Milestone Capital Advisors Limited, a real estate focused private equity firm, has hired Dhruv Jain as its chief financial officer and head – risk management.
He will be responsible for the financial control, treasury, budgeting, MIS & risk mitigation activities at Milestone and its subsidiaries, and will also play an important role in growing the debenture trustee and NBFC businesses for which Milestone has already secured the licences.
Prior to joining Milestone he was the group CFO at India Infoline Limited (IIFL) and was responsible for the overall financial management of the group and its businesses. In his prior assignments, he has also played key roles in organisations such as CitiFinancial, Bharti Airtel, Kotak Securities and ITC Classic Finance across multiple locations in India.
He has an experience of over 21 years across industries, including the entire gamut of financial services and telecommunications.
This marks the third senior hire for the firm in the last one year. It had roped in Alok Aggarwal from SUN-AREA Property Partners, as a managing partner and CEO of its real estate private equity business early this year. He joined more than a year after the previous head of the real estate investment vertical Ashish Joshi quit the firm.
A year ago, the firm hired Nitin Goel from AIG Real Estate as partner for real estate investments. Goel is responsible for real estate development funds with a focus on new investment opportunities and exits from the current portfolio.
Although the PE fund house sold a chunk of its alternative assets fund management business last year to Quadria Capital, it continues to have over Rs 3,200 crore in asset under management (AUM) across seven funds, currently managing investments into over 25 million sq ft of real estate projects.
The investment firm lost its founder and chief Ved Prakash Arya in a freak accident in 2011. While it was looking at possible buyers for the overall business, Rubi Arya, wife of the deceased founder, had scrapped a proposed plan to sell the company.
Most recently, as first reported by VCCircle, the firm which had proposed to launch a commercial real estate focused fund, tweaked its strategy and is now launching a residential property focused fund targeting a corpus of Rs 500 crore ($85.45 million).
This would be the company’s first fund after the demise of its founder. Currently, the company is spread largely across three broad investment themes—yield, development and mezzanine.
As part of its yield investments, it has a JV with IL&FS investment managers which is primarily a REIT-like structure and manages IL&FS Milestone Fund I (Rs 525 crore), IL&FS Milestone Fund II (Rs 570 crore) and an offshore fund IL&FS Milestone Core Plus Retail Fund LLC ($73.29 million).
Under its development investments, it focuses on affordable homes and warehousing and manages Milestone Domestic Scheme I (Rs 229 crore) and Milestone Domestic Scheme II (Rs 425 crore) along with offshore fund Milestone Fund LLC ($75.30 million). Its mezzanine practice aims at delivering equity like returns with debt like security managed under Milestone Domestic Scheme III (Rs 410 crore).
(Edited by Joby Puthuparampil Johnson)
