Private equity fund India Value Fund Advisors has committed up to $30 million (approximately Rs 190 crore) to pick an undisclosed stake in deGustibus Hospitality Pvt Ltd that owns and operates food & beverage (F&B) brands like Indigo, Indigo Deli, Neel, Tote on the Turf and Moveable Feast, it said on Monday.
“deGustibus is one of the most consistent and reputed brands in the food services sector. It has a strong talent pool of long-serving chefs and business managers. We have twin objectives—strengthen and grow the current brands by adding more outlets and introduce new concepts to penetrate new market segments,” said Haresh Chawla, partner at IVFA. IVFA has a preference for control deals with a majority stake though it also buys minority stakes in portfolio firms.
The firm was founded by chef Rahul Akerkar in 1996 and currently operates 15 outlets across Mumbai and New Delhi.
F&B as a sector has seen a string of PE deals this month alone.
F&B Asia Ventures Ltd, a pan-Asian food and beverage business platform promoted and controlled by private equity firm Everstone Capital, said it will invest up to Rs 85 crore (approximately $13.4 million) in restaurateur Zorawar Kalra's Massive Restaurants, which runs the Indian-themed Masala Library, Made in Punjab and Farzi Cafe chain of restaurants and cafes.
In another private funding deal in the restaurant business, early this week Delhi-based Azure Hospitality Pvt Ltd, which runs a pan-Asian casual dining chain under the Mamagoto brand besides QSR chains Rollmaal and Speedy Chow, secured $10 million (about Rs 64 crore) from global financial services giant Goldman Sachs.
For IVFA, this is turning out to be an active year for investments. This is its fourth deal this year after it put more in existing portfolio firm Meru, backed public listed NBFC Magma Fincorp and rolled its investment in Atria Convergence into its new fund from a previous vehicle. The PE firm typically deals four-five deals in a full calendar year, as per VCCEdge, the data research platform of VCCircle.
The PE firm raised $500 million (Rs 3,130 crore) to mark the first close of its new fund Indium-V early this year. It is now looking to complete the fundraising soon with a total corpus of $700 million.
This would make it one of the largest sector agnostic PE funds raised to invest in India in the recent past. Two other large funds with over $800 million corpus have been raised in the past one year. However, one of these was a special situations fund and the other was an infrastructure-focused fund.
