Canbank Venture Capital, a wholly-owned subsidiary of state-run lender Canara Bank, is all set to float its sixth venture capital fund with a target corpus of Rs 500 crore ($81.6 million), Business Standard reported citing a top executive of the firm. This is just half of the original plan which sought to scoop around Rs 1,000 crore.
The company expects to kick-start the process to launch the fund from April. The new fund would be similar in size as its fifth fund which is being deployed and is expected to be drawn down by September 2014, the paper said.
“We have a healthy internal rate of return on our funds and out of our earlier fund, we have given out non-binding term sheets for the rest, which we expect to commit by September," Canbank Venture Capital’s managing director S Thiruvadi told the paper.
In the fifth fund, nearly 18 public sector banks, including United India Insurance Company and developmental institutions such as IFCI and SIDBI, had contributed to the investment corpus with Rs 100 crore committed by Canara Bank.
The investment firm is looking to have a smaller number of investors for the proposed sixth fund.
The previous four funds were much smaller with an aggregate corpus of around Rs 117 crore.
Canbank Venture Capital, set up in 1989, is the country's first and only public sector bank-sponsored, SEBI-registered venture capital fund. The fund was set up to invest in emerging Indian businesses in the small & medium enterprises in various sectors.
(Edited by Joby Puthuparampil Johnson)
