PE fund multiples to raise $1 billion for resurgent India

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India-focused funds together raised about $3.1 billion in 2017, according to Preqin data.

Multiples Alternate Asset Management, the private equity fund founded by former ICICI Venture CEO Renuka Ramnath, is set to raise as much as $1billion in what could be one of the largest capital-raising plans by a domestic asset manager.

The programme, which is expected to start in February, will target pension funds, sovereign wealth funds and university endowments in North America, Europe, the Middle East and South East Asia, two people with knowledge of the matter said.

The proposed fund will be equivalent to almost one-third of the capital raised by 29 India-focused private equity and venture capital funds in 2017.

The fund is being launched with appetite for long-term capital after a relative lull of almost a decade. Big-ticket asset owners such as pension and sovereign funds have started putting in money since last year, especially after Moody’s Investors Service upgraded India’s sovereign rating outlook, which lifted sentiment towards one of the fastest-growing economies.

Multiples raised its first fund of $400 million in 2011 and its second fund of $750 million in 2016. It has delivered an average internal rate of return (IRR) of 30% to investors, sources said.

The average net IRR of India-focused funds was 14% over the past 10 years, according to London-based data tracker Preqin, compared with the median net IRR of 11.9% across all Asia-based private equity funds of all vintages.

“Yes, we have already started discussions with our existing limited partners and are looking to start marketing roadshows from Febru-ary. We expect the first close by mid of this year and a final close by December,” said one of the two people.

Founded in 2009 by Ramnath, former managing director and CEO of ICICI Venture, the private equity arm of the country’s biggest private lender, ICICI Bank, Multiples manages close to $1billion assets, its website showed. It counts Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and other North American pension money managers and university endowments as its largest limited partners or investors.

These investors have already committed to the fresh fundraising. Some of the investments by Multiples include Arvind, Cholamandalam Investment & Finance, Indian Energy Exchange and RBL. Last January, the firm sold its 14% stake in India’s largest movie hall chain PVR to rival private equity fund Warburg Pincus for Rs 820 crore, making a return on more than three times on its four-year-old investment, in constant currency terms.

India-focused funds together raised about $3.1 billion in 2017, according to Preqin data. This is more than double the money raised by 18 asset managers in 2016. Last year, former Temasek India head Manish Kejriwal’s Kedaara Capital raised about $750 million for its second fund, while IDFC Alternatives raised $350 million.

PE fundraising slowed soon after the Lehman crisis with asset managers struggling to get out of their investments as valuations were rearranged, said the head of a large US fund in India. “The Moody’s upgrade and related strength seen in the economy and continued strong sentiment are expected to keep the India story intact,” he added.

Source:Economic Times

 

Airtel teams up with Singtel to expand data business in 325 cities globally

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Bharti Airtel and Singapore Telecommunications (Singtel) have combined resources to form an Internet Protocol Virtual Private Network (IP VPN) to deliver high-speed, secure data network coverage to enterprise customers in Asia-Pacific, the Middle East, Africa, Europe and the US.

The combined network will provide data connectivity to 325 cities across the world through 370 Points of Presence (PoP). Together, Singtel’s 200 PoPs in 160 cities around the world and Airtel’s 170 plus PoPs in 165 cities across India, Africa and Middle East will form a new network that offers a connectivity backbone to enterprises across Asia, Europe, Africa and North America.

“This association will strongly enhance our value proposition for enterprise customers by offering them a wider global reach and the largest reach within India under a single platform. In particular, this will benefit companies in the pharmaceutical, IT and IT-enabled services as well as financial services segments, which are branching out to international locations rapidly,” Manish Prakash, director for strategic ventures at Bharti Airtel, said in a joint statement issued on Tuesday.

Under this global network, multinational corporations can maintain line of sight of their operations across different regions by using high-bandwidth business applications such as cloud applications, unified communications, video conferencing and software-defined networking solutions.

“By tapping on one another’s infrastructure assets, we enhance each other’s capabilities,” said Lim Seng Kong, Managing Director of Global Enterprise Business at Singtel Group Enterprise.

Source :  http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/52745963.cms

US, Europe combined infra spending less than China’s

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Despite a crying need for better infrastructure, investment in it has actually fallen in 10 major economies since the financial crisis, including the US, according to a new study by the McKinsey Global Institute. Meanwhile, China is still going gangbusters on roads, bridges, sewers, and everything else that makes a country run.

“China spends more on economic infrastructure annually than North America and Western Europe combined,” according to the report published Wednesday.

Economists around the world have been arguing that now is a great time to invest in infrastructure because interest rates are super-low and the global economy could use the spending jolt. “Is anyone proud of Kennedy airport?” Harvard University economist Lawrence Summers likes to ask.

The MGI report cites 10 countries where infrastructure spending fell as a share of gross domestic product from 2008 to 2013: the US, UK, Italy, Australia, South Korea, Brazil, India, Russia, Mexico, and Saudi Arabia. The study counts 11 economies, but that’s because it lists the European Union as a separate entity.

In contrast to the widespread declines, the institute says, infrastructure spending grew as a share of GDP in Japan, Germany, France, Canada, Turkey, South Africa and China. The chart from the MGI report shows China’s strength in infrastructure spending. Its bar is the highest. There’s such a thing as too much infrastructure spending, of course. At current rates of investment, China, Japan, and Australia are likely to exceed their needs between now and 2030, the McKinsey & Co-affiliated think tank says. To fund more public infrastructure, the report favours raising user charges such as highway tolls, among other measures.

To encourage more private investment in infrastructure, MGI argues for increasing “regulatory certainty” and giving investors “the ability to charge prices that produce an acceptable risk-adjusted return.”

 

Source:  http://www.business-standard.com/article/international/us-europe-combined-infra-spending-less-than-china-s-116061600030_1.html

IIT Madras incubated ‘water-tech’ InnoNano Research raises $18mn

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With an aim to making India an exporter of water technologies, the company plans to set up a manufacturing facility, a modern research laboratory and technology delivery offices across North America, Asia and Africa.

InnoNano Research (INR), a clean water technology company incubated at IIT Madras has entered into an agreement with NanoHoldings (NH), an energy and water investment specialist firm from US, to set-up a global water technology company with an investment plan of $18 million.

 

With an aim to making India an exporter of water technologies, the company plans to set up a manufacturing facility, a modern research laboratory and technology delivery offices across North America, Asia and Africa. Nano Holdings, has supported global patenting activity for the team and IIT Madras for the past four years.

 

“These technologies are destined to change the world in a significant way,” said Justin Hall-Tipping, CEO, NH.

 

This is perhaps first of its kind global expansion programme for academia-born Indian material technologies in India.  “IIT Madras is delighted that research at the cutting edge of materials science has led to applications at the very core of human well-being, namely, supply of safe drinking water,” said Prof Bhaskar Ramamurthi, director of IIT Madras.

 

Prof Pradeep, co-founder and advisor of INR said, “Making our science challenging to academia and simultaneously delivering solutions to the common man is an enormous challenge, but we find a purpose there. Water is an area where India needs self-reliance and every technology and every effort matters in this noble objective.

 

Water technologies have to be inclusive as water itself presents enormous diversity, both locally and globally. This would not have happened without the sustained support of Department of Science and Technology, government of India”.

 

Source: http://www.financialexpress.com/article/industry/companies/iit-madras-incubated-water-tech-firm-raises-18-million/251765/