Prozone sells 27% to Triangle Real Estate

Prozone Enterprises has sold a 27% stake in its realestate subsidiary to Triangle Real Estate India Fund for a total consideration of Rs 457 Cr.The subsidiary holds stake in four projects that being developed in Aurangabad, Indore, Nagpur and Jaipur covering approximately 16 million sq.ft.

Triangle Real Estate India Fund is co-promoted by ICS group and Old Mutual Investment Group Property Investments, the property division of Old Mutual.

Prozone Enterprises, is a joint venture between apparel maker Provogue (India) and UK-based Liberty International.

Kotak raises $440 Mn. for PE buys

Kotak Investment Advisory ltd. has raised $440 Mn. in its PE fund, taking the corpus to $1.4 Bn. It will continue it's focus on small & medium enterprises with a sweet spot in the range of $10-$30 Mn.

C. Jayaram, head of KIAL says the India story is so strong that it has percolated even the scandinavian countries. Another $250 Mn. will be raised from oversees investors by september.

KIAL is organised under two heads. Real Estate & PE. The PE group has two other funds, a $160-million fund that invests across sectors and a $68-million fund focused only on biotech. With the closure of the third fund, KIAL now has approximately equal amounts in both groups. It intends to launch a third group focussed only on investments in the core infrastructure sector with a corpus of $1 billion.

reports ET

TechWave : DataCenter Story Rolls On With Ctrl S

Ctrl S Data Centers, promoted by the Pioneer Group along with IDBI and Och-Ziff will set up 4 tier-IV data centers in India, investing $250 Mn. over 2-3 years.

The Asian Data Centre market is expected to grow at CAGR 11.5 % over 2006 -10 with India emerging as the fastest growing market. The coming of around 50 Telcos is creating demand for datacenters.

All other current facilities are tier-II or III, a lowver version. A tier-IV costs 30-40% higher.

This is a part of new technology wave likely to hit India after software & BPO sector having matured, called Remote Infrastructure Management.

Reported by ET

Unitech to raise $500 Mn. from Lehman, Deutsche Bank

Lehman Brothers & Deutsche Bank will invest $500 Mn. in a Unitech SPV.

A source suggests talks are in advanced stage for two commercial projects at Santa Cruz (Mumbai), for developable office space of 2Mn. Sq.Ft. The deal might close in 3 weeks.

This project will be a Unitech first in Mumbai, as the firm gets aggressive outside NCR, it's home zone.

Poor market conditions, and reducing funding options have been hard on realestate companies, but everyone loves a good deal.

Read the full story on ET

PE Funds Waiting For Bargains

Mint here is first with a story on what was expected. PE deals down, but funds sure that companies are undergoing customary 3-4 month valuation adjustments before they line up for funds.

Also, Richard Heald, partner and MD of NM Rothschild and Sons. “During this period (of declining stock valuations), there will be more PIPE (private investment in public equity) transactions happening globally.”

“Deal prices remain high,” said John Levack, MD,Electra Partners Asia Ltd, "we will stay away from the Indian market and concentrate on deal opportunities in some other Asian markets in the short term".

Manu Punnoose, chief executive of PE fund Subhkam Ventures, added that “PE will get larger stakes (in pre-IPO deals)…but the holding time will be longer, around 3-4 years”. Nitin Deshmukh, head of Kotak Private Equity Group. “From a momentum play, we are getting into a value play.”

For more opinions on PE trends go to Mint Article

Cairn raises 2534 Cr. with 5.37% stake sale

Cairn India, Indian arm of British O&G co. Cairn Energy decided to sell 5.37% to Malaysian Petronas, and Singapore-based Orient Global Tamarind Fund for Rs 2,534 crore ($625 million) for funding Capex.

Of the 113Mn. shares, 63.3 Mn shares go to Petronas & 49.7 Mn to Tamarind at Rs.224.3 each with a 1 year lockin. Funds will be utilised for capex at Mangala, Rajasthan, by next year.

For details of Cairn Operations read Business Standard.

Osian`s sells 9.4% stake to PE firm

Osian’s Connoisseurs of Art will sell 9.4 per cent stake to Abraaj Capital, Dubai-based PE firm, for Rs 80 crore. Arif Masood Naqvi, VCM & group CEO Abraaj, will join the Osian’s board.

The Neville Tuli founded unique private-sector art institution straddling various sectors of art, films and lately, sports.

Osian has an archive of visual and textual material which includes rare etchings, lithographs, maps of India, British Indian photography, popular art, cinema publicity material. Having acquired Minerva theatre in Mumbai in 2006, where it is building Osianama, a museum for cinema and the arts, the company has also ventured into film production.

Osian also has an art fund, floated in 2006, with a corpus of Rs 100 crore. The company is looking at a public listing in 2009.

Osian’s has 48 other stake holders besides Neville, with none holding more than 5 per cent. These include Shiv and Kiran Nadar, Sanjeev Khandelwal, Gautam Thapar, Kumarmangalam Birla, Kito de Boer, Kamal Morarka, Sangita Kathiwada, Jerry Rao, Priya Paul and Ashok Alexander, among others.
“Each has been buying from 2001 when shares started at Rs 30 and thereafter many placements every year at Rs 90, Rs 180, Rs 360, Rs 540, Rs 1,000, Rs 1,200 and Rs 1,600.”

As reported in Business Standard

MFI gets funding from Unitus

MokshaYug Access (MYA) has received funding of Rs 8.35 crore ($2 million) from a private equity fund Unitus Equity Fund L P (UEF), a Unitus entity to support MFIs in Asia & LatAm.

MYA follows dual aim of developing rural entrepreneurial Self Help Groups & through them providing penetration to urban product & service providers.

Segments MYA focusses on are manpower, infrastructure and community participation- that can be used to increase efficiencies in the delivery of services such as dairy farming, livelihoods, healthcare and agribusiness to the rural households.

In 2006, it tied up with ICICI bank on a ‘partnership model’, through which the MFI identified the Self Help Groups (SHGs eligible for the loan. The bank then channeled the loan through the MFI, against 10 % of the amount held as security. This arrangement has been particularly cost-effective for lenders since loan identification, disbursement and recovery aspects are outsourced to MFIs who are know the local market.

PE-VC funds may be deemed FDI

According to a latest draft put up on RBI site for public comment, various classes of investors have been broadened with specific mention of PE & VC funds.

"Secondly, the details of investment received in units of venture capital funds from FVCIs are proposed to be separately captured."

Details of investment received from foreign venture capital investors are also proposed to be captured separately. Part B of Form FC-GPR has been modified to capture details of such foreign investors. The date of filing Part B of the form has been extended from June 30 of every year to July 31.

FDI is permitted under automatic & approval route. An Indian company issuing shares and convertible debentures to non-residents under either route is required to submit details of the investment in a two-stage reporting procedure.

In the first stage, receipt of funds is to be reported to RBI within 30 days. In the second stage, the company has to file Form FC-GPR with RBI within 30 days from the date of issuing shares/convertible debentures.
Form FC-GPR was revised in April 2007 by which remittance receiving Indian banks were required to obtain a KYC report on the foreign investor from the overseas bank remitting the amount.

Go to Financial Express for the complete article

Rahejas to raise Rs.530 Cr. from PE funds

New Delhi based Rahejas plan to raise Rs.530 Cr. from PE funds against 26% equity in their upcoming Gurgaon based engineering SEZ.

MD Navin Raheja said the group was talking to Royal Group of Abu Dhabi, Ford Capital, Ascendas, Blackstone & Carlyle with E&Y as consultant. He said " Though the deal is not finalised we prefer Royal group because of their bigger projects, construction techniques, equipment & manpower"

The JV will be as an SPV to be listed later. The company plans to invest Rs 4,535 crore in the SEZ to be funded with a mix of equity, debt and internal accruals. It has plans to build country's tallest building here. Since haryana faces power shortage, the company is planning a 200MW captive powerplant and is in talks with Adani & Lanco.

Quippo, Oil & Gas Service Sector and A New PE Hotbed

Quippo Oil & Gas, a subsidiary of Quippo Infrastructure Equipment promoted by SREI Infrastructure Finance, is planning to put Rs.2400 Cr. over next two years in buying onshore rigs, off-shore supply vessels and pipe-laying barges.

Quippo Oil & Gas currently owns two onshore drilling rigs and one offshore pipeline-laying barge (bought for $120 Mn.) The plans are to deploy these to India & Malaysia. This Business Standard article reemphasises a global trend in O&G service sector.

There is a shortage of rigs across the world and its impact is being felt in India as well. The Oil & Gas service sector market is booming globally with M&A/PE activity.

Globally PE firms are active in the O&G service market due to crash and easing valuations, specially in the mid-market. Tight credit markets have put brake on largecap deals but middle market is growing 50%.

Richard Spears, VP of energy analysis and advisory firm Spears & Associates Inc. says "Right now, we have projects for 15 deals under way, when last year, at any one time, we had six or seven." Investors and companies hire Spears to analyze businesses during the due diligence process of a transaction. Spears said his private equity clients were sizing up businesses in well completion services, land and offshore drilling and production, and other parts of the oilfield services sector.

Some of the recent deals in the sector include First Reserve Corp buyout CHC Helicopter Corp for $1.5 Bn., US buyout firm Castle Harlan's Anchor Drilling Fluids US for $250 Mn.

Analyst Bill Herbert of research firm Simmons & Co said expects PE firms to snap up more small-cap oilfield service companies with either international franchises or technology that can be exported to international markets.

It will not be surprising to see some of the Infrastructure Funds moving in, on the sector.

Blackstone eyeing 10% in Ennore Foundries

Blackstone & Primus Capital are racing to acquire a 10% stake in Ennore foundries, now renamed Hinduja Foundries.

Hinduja's have decided to sell 10% of the their holding to raise $80-100 Mn. for partfinancing proposed capex.

The Sun Also Sets : PE deals falling through

The chill is moving deeper down the spine. This HT article points out that southbound market is taking a lot of valuations and some of the deals with it. Down.

With 14 PE deals falling through in last 3 months & big 3 in last last month, Feb. PE deals are 55% lower then Jan'08.

The 3 big ones to go down are ICICI Venture-Jaypee Infratech deal, Rs 1200-crore Blackstone-Eenadu group deal and Rs 250-crore Future capital-DishTV deal. The Jaypee deal is shaved from 3200 to 1000 Cr.

PE funds closed over 27 deals in Feb. valued around $1.48 billion, according to a Grant Thornton study. India Inc recorded deals worth $5.06 billion in 116 M&A and PE deals in Jan.

Compared to Feb'07, there was a 50 % rise in PE deals this Feb.

IDFC PE to raise $600 million in third fund by March 2008

IDFC Private Equity, the private equity investment arm of infrastructure financing firm Infrastructure Development Finance Co. Ltd (IDFC), is raising a $600 million (Rs2,364 crore) fund, its third since it set up operations as the country’s first pure play infrastructure PE investor in 2002. The proposed fund has an upper limit of $700 million on the final corpus and is expected to close fund-raising in March 2008 as reported by Mint.

Separately, IDFC PE’s parent, the state-owned IDFC is itself in the process of closing first-round commitments for a mega $5 billion mega infrastructure fund, which includes debt and equity. With the proposed $600 million fund, total funds raised by IDFC PE till date stand at $1.2 billion. Its first fund, India Development Fund, had a corpus of $192 million and was the first to raise capital entirely from domestic institutional investors. The second fund, dubbed, IDFC Private Equity Fund II, raised $440 million of which over 70% came from overseas investors.

The firm has invested in 22 companies till date, which includes three airports and 31 roads and bridges. It typically picks up stakes between 10% and 50% in each of its portfolio companies and invests across the spectrum in power, oil and gas, transportation, telecom, urban and rural infrastructure and social infrastructure

Nutek gets 25 cr funding from a US fund

Gurgaon-based telecommunication solutions company, Nutek India Ltd, said that it was close to sealing a Rs 25-30-crore infusion from a leading US-based fund by end-this month. "We are in the final stages of closing this deal," Nutek India Managing Director Inder Sharma told reporters here.

The US-based fund will be picking up an around 10 per cent stake in Nutek, Sharma said, however without disclosing the identity of the US-based fund. The sale price is expected to be in the range of Rs 170 per share. Earlier, Atherstone Capital had invested Rs 10 crore in the company for an around 8 per cent stake. Atherstone Capital had been sold the company's shares at Rs 87 per share, Sharma said. This transaction took place nearly two years ago.

Post the fund-infusion expected to be completed by end-this month, the promoters' holding in the company would come down below 80 per cent from the present around 90 per cent, Sharma said.

Nutek's core expertise lies in the breadth of services it provides to its customers in the telecom infrastructure market. It provides turnkey infrastructure creation and installation for telecom sites which includes passive infrastructure like towers, telecom shelters, power plants, back-up power, DG sets, electrical infrastructure and earthing stations, among other services.

Source: Economic Times

3i makes its second India investment in Soma Enterprise

3i India Infrastructure Fund, part of the London-based private equity and venture capital company 3i Group Plc, has invested $101 million (Rs 398 crore) in Hyderabad-based infrastructure company Soma Enterprise.

Though the companies have not disclosed the exact stake the fund picked up, Avinash Bhosale, joint managing director, Soma Enterprise said, “3i has got minority stake; the stake figure is in mid-teens (between 13% and 17%).” This figure values the company at over Rs 3,400 crore.

Soma will use the money for expansion. Hyderabad-based Rajendra Prasad Maganti and his family owns majority stake in the infrastructure firm. Pune-based flamboyant real estate developer and hotelier Avinash Bhosale is the other promoter.

Soma, with revenues of Rs 1,100 crore, has an order book of Rs 6,400 crore. The company is also planning a public issue next year.

The company has divided its business in six verticals. Theses include real estate, urban infrastructure, irrigation, transportation, tunnel and hydro power. Along with IL&FS, Soma is bidding for phase II of the Mumbai metro rail project.

3i India Infrastructure fund targets to invest about $1bn in the country. Soma Enterprise is its second investment in the country. In October this year, it had invested $227 million for a minority stake in Adani Power, a subsidiary of Adani Group.

Source: DNA Money

RE funds eyeing township projects

Integrated townships seem to be the preferred investment option for private equity (PE) players in India. In fact, a Cushman and Wakefield (C&W) report finds that 28% of PE investors favour investment through this route in the real estate market.

Integrated townships — as a low risk investment avenue due to their diversification benefits and low entry cost — are a highly attractive option. Agrees Sandeep Singh, national head, capital markets, C&W, “In today’s high land price scenario, integrated townships offer higher value creation opportunities due to low entry costs for land and synergies created by mixed-use development within them.

Industry players also feel that it is only natural for investors to look at this asset class as a lucrative option. “Only integrated townships have the capacity to absorb a significant amount of capital that is raised ...this also means that in the years to come, this asset class is bound to grow by leaps and bounds,” feels V Hari Krishna, CIO, Kotak Real Estate Fund. Moreover, a mix of various services in these townships such as hospitals, recreation, education etc makes them win an edge over the other models.

The report also finds that investments in the market have spread rather evenly over three broad investment vehicles. While majority of the investment still remains either at the portfolio and SPV level partnership, at 40% and 36% respectively, the number of entity level partnerships formed 26% of the total investment in the sector.

Source: Economic Times

General Atlantic takes minority stake in IBS software for $60 mn

Private equity firm General Atlantic has paid $60 million for a minority stake in India's IBS Software Services, reported Reuters.

IBS, which provides services for the travel, transport and logistics industries, has two development centres in India.

Edelweiss Capital was the financial adviser to IBS.

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TechTribe gets funding from 3 PE funds including Canaan Partners

Canaan Partners, a $2.4 billion global venture capital firm, today announced it has led a joint investment with The Entrepreneur's Funds and Miven Venture Partners in techTribe, India's leading career networking portal as reported by PRWeb.

techTribe is a software company that enables current and future Indian technology professionals to enhance their careers through social networking. The investment will be used to expand techTribe's sales and marketing infrastructure in India and to drive new revenue growth. Alok Mittal, Canaan's managing director in India, will be named to the techTribe board of directors.

The Indian career networking market for middle- and senior-level executives is worth $400 million, according to techTribe, which has operations in San Francisco and New Delhi.

Canaan Partners is a leading global venture capital firm specializing in early-stage information technology and life sciences investments. Founded in 1987, Canaan Partners has $2.4 billion capital under management and has invested in more than 240 companies, completed 63 mergers and acquisitions, and brought over 50 companies public.

The Entrepreneurs' Fund III (TEF3) is a Silicon Valley based, early stage venture fund focused on Software and Healthcare startups. Miven Venture Partners, founded in 2005, is a multi-stage venture capital firm with a primary focus on investing in consumer related technology companies.

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Canaan Partners to invest in 3 companies; deals to close by year-end

Angel Broking is attracting PE interest

The domestic equity broking scene has been heating up recently. With the interest that global investors are showing in the Indian markets, the broking business is getting very attractive for a lot of players.

After names like Motilal Oswal, Edelweiss, India Infoline, it is now Angel Broking which is in talks to offer 20% of its stake to PE investors like Lehman Brothers, Warbug Pincus and the Carlyle group. Angel intends to raise Rs.200 crs through this sale, valuing it at Rs.1000 crs. NM Rothschild has been given the mandate to look for a suitable partner and the deal is expected to be closed by September end as reported by the Economic Times.

The funds will be used to finance Angel’s proposed expansion of branches and to launch new products such as loan against shares and margin funding, said the paper.