A consortium of three private equity investors have bought a majority stake held by private equity major Carlyle Group in Chennai-based publishing services provider Newgen Knowledge Works Private Limited. The stake, reportedly between 60-65 per cent, was acquired by Franklin
Templeton Private Equity Strategy, Aureos South Asia Fund and ePlanet Capital. Carlyle had invested $9.5 million through its affiliate First Carlyle Ventures III in 2004.
Financial details of the transaction were not disclosed. Last year Carlyle had also exited Financial Software & Systems, an electronic payments processing firm, by selling its stake to Jacob Ballas Capital and New Enterprise Associates (NEA).
There have been several deals in the e-publishing space in India. Pre-Media Global has raised funding from NEA Indo-US Ventures and JM Financial India Fund in 2008 while Excelsoft Technologies is backed by DE Shaw.
Newgen, founded in 1996 by Prabhakar Ram, provides outsourced publishing services to publishers across USA, UK and Europe. It offers project management services for books and journals, taking on processes like author liaison, development editing, copyediting,
design, XML creation, ebook delivery, etc. Newgen also owns a subsidiary in the UK, Global Publishing Solutions, which provides clients in-house automation of the documentation/publishing process.
Several private equity firms have made exits from their investments through secondary transactions over the last few months. Only in May, India Value Fund had exited Kochi-based SFO Technologies when it raised $37.5 million from three PE firms – Franklin Templeton
Private Equity Strategy, IL&FS Investment Managers Ltd and Asia Mezzanine Capital Group.
Another prominent exit came when Mount Kellett Capital, TVS Shriram Growth Fund and IndiaVenture Advisors invested Rs 410 crore in pharma chain MedPlus, buying the stakes held by Peepul Capital, NEA IndoUS Ventures and Arcapita.
