International Finance Corporation is planning to make a debt investment of $30 million (nearly Rs 200 crore) in ETC Agro Processing (India) Pvt Ltd.
ETC Agro, the Indian subsidiary of Mauritius-based ETC Group, will use the capital to set up a new pulses processing facility, the World Bank’s private-sector arm said in a disclosure.
The company processes and trades pulses, and also makes wheat flour and biscuits.
IFC said the investment will allow the company to expand its pulses processing capacity in India to about 475,000 metric tonnes a year to provide high-quality processed pulses to the Indian market.
The Mumbai-based company plans to spend a total of $98 million to set up the processing unit, which will handle processing of yellow peas, lentils, green gram and black gram. Currently, it has a production capacity of 1,75,000 metric tonnes per annum.
ETC Group is a vertically integrated agricultural supply chain firm involved in origination, procurement, warehousing, transport, trading, agriculture processing and consumer products. The group and its subsidiaries are active in 35 countries across Africa, Asia and America.
ETC Group, which is also backed by Standard Chartered Private Equity and Pembani Remgro Infrastructure Fund, holds a 60% stake in ETC Agro. Vijay Doshi, the managing director of the Indian firm, and his family own the remaining stake.
IFC has an active private equity-style investment practice in India. It also lends to firms and has an active limited partner, or LP, portfolio in India where it backs PE and VC funds.
In the agricultural sector, IFC had planned to invest $175 million in Singapore-based commodities merchant Olam International Ltd to finance its projects in India and Nigeria.
IFC recently committed to provide $47.5 million (Rs 318 crore) in debt funding to drugmaker Granules India Ltd.
Last month, it committed to invest $20 million in IDG Ventures India's third country-focused fund. The third fund has a target corpus of $200 million.
The World Bank arm has made debt investments in a number of companies in India. In September last year, for instance, it said it would invest up to $40 million in Bengaluru-based microfinance firm Ujjivan Financial Services Ltd via debt.
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