US-based private equity giant The Carlyle Group has appointed Vikram Nirula as a managing director in its Asia private equity team, a company statement said.
Nirula will advise on Carlyle’s investment activities in India and will be based in Mumbai, the statement added.
“Vikram’s extensive on-the-ground experience in India’s PE industry and strong market insights well place him to bolster Carlyle’s continued growth and success in India,” said Greg Zeluck, managing director and co-head of the Carlyle Asia buyout team, in the statement.
Earlier this year in January, VCCircle had reported that Nirula had resigned from True North to float his own venture.
Nirula was part of the team that set up True North, earlier called India Value Fund Advisors, in 2000. While there, he was responsible for fundraising and investor relations in addition to overseeing investments across sectors including consumer, retail, financial services and the industrials segments.
Prior to True North, he spent five years at Arthur Andersen in their financial consulting and corporate finance practice.
He holds a bachelor’s degree in engineering from Birla Institute of Technology and a postgraduate diploma in management from the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore.
Carlyle Group
This year, at least two Mumbai-based managing directors quit the PE firm.
In January, Shankar Narayanan had left to float a sector-agnostic PE firm focused on mid-market opportunities.
In July, VCCircle reported that Devinjit Singh had resigned to launch his own PE fund with a size of $200-250 million. He had teamed up with CX Partners co-founder Ajay Relan and another industry veteran PR Srinivasan to set up Xponentia Fund Partners.
The Carlyle Group invests in both growth and buyout deals in India from its Asia funds.
In June this year, it had raised $6.55 billion for its new Asia private equity fund—Carlyle Asia Partners V. The fund had exceeded its initial target corpus of $5 billion. The new fund will focus on buyout and strategic investments across the Asia Pacific and will focus on sectors such as consumer and retail, financial services, telecommunications, media and technology, healthcare and industrial.
The PE firm's India portfolio includes e-commerce-focussed logistics company Delhivery, mortgage lender PNB Housing Finance Ltd and diagnostics chain Metropolis Healthcare.
The Carlyle Group is a global alternative asset manager with $210 billion in assets under management as of 30 June 2018.