Kotak Investment Advisors Ltd today announced the first close of its new Kotak Pre-IPO Opportunities Fund at Rs 1,386 crore (about $185 million).
The fund had initially targeted a corpus of Rs 1,000 crore, which was oversubscribed within three months of launch. The fund exercised its greenshoe option for Rs 386 crore, the company said in a statement.
The investors in the fund include family offices such as NR Narayana Murthy’s Catamaran.
The Pre-IPO Opportunities Fund, whose launch was announced early last month, has already made commitments in two deals worth $44 million, one of them in the parent company of PharmEasy where the fund was the only external investor.
In the launch statement issued last month, Kotak had said it would aim to raise Rs 1,000 crore with another Rs 1,000 crore as a greenshoe option and that it will have a tenor of five years from the final close.
The fund will target Indian companies across sectors with a strong moat of technology, robust unit economics, scalable business models and exit visibility. The focus will be on technology-oriented companies including technology-enabled companies in traditional industries.
Srini Sriniwasan, managing director, Kotak Investment Advisors, said, “The Indian technology ecosystem is at an inflection point and with widespread digital adoption, companies are scaling up faster and accelerating towards profitability. Our investment mandate enables us to participate in businesses that are disrupting the way traditional industries operate.”
Srikanth Subramanian, CEO, private wealth, investment advisory, Kotak Investment Advisors, said, “India’s tech ecosystem has emerged stronger displaying unmatched resilience. Many key sectors like ecommerce, Software-as-a-Service (Saas), fintech and edtech have recorded strong growth. The stock markets at present have very little exposure to such companies and it is worth considering diversification through this sector.”
Investing in pre-IPO companies has garnered investor interest in India of late with high-profile IPOs such as Barbeque Nation, Indigo Paints, Kalyan Jewellers, and Nazara Technologies, etc. hitting the market and the likes of Paytm, Zomato, FabIndia, CarTrade, PharmEasy, and logistics company Delhivery slated to go public soon.
Kotak Investment Advisors manages a string of other funds including sector-agnostic private equity, real estate, infrastructure, and stressed assets/special situations vehicles.
It was set up in early 2005 to bring a sharper focus to Kotak’s alternative assets practice and has raised/managed/advised over $4.9 billion across different asset classes.
