Sector-agnostic and homegrown private equity firm India Value Fund Advisors (IVFA) has unveiled a new brand identity and would now be known as True North (Managers). The firm has also realigned its sector focus, it said in a statement.
The firm has restructured its business and investment management teams as per sector specialisations, namely financial services, consumer, healthcare and technology products & services, it said.
True North has made investments in consumer focused industries like media & entertainment, radio taxi, retailing, food services and financial services besides healthcare. It will now add technology products and services to its portfolio.
The fund has unveiled the brand in the presence of tennis great Andre Agassi.
IVFA has been looking to add senior executives for a bigger play in the financial services space. Besides independently approaching ICICI Bank veteran Rajiv Sabharwal, as first reported by VCCircle, the PE firm has roped in Maninder Singh Juneja in November.
Vishal Nevatia, managing partner of True North, said, “Our brand is at the cusp of new beginnings, and we are looking forward to an exciting future ahead of us. With the renewed sector focus, we will continue to build admired businesses across the four sectors.â€
“Moreover, this transformation from IVFA to True North comes at the right time when the sector teams are ripe with the expertise and experience gained over the last 17 years, with most members having invested across two-three economic cycles,'' Nevatia said.
True North is known for executing control transactions in India’s mid-market which is otherwise dominated by minority and private investment in public equity (PIPE) deals. With this business model, in the last 17 years, the firm has worked with over 30 businesses and invested over Rs 8,000 crore of equity capital, it said.
These businesses were able to grow revenues and EBITDA at 25% and 20%, respectively. Since inception, the firm has created 45,000 jobs and generated Rs 12,000 crore and Rs 1,600 crore in incremental sales and EBITDA, respectively.
It has launched five investment funds with a combined corpus of over $2 billion. This capital has been contributed by over 35 international institutions with a combined investible capital base of over $3 trillion.
The team has been structured with a balanced mix of nine investment and 16 business managers. The senior executives are spread across both fund and business management as the former is responsible for identifying emerging industries, evaluating and concluding investments, monitoring acquisition opportunities and managing exits.
The business management team engages with portfolio companies in attracting and mentoring talent, evolving business strategies, developing and monitoring business plans and facilitating institutionalisation of business processes, as per IVFA’s website.
Rebranding
In April 2015, Singapore government-owned investment firm Temasek Holdings has renamed its newly acquired debt financing company SVB India Finance as InnoVen Capital India.
In July 2015, Prime Venture Partners, was rebranded from its earlier name known as AngelPrime.
In June 2015, Fidelity Growth Partners India rechristened itself as Eight Roads Ventures.
In October 2014, Reliance Equity Advisors, the private equity firm under Reliance Capital, was renamed as Fairwinds Asset Managers Ltd, after a spin-off.
In October 2015, Subhash Bedi, one of the founders of real estate private equity fund Red Fort Capital, set up a venture christened as Rising Straits Capital.
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