Jin-Yong Cai, the former head of the World Bank’s investment arm, is moving to global private equity firm TPG at a time when emerging markets are in tumult.

For him, the market gyrations created by worries over the state of the Chinese economy, crashing commodity prices and rising US interest rates are creating buying opportunities and encouraged him to make the leap into private equity.

In spite of recent volatility, there are still good investing opportunities in emerging markets, this is a more interesting time to look into those opportunities, Cai told FinanceAsia in an interview.

In his newly created role, Cai will...