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Private equity firm Blue River Capital has picked up a minority stake in Wilson Sandhu Logistics (WSL), a freight management company, for Rs 40 crore. WSL has offices in 35 locations across the country and an agent presence in over 70 countries. The company has capabilities in multi-modal transport and also handles specialised cargo for some of its clients. WSL has recently acquired Detraco GmbH, a freight management company based in Germany. […] Chairman of Wipro, Azim Premji`s, private equity fund PermjiInvest has acquired 2% stake in Koutons Retail for about Rs 200 million, reports Business Standard. Through his private equity fund PremjiInvest, Premji acquired about 300,000 shares of Koutons from the secondary market. This is the second investment by Wipro Cheif in a textiles related company. Earlier he had acquired more than 3% stake in Bangalore-based Himatsingka. (My Iris) […] D E Shaw, a global private equity firm has picked up a 35 per cent stake in Mysore-based e-learning firm Excelsoft for Rs 125 crore, valuing the Rs 50 crore firm at Rs 350 crore. This 35 per cent stake was held by UTI Ventures, which had invested Rs 2.5 crore in 2001. UTI Ventures, with this exit has multiplied its investments 50 times, making this among the top exits in the recent history of PE/VC investments in India. UTI Ventures’ MD & CEO Raja Kumar confirmed the development but declined to spell out further details. According to industry sources, other private equity funds such as Sequoia and Cisco Ventures were in the race to pick up stake in the firm which is estimated to have pretty high net margins. According to recent information, Excelsoft posted a net profit of Rs 25 crore on a topline of Rs 50 crore. Sources further indicated that UTI Ventures in addition to selling its stake to D E Shaw, has invested a further $5 million in this firm at its present valuations. […] Leading PE firms and banks such as ICICI Venture, Yes Bank, GM Financial and Standard Chartered are learnt to be in talks with Ranbaxy’s diagnostic chain, SRL Ranbaxy, for a minority stake ahead of the company’s proposed IPO. SRL Ranbaxy has received expressions of interest (EoI) from several financial funds and talks are at a fairly advanced stage. However, the company has not finalised the financial details or the stake it would offload before its public issue. “The equity that the company will divest to financial funds will be finalised after the valuation of SRL Ranbaxy is worked out,” sources said. SRL Ranbaxy plans to raise around Rs 200-Rs 250 crore through its maiden IPO and may dilute 10-20% to PE funds as a pre-IPO arrangement. […] Lizer Cylinders Limited today announced participation by South Africa based Rand Merchant Bank’s (RMB) private equity arm, FirstRand (Ireland) PLC, a leading foreign private equity investor. RMB is advised by Rosewood Investment Advisor Pvt. Ltd in India.Lizer is promoted by Mr. Ashok Ramsinghani who has extensive business experience of over 30 years in diverse industries. Mr. Vishal Ramsinghani – Managing Director, a business graduate from USA manages the day to day operations. Commenting on the participation, Mr. Vishal Ramsinghani said, “We are happy to have RMB Private Equity as financial partner, which would help us in achieving faster growth. The RMB – Private Equity has invested INR 400 Million (US $ 10 Million) in Lizer Cylinders. The fund raised will be utilized to further expand the Company’s manufacturing capacity from current level of 200,000 to 400,000 CNG Cylinders per annum.” […] Morgan Stanley, the second-biggest U.S. securities firm, will set up a private equity unit in India from May 1, the company said in an e-mailed statement today. The New York-based company also said it has hired Aluri Srinivasa Rao from ICICI Venture, a unit of ICICI Bank Ltd. and India's largest private equity fund, as a managing director. Rao, 43, will run the group's private equity investments in India, the statement said. “We are excited to be entering the India market,'' Chin Chou, managing director and chief executive officer of Morgan Stanley Private Equity Asia, said in the statement. This year presents one of the most attractive times to be investing capital in India, he said. Morgan Stanley's private equity unit will invest in India through its third fund dedicated to Asia, which manages $1.5 billion, the company said. (Bloomberg) […] Indian infrastructure specialist IDFC Private Equity is raising a new $700 million fund to buy stakes in firms expected to thrive as the country modernises its rag-tag power and transport networks. IDFC's managing director for investment, Satish Mandhana, told Reuters the fund would close in the next two to three weeks, with around 85 percent of the money coming from abroad. Foreign investors are increasingly drawn to Indian infrastructure, as the government estimates about $500 billion will be needed to build new roads, ports, airports and power plants by 2012 to keep pace with a fast-growing economy. Around 30 percent of that spending is expected to come from the private sector, with the rest split between the central and state governments. […] The unending euphoria over real estate, which India has been witnessing over the past few years, is finally starting to show signs of ebbing, and that is probably healthy news for the long-term growth of this sector. Collapse of a few recent PE deals, postponement of capital-raising plans by developers and poor response to government land auctions are indicators of the “expected slowdown” in Indian real estate chapter. Recalling the success story of a few years ago when home loan rates sank to 7.5%, it resulted in huge demand for quality real estate and paved the way for the spiking in property rates in many cities. Since then this industry displayed an unstoppable upward curve. However, today, with interest rates already very high with negligible scope of reduction due to inflationary pressures, the real estate momentum would not be the same. Signs of a slowdown have started becoming visible in the residential sector. There has already been a marginal decline in rental and capital values of apartments across a few micro markets and the trend will only gain momentum as we move ahead, especially in peripheral and suburban locations where significant supply is in the pipeline. Even the office market has not escaped. It has witnessed stagnancy in rentals in majority of locations in Q1 2008. […] Private Equity investments (PE) in India have grown to about twice the value to $4 billion in the first quarter ended March 31 of the calendar year 2008, when compared to the corresponding period last year, maintaining its position as the hot destination in Asia (excluding Japan) surpassing China, which has recorded just $570 million in investments so far. According to a statement from IndusView Advisors, a corporate advisory firm, India had first achieved the milestone of surpassing China in attracting PE investments towards the end of the second quarter of the calendar year 2007 when it had grossed $10 billion compared with China’s $8 billion. China received $13 billion in private equity investments in 2006 compared with $7 billion in India during the same period. The equation has changed since then, with India well in the lead now. […] Hyderabad-based NetXcell, an application service provider for the telecom domain, is in the processing of raising a $3-million (around Rs 12 crore) private equity fund to expand its sales operations in India and the US besides product portfolio, said Executive Chairman Dayakar Puskoor. “Our current investors have given their consent for extended funding and we expect to close the transaction during this year,” he said here on Tuesday. NetXcell had raised $1 million (Rs 4 crore) in its first round of funding from Lee, a venture partner of Ignition Partners, and Ruderman Capital last year. […] |