Mumbai : Electra Partners Asia, the Hong Kong-based Private Equity Investment firm is in the process of raising a $250 million fund for Asia. The first closure for this fund at about $100 million will take place within a month. Electra Partners earlier ran a private equity fund in India focusing on technology investments in a joint venture with Jardine Fleming.The focus of this fund will largely be on the Indian and Korean markets, according to Mr Prakash Karnik, who heads the fund's operations in India. Mr Karnik is also part of the earlier team which had managed the previous fund. The latter's share in the JV was recently bought out by Electra Partners Asia and the current fund will entirely be managed by Electra Partners Asia.Mr Karnik inidicated that the current fund will involve commitments from third party investors unlike the previous one which had commitments only from Electra and Jardine Fleming.
Electra has come in as the anchor investor in the current fund with a $30 million investment. The company is currently talking to institutional investors to raise money for the first closure of $100 million, though Mr Karnik was unwilling to disclose names of potential investors at this stage.
Electra Partners to raise $250 m fund for Asia Mr Karnik said that the fund has begun to identify potential deals in India and has been meeting companies for a while, he expects investments to begin as soon as the first closure takes place in a months time.
Commenting on the areas of focus for investment, Mr Karnik said that the companies would typically be in pure technology as well as the selling of manufactured products for IT services besides biotechnology. The average deal size would be anywhere between $8 million and $15 million according to Mr Karnik.
"We don't see ourselves as angel or first round investors but typically as investors who identify proven management and then help catapult companies into different growth phases" explains Mr Karnik.
The earlier fund which was managed by Mr Karnik's team for the Electra and Jardine Fleming JV made a total of six investments in India, which included companies like Moser Baer and Aksh Optifibre. "We have seen an IRR of 40 per cent on two of our investments, we had invested over $ 400 million over four-and-half years and the residual value of these investments is large" says Mr Karnik, commenting on his team's track record with the previous fund.
Copyright © 2001 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
