Adani Group is in early-stage talks with Reliance Power, which supplies electricity to Adani Electricity Mumbai, to acquire subsidiary Vidarbha Industries Power, two people aware of the development told The Economic Times.
Vidarbha operates two 300 megawatt (MW) units at Butibori in Maharashtra, but it has not been generating any power since mid-January forcing Adani Electricity to buy power from the open market cater to its three million customers in the city, the report said.
Vidarbha stopped production after Coal India halted coal supplies over an ongoing litigation and payment issues.
After Vidarbha defaulted on repayment of loans, its six lenders in July 2019 signed an inter-creditor agreement that gave them 180 days to resolve debt payment issues in line with the central bank’s circular dated June 7. No resolution materialised by the January 7 deadline.
Previously, Adani Group acquired the Mumbai electricity distribution business from Reliance Infrastructure in a deal valued at Rs 13,251 crore in 2017. Prior to this, Adani Transmission had bought two transmission projects from Reliance Infrastructure in a deal valued at Rs 1,000 crore.
Meanwhile, early-stage tech-focused investor Inventus Capital Partners made one partial exit and two full exits, The Economic Times said, with the move returning almost 96% of the second fund.
All three deals sealed in December were worth Rs 230 crore ($32 million at current exchange rate).
The exits include a partial stake sale in PolicyBazaar to Japan’s SoftBank for Rs 177 crore. By selling 1.67% of its 3.5% stake to SoftBank, it made more than 20 times return on its investment.
The full exits entail stake sale in AasaanJobs to OLX, and in eDreams to Reliance Industries.
Inventus invested Rs 10.7 crore in AsaanJobs across two funding rounds in 2015 and held close to a 15% stake in the firm, the report said citing regulatory filings. It made a return of two times by selling off stake to OLX, Inventus said.
In another development, celebrity engagement and wishing platform Wysh has raised $2 million in a Series A funding round led by Kalaari Capital.
The latter was joined by Akatsuki Entertainment Technology Fund, AngelList, Touchstone Equities, Whiteboard Capital, Indian Institute of Management Kozhikode (IIMK) Alumni Fund and Gemba Capital, TechCircle said.
Launched in December 2019, Wysh is a two-way engagement and video request platform that enables fans to get personalised video messages from their favourite celebrities. Fans can send a request to their desired celebrity and the celebrity responds with a video message that can be shared or downloaded.
“The current fundraise will help us scale up Wysh in India quickly by expanding its celebrity base across different categories such as TV, movies, sports, singers and also across different regions of India,” Mahesh Gogineni, CEO, Wysh, said.
