India Equity Partners (IEP), a three hundred million dollar India focused private equity fund, possibly will raise around one billion dollar corpus coming year to invest in India.
“We were going slowly earlier as the equity market was pricey,” said Steven Wisch, the US-based managing partner of IEP. The fund was raised one year and six month ago and so far 40 % has been used in investments in companies like Bharti Infratel, Mannapuram Group of Companies and Hyderabad-based port management company Ocean Sparkle ITD.
“We will raise a significantly higher fund subsequent year,” he said.
India Real Estate Opportunity (IREO) Fund, IEP’s sister concern, invested $1.4 billion out of its $1.6 billion equity in the Indian real estate sector in 2004-2007. IREO was started with a corpus of one hundred fifty million dollar and then moved on to raise $1.1 billion. IEP is planning to raise one billion dollar in the same way.
According to Khanna who is chairman and managing director of the firm”It is an electrifying time for private equity”. “We may finish our existing fund for investment by next year,” he added.
IEP has also brought K K Iyer and Sudarshan Sampathkumar, who were lead partners at Accenture, on board as managing directors.