capital in the consumer sector — retail, branded consumer products, fitness/leisure, and consumer e-commerce.
• Focuses on established, growing businesses with proven, cash-generative models and a clear runway for international expansion and store/format roll-out, rather than early-stage bets.
• Backs companies with strong, differentiated brands and scalable go-to-market models — e.g. on Konges Sløjd he cited its "exceptionally high customer engagement" and "efficient and scalable social media-based go-to-consumer approach" as reasons to invest, and 3i's intent to support "the next phases of international growth across Europe, Asia and the US."
• 3i's model favors long-duration ownership and value creation through operational growth and geographic expansion (the Action holding is the archetype), so he says yes to businesses where 3i can materially accelerate a scalable formula.