India-focused PEs to raise $24 billion this year
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India-focused PEs to raise $24 billion this year
Bangalore: India-focused PEs seem to be not at all concerned about the recession and the related hullabaloos as 78 private equity players are looking to raise $24 billion in 2009 for investing in India. It is clearly three times more than that of last year, when 30 private equity players raised $9.2 billion. This also includes real estate funds, according to a research report. The country has some more to cheer. 117 Pan-Asian private equity (PE) players with India as focus also aim to raise funds worth $59 billion, says UK-based Preqin, an alternative assets research and consultancy group. "We have reached this estimate after talking to all concerned general partners. These are our current figures for fund raising," said Tim Friedmen, company spokesperson, adding, "On a global platform, majority of investors remain positive towards private equity." K Srinivas, MD, Saffron Capital Advisors, agrees with the report. However, he feels the scenario looks certainly tough. "For the next couple of months, Japan, Europe and the US markets are not going to show any signs of revival. Whereas, India will be much faster in recovering and hence, raising this capital is quite possible," he was quoted as saying by Business Standard. A Preqin survey conducted in December 2008 reveals that 29 percent of investors intended to increase their private equity portfolios in the medium to long term, while 67 percent intended to maintain their allocations. Only 4 percent of those polled intended to reduce their allocations to private equity in the future. One of the companies who had stepped into the PE segment recently is the Aditya Birla Group, which plans to raise a corpus of $200-250 million by the end of this year. "While we announced our venture into the PE business only now, we have been working towards it for the past one year. And we have been talking to both domestic as well as international Limited Partners and hence are confident of raising this fund," said Bharat Banka, Managing Director and CEO, Aditya Birla Private Equity. The group would also contribute $100 million in the corpus. The Preqin report further highlights that fund-raising in 2008 and the previous few years has left PE firms with significant levels of uncalled capital, available for new deals. Globally, the research firm states that the total uncalled capital currently stands at $1.02 trillion, of which buyout funds have the largest share with $472 billion. India specific data is not available.

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