Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group (ADAG) is hitting the private equity road braving the market turmoil. The group is promoting a $2-billion yet-to-be named fund as a standalone entity, and not as part of Reliance Capital, sources said.
The group has put in place a fund team that is already chasing deals of at least $50-75 million in size. The general purpose fund has already raised over $500 million with Anil Ambani as anchor limited partner, sources added. Mr Ambani’s infusion is believed to have come from his personal holding companies – Batista and AAA.
“The fund hopes to close a few transactions before achieving financial closure. It may have 4-5 LPs besides Mr Ambani himself who is not treating it as just a route for deploying his personal wealth,” a sources explained. In context, sectoral observers said Mr Ambani’s PE play may be different from his peer and Wipro Chairman Azim Premji who recently floated $1 billion PremjiInvest mainly pouring in his personal wealth.
Independent investment banking sources confirmed that the group was talking to global investors for raising a private equity fund in the bracket of $1.5-2 billion.
ADAG is expected to announce the private equity team with a CEO – who is most probably a group insider – and three fund managers in the coming days. An email questionnaire to ADAG did not elicit response at the time of going to the press.
Incidentally, the group company Reliance Capital has an existing private equity division with investments in companies like Prime Focus, Kinetic Engineering, DTDC, Yatra Online, Financial Technologies and Southern Wind farms.
In fact, the group’s buyout binge soon after the split with Reliance Industries Ltd was perceived to be private equity transactions by nature, and media reports at the time indicated that ADAG through Reliance capital was floating $500 million private equity play.
Observers did not rule out the possibility of the new standalone fund assuming the private equity portfolio of Reliance Capital, eventhough this could not be independently confirmed.
Source: Economic Times