Domestic private equity firm CX Partners has wound up its mezzanine debt fund, CX Intermediate Capital Fund, having exited all its investments and returned money to its investors, managing partner Jayanta Basu told VCCircle.
“After I took over, we decided to focus on our core competence and hence decided to exit the credit business,†Basu said. He, however, declined to specify the returns the fund generated.
Basu was promoted as managing partner of CX Partners in December after co-founder Ajay Relan stepped down as managing director.
The PE firm’s debt financing fund had a poor start and it announced the final close at $70 million in 2014.
The fund had trimmed its corpus, having originally planned to raise $200 million to invest in companies through a mixture of equity and debt transactions. It had initially sought to back companies in their final bid to raise capital to help with project completion.
The winding up of the credit fund was first reported by Mint. The newspaper also said that Shishir Jain, managing partner at CX Partners responsible for the credit fund, had resigned.
The CX Intermediate Capital Fund has made only three investments. It made a debt investment in education firm NSPIRA along with Olympus Capital in January 2016. In November 2015, the fund provided capital to Agarwal Packers and Movers Ltd which helped the founders buy out Kotak Private Equity. Basu declined to provide details of its third investment.
Asked why the fund house was exiting debt when others were launching credit funds, he said, “Other funds are getting into it for different reasons. We are a young firm and would like to focus on our core competence.â€
A few PE firms have floated debt funds recently. These include KKR India, which launched a credit fund last month. IDFC Alternatives is also looking at floating a debt fund, VCCircle reported last month.
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