3i Group Plc, the London-based private-equity investor that has a $1.2 billion infrastructure fund for India, is looking to make its third investment in a port as the nation’s freight traffic exceeds capacity. “We like the space,” said Anil Ahuja, managing director of 3i’s India business and co-head of 3i Asia, in a telephone interview from Singapore. “India is amazingly short on port capacity.” He declined to identify the potential targets. 3i has placed a combined $211 million in Krishnapatnam Port Co. on India’s eastern coast and Mundra Port & Special Economic Zone Ltd. in the west to tap capacity in a nation where traffic is forecast by the government to almost double to 1 billion tons by March 2012. As much as 95 percent of the South Asian nation’s global trade is routed by sea and the ports require $20 billion in the next five years, according to India’s Planning Commission. […]

ICICI Venture Funds Management Co. Ltd, the private equity (PE) subsidiary of India’s largest private sector lender, is ready to float a $500 million (Rs2,420 crore) equity fund with an option of retaining another $300 million, its first attempt to raise money from investors after the exit of its high-profile former chief executive officer (CEO) Renuka Ramnath. ICICI Bank Ltd will chip in with 10% of the size of the fund. The PE firm has also received commitments of about Rs1,000 crore from domestic institutional investors and high networth individuals. Four months into her new assignment, Vishakha Mulye, ICICI Venture’s new managing director (MD) and CEO, is also planning to cap the size of the $810 million India Advantage Fund Series 2 at $583 million, 72% of its original corpus. […]

Advent International Corp., a Boston-based private equity firm, hired Shweta Jalan to expand its private equity business in India. The U.S. firm began investing in Asia’s third-largest economy two years ago when it acquired a stake in Computer Age Management Services Ltd., a transaction processing company. Advent appointed P.J. Nayak, former chairman of Axis Bank Ltd., as a partner in July to advise on Indian investments. Advent International has raised $24 billion in private equity capital and has completed over 250 transactions valued at about $45 billion in 35 countries, the release said. […]

The global venture capitalist Draper Fisher Jurvetson (DFJ) is seeking broader investment opportunities with two of its family funds DFJ Growth Capital and Element Partners — kicking off action in India. This coincides with DFJ embracing local entrepreneurship focusing on India’s bottom of the pyramid as well as rising middle-class, offering unprecedented breadth in investment choices, its managing directors Andreas Stavropoulos and Josh Stein told ET. […]

With nearly 20 per cent of its Rs 6,000-crore corpus invested in clean energy, IDFC Private Equity has identified clean technology as a focus area. The seven-year-old company, which manages three funds, has committed over Rs 1,100 crore to nine companies, the latest being Krishna Godavari Gas. The investment in the gas pipeline venture, where the Andhra Pradesh government and Gujarat State Petroleum Corporation are shareholders, was yet to be finalised, IDFC PE President and CEO Luis Miranda said. […]