Kotak Mahindra Group’s alternative asset management arm, Kotak Alternate Asset Managers, has raised about Rs 1,000 crore (around $120 million) for its open-ended equity fund to invest in Indian equities.
Kotak Iconic Fund, a category-III alternative investment fund (AIF), is an open-ended fund that invests across diversified active and passive strategies in equities with a varied market capitalisation.
“The journey to Rs 1,000 crore in AUM has been marked by unwavering dedication, resilience, and the trust of investors who have chosen Kotak Iconic as their preferred investment vehicle in the Indian equities space. Kotak Iconic Fund helps bring efficiency and operational ease to investors’ equity journey,” said Lakshmi Iyer, chief executive officer – investments and strategy, Kotak Alternate Asset Managers.
Adding to this, Nishant Kumar, head of discretionary portfolio solutions at Kotak Alternate Asset said that the open-ended fund focusses on strategy selection, allocation and performance monitoring.
The fund will accept inflow from geographies including the US, UK, Singapore, DIFC (Dubai International Finance Centre) and Hong Kong for non-residents to access Indian equity markets.
The alternative asset management business, under its brands Kotak Optimus and Kotak Iconic, offers multi-asset and equity discretionary portfolio solutions to both resident and non-resident investors.
In September, Kotak’s alternative asset management arm also topped up its investment in a subsidiary of Sify Technologies by investing Rs 600 crore in Sify Infinit Spaces. The transaction took Kotak Alternative Asset Managers’ total investment in the data centre firm to Rs 1,600 crore as it had earlier made an investment of about Rs 1,000 crore in the company via Kotak Special Situations Fund.
In February, Kotak Asset Managers marked the first close of the $800-million Kotak Data Centre fund at $590 million. The investment vehicle will invest in building data centre capacity, in a bid to support data-backed digital economy, enterprise cloud, 5G and IoT (internet of things). The fund is domiciled in Gujarat’s GIFT City.
Set up in 2005, the Kotak Mahindra Group last month announced that it shall combine its alternate fund management and investment advisory businesses into an entity with $18 billion under management, which will be rechristened as Kotak Alternate Asset Managers Limited, erstwhile Kotak Investment Advisors Limited.
The entity, during its launch, was expected to include $8.9 billion in alternate investment funds and the advisory business with $9.1 billion under management. The company is not looking to raise any external funds, the managing director had in August.
