Private equity giant Blackstone may finance south-based Embassy Property Development's purchase of 22% stake in Manyata Tech Park, the country's largest operational tech SEZ located in Bangalore, from HDFC Property Ventures for Rs 540 crore, said sources privy to the development. The PE behemoth is likely to back Embassy's stake purchase through a combination of convertible equity and debt totaling $100 million, or roughly Rs 450 crore, sources added. The transaction, if clinched, could mark Blackstone's biggest real estate investment in India. The stake buyback would raise Embassy's shareholding in the IT business park to 57%. Jitu Virwani, chairman of Embassy Property Development, confirmed the Rs 540-crore share buyback from HDFC Property Ventures, but said he had no immediate plans to raise funds from outside. A Blackstone official was not available for immediate comments. […]

ICICI Venture Funds Management, the PE arm of private sector bank ICICI Bank, plans to raise around Rs 1,000 crore from high net worth individuals and domestic banks for its second real-estate fund, the India Advantage Fund Two, in the next six to nine months. The fund raised will be invested in residential real estate projects of mid-sized developers in top-tier cities such as Delhi-National Capital Region, Mumbai, Pune, Bangalore and Chennai. ICICI Venture is a leading private equity firm with a corpus in excess of 42 billion, which was raised in 2005 and focused on residential, commercial and mixed land-use projects including Express Tower in Mumbai and IT SEZ in Hyderabad. […]

Future Group's logistics arm is planning to raise Rs1,000 crore by selling stake either through an initial public offering or private equity placements in the next 15 months. “This is a capital intensive business and we will raise funds through a combination of debt and equity,” said Anshuman Singh, MD and CEO at Future Supply Chains . “It could be anything – private equity placements, IPO or even existing stakeholder Li & Fung increasing its stake. We will decide the route next year,” he added. In 2009, Hong Kong-based supply chain giant Li & Fung Group had bought 26% stake in the company for $30 million. At present, Future Supply Chain gets more than 70% of its Rs600-crore business from servicing retail operations of its parent company. However, the company is also de-risking its business model and tapping other opportunities by adding newer clients across consumer sectors. […]

Aloe Private Equity, a Mauritius- based company that focuses on Asia, seeks to raise as much as 350 million euros ($501 million) to invest in companies developing environmental technologies. The company expects to close in the third quarter the first funding round for its Aloe Environment Fund III with capital commitments of about 100 million euros, according to Vivek Tandon, co-founder and general partner at Aloe. It expects to investment in eight to 10 companies in fields such as waste management, recycling, water and energy efficiency that want to expand into Asia, Tandon said in an interview yesterday. “Entrepreneurs in Asia were very quick to realize that being green was a profitable business and the concept of reduce, reuse and recycle could save their companies money,” he said. Aloe has received commitments from two institutional sponsors and some of its existing partners. […]

Tata Capital, a unit of India's diversified Tata group, has received commitments for USD 800 million by the end of March, for its private equity funds, its chief executive said. “Despite the difficult fund raising environment, we have been able to successfully build assets of USD 800 million and are optimistic to achieve the target well before the earlier announced deadline of December 2011,” Praveen Kadle said. Last year, Tata Capital set up a private equity fund jointly with Japan's Mizuho Securities to invest in unlisted Indian companies, with a target of raising USD 1 billion by December 2011. […]