Piramal Group has roped in former AION Capital Partners managing director Kalpesh Kikani as the new head of its alternatives business.
He will take over as the CEO of Piramal Alternatives, now a separate initiative.
In October last year, Kikani along with two other senior executives formally exited AION Capital after the nine-year old joint venture between Indian private equity firm ICICI Venture and US-based Apollo Global Management Inc was scrapped starting April.
With over 25 years of experience, Kikani was the founding managing director at AION Capital where he led both fundraising and deployment of over $1.25 billion as well as served on the boards of several portfolio companies.
Overall, the AION fund invested in 12 companies, eight were minority investments and the remaining buyouts.
Before AION Capital, Kikani spent over 15 years at ICICI Bank building the lender’s commercial banking business to over $10 billion in assets and the structured finance business to over $5 billion in assets.
Prior to that, he set up and built the bank’s corporate and investment banking business in London to $4 billion in assets. Earlier, he was also part of the retail banking team at the time of the merger of ICICI Limited and ICICI Bank Limited.
Kikani started his career at ICICI Limited in project finance where he participated in multibillion dollar corporate and infrastructure financing.
He holds a graduate engineering degree in computer science and an MBA in finance from Bombay University, and is a member of the CFA Institute, USA.
“As the Indian economy evolves, Piramal Alternatives can be a significant provider of customised financing solutions to high quality Indian corporates looking to maximise potential,” Kikani said.