Rakesh Jhunjunwala-backed portfolio management services provider Alchemy Capital Management has launched its new alternative investment fund (AIF), which will invest in emerging market leaders across sectors, said a senior executive of the firm in an interaction with Mint.
The new fund - Alchemy Leaders of Tomorrow, Closed Ended Fund, Series 2 - will have a tenure of three years and the firm is targeting a corpus of Rs500 crore. The first iteration of this fund had raised Rs125 crore in 2018. The fund is a category III AIF, which invests in listed stocks.
Alchemy, founded in 1999 by Lashit Sanghvi, Rakesh Jhunjhunwala, Ashwin Kedia and Hiren Ved currently manages a portfolio of almost $1 billion for HNIs, family offices and overseas investors.
The investment allocation will be multi-cap and sector agnostic, which will allow flexibility in-stock selection. The scheme aims to raise investments from high net worth and ultra-high net worth individuals (HNIs & UHNIs), entrepreneurs, corporates and family offices.
“Alchemy Leaders of Tomorrow, Closed Ended Fund, Series 2 is a fund where the primary objective is to create the portfolio of the future, invest in companies which are building solid competitive edge to compete and excel in an increasingly disruptive digital environment,” said Hiren Ved, Co-Founder, CEO, Director, and CIO, Alchemy Capital Management.
“We are not buying small and mid caps that will become large caps. What we are saying is that the companies that will lead the next 5-10 years will not necessarily be the leaders of the past. The reason for that is, every 8-10 years leadership changes because of business cycles, new entrepreneurs coming in and creating a massive competitive edge and disrupting existing players,” said Ved.
The current business environment in India is seeing a massive change due to major regulatory changes and digital disruption, which will create new leaders in every sector, said Ved.
“What we are currently witnessing is a significant change in the business environment and context, brought about by several things such as change in the regulatory environment in India through GST, RERA, IBC etc. But the biggest change is the one being led by technology. The whole digital landscape has changed and is creating disruption in every industry. And whenever there is massive disruption there are winners, losers and new entrants,” he said.
Ved added that the changing business environment will see the market re-rate companies and thus investors too need to align their portfolios.
“The market will re-rate companies that are not adapting to the changing environment and therefore your portfolio also needs to capture this change and you need to be positioned not in the leaders of the past but leaders of tomorrow,” he said.
The fund’s mandate allows it to invest in various opportunities including investing in listed Indian equities, QIP’s, debt instruments and in IPOs.
The firm claims that its Alchemy Leaders of Tomorrow - Closed Ended Fund, Series 1 which ended in November 2021 has given a CAGR of 22.1% since inception.
