Global private equity firm Advent International has appointed a former senior executive at PepsiCo and Nokia as its new operating partner based out of India.
Shiv Shivakumar will join the team in Mumbai which has overseen a commitment of $3.2 billion so far across 14 companies with headquarters or operations in India. Advent has a total of around 125 operating partners across the globe.
Shivakumar said in a LinkedIn post that while he agreed in principle to join the PE fund in January itself, the onboarding formalities took nearly three months.
"I personally believe that the next decade will see exciting PE activity. I think PEs will gain from multinationals defining and redefining their core and small to mid size Indian companies looking for an exit," he said.
Shivakumar, an alumnus of IIT Madras and IIM Calcutta, has nearly four decades of working experience with some of the mighty names across the globe including Unilever, Nokia and PepsiCo. His last stint was with Aditya Birla Group as its group executive president at corporate strategy and business development.
Founded in 1984, Advent International is a global private equity investor having made over 400 investments across 42 countries. As of June 30, 2022, it had about $96 billion in assets under management. The firm focuses on investments in five core sectors: business and financial services; health care; industrial; retail, consumer and leisure; and technology.
The PE fund had last year finished fundraising for its tenth flagship fund at $25 billion.
Advent has been investing in India since 2007 and set up its Mumbai office in 2009. The PE fund has of late struck some large deals in pharmaceuticals, financial technology and deep technology categories.
In January this year, the PE firm put $100 million in fintech startup KreditBee.
In December 2022, Advent acquired a significant stake in Suven Pharmaceuticals. It intends to explore the merger of its portfolio company, Cohance Lifesciences with Suven, to build a leading end-to-end CDMO and merchant API player servicing the pharma and specialty chemical markets.
The same month, the firm picked up a minority stake in Bengaluru-based data science and artificial intelligence firm Tredence Inc.
