Wipro chairman Azim Premji, among the richest Indians, is casting his net wider. Known as an astute investor who picked stocks in his personal capacity across an array of undervalued but promising companies, Mr Premji is now launching a private equity fund with an investible corpus of at least $1 billion. The fund, PremjiInvest, is expected to be sector-agnostic. And if insiders are to be believed, it may even shun pure-play IT services companies.
As a first step, Mr Premji named Sudip Banerjee, who till recently was president of the enterprise solutions business, as director on the advisory board of PremjiInvest. This is probably the biggest private equity play by a domestic corporate honcho.
However, there are India-origin funds that are bigger—ICICI Ventures, for instance. With about 80% stake in Wipro, Mr Premji’s wealth in terms of market capitalisation is pegged at around Rs 68,000 crore. And the 61-year-old promoter is believed to be taking home well over Rs 500 crore in dividends and salary annually.
It is believed that the fund would look at venture funding or act as a private equity. On Friday, both Mr Premji and Mr Banerjee were tightlipped on the fund story. But with Mr Premji alone committing almost $1 billion of his personal wealth, the fund is expected to get significantly bigger eventually. Though there is no official word on it, one of Mr Banerjee’s key roles will be to raise liquidity from outside investors, sources said.
Incidentally, a section of the private equity industry argues that PremjiInvest, with most of the capital mopup coming from Mr Premji himself, may not fit into the definition of private equity strictly. The reason is it may exclude any reasonable play for institutional investors or limited partners . It would rather be a proprietary fund in the role of a private equity, they say.
Some years back, Mr Premji made news when he hired the services of a professional fund manager to launch Azim Premji Investments for making personal investments into several companies, both listed and privately-held entities. This personal investment company will be part of larger entity called PremjiInvest.
Till date, based on stock market filing, Mr Premji holds 3.33% in Himatsingka Seide while in JM Financial, he owns 2.92%. In Aventis Pharma, Mr Premji holds 1.03%. However, there is no information on the quantum of Mr Premji’s holding in cement maker Birla Corporation.
Source: Economic Times