Financial sevices firm India Infoline Ltd has got approval from markets regulator SEBI for its VC arm, India Infoline Ventures Capital Fund. The fund for which India Infoline will be the investment manager will provide "seed capital to entrepreneurs and businesses with innovative and scalable business ideas across a variety of sectors".
India Infoline today also announced that it has hired Deepesh Pandey (former deputy CIO of Mirae Asset) and Manish Srivastava (former fund manager with Halbis--HSBC Global Asset Management) as co-heads for its asset management business IIFL Capital.
Both Pandey and Srivastava comes with over 13 years of exerience managing India equity funds. An IIT (D), IIM (Cal) product Pandey has previously worked in Prudential ICICI, Franklin Templeton SBI Fund Management. Srivastava (IIM-A) has worked with ABN Amro, Citigroup, CLSA, SSKI. At HSBC he was part of a three member team managing India equity funds and a hedge fund.
With offices in Singapore, Dubai and New York, IIFL will offer India-focussed equity products and fund management and advisory services for offshore clients and domestic wealtth management customers.
Deepesh Pandey, co-Head, Investments, IIFL Capital, said, "We will focus on the developed markets' investor base of pension funds, endowment funds, Mutual Funds, HNIs, sovereign funds for India equity exposure in asset allocations. We will leverage on the IIFL Wealth offices in US, Middle East, Singapore and India and prime brokers."
In the future IIFL also intends to offer products for other Asian markets. IIFL Capital is planning to launch two long short funds for offshore clients by next quarter and thereafter a similar product for domestic customers. In the medium term it would also look at expanding the product basket with a mid-cap fund besides secor specific funds.
