Reliance-Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group (ADAG) is reportedly launching a $2-billion private equity fund. The Economic Times today reported that the yet-to-be named fund will be a standalone entity, and will not be a part of Reliance Capital Ltd, which is a non-banking finance company. All R-ADAG’s financial businesses - such as mutual fund, retail broking business and the newly formed investment banking entity Reliance Capital International - are held under Reliance Capital.
R-ADAG has been making private investments in Indian companies like Deccan Aviation, Sukam Power, Prime Focus, Kinetic Engineering, DTDC Courier, Yatra Online, Financial Technologies and Southern Wind farms. All this have been made out of Reliance Capital’s proprietary book.
The group also has a private investment advisory business called Reliance Technology Ventures Pvt Ltd, headed by ex-IBM executive Harshal Shah (see our ), which has been advising Reliance Capital and other group companies on mergers and acquisitions and investments in the technology sector.
ET report added that the group has put in place a team for the fund, which will make investment in the range of $50-75 million in size. The report further said that the sector agnostic fund has already raised over $500 million with Anil Ambani as anchor limited partner. Ambani’s investment has reportedly come from his personal holding companies - Batista and AAA.
When VC Circle contacted R-ADAG spokesperson, he declined to comment on the report. The ET report also does not contain an official confirmation of the development. Nor is it clear if the fund has done any registration done with SEBI, the regulator for VC funds in India.
The report added that the fund would start making investments even before the closure of the fund. Also the fund would add more limited partners besides Ambani himself. This will be different from Wipro Chairman Azim Premji’s $1 billion fund PremjiInvest, which mainly invests out of Premji’s personal wealth.
The ADAG fund is expected to appoint a CEO (or a managing partner) for the fund and three fund managers soon.