The Indian sovereign fund National Investment Infrastructure Fund (NIIF) has raised over half of its intended target corpus for its direct private equity fund that is making bets on both 'sizeable' traditional and new-age companies.
The Strategic Opportunities Fund -- through which NIIF takes direct stakes in companies -- has raised around $1.1 billion so far, the fund's executive director and chief investment officer Padmanabh Sinha said on the sidelines of the Mint India Investment Summit.
The direct private equity fund is targeting a total corpus of $2 billion.
Sinha joined the NIIF to lead the Strategic Opportunities Fund in May last year. after a brief entrepreneurial stint. As reported by VCCircle, he had floated a growth-stage private equity firm – LaunchBay Capital - in 2020 after leaving Tata Opportunities Fund.
Since the launch of the Strategic Opportunities Fund, the fund has made investments in NIIF Infrastructure Finance Ltd (NIIF IFL) and Aseem Infrastructure Finance Ltd (AIFL). In April last year, it invested Rs 2,100 crore in hospital chain Manipal Hospitals.
NIIF has also sought anti-trust body Competition Commission of India's (CCI) approval to invest in Brainbees Solutions Pvt Ltd, which owns and operates online-first baby products retailer FirstCry, as reported in February.
On Tuesday, speaking at a panel at the Mint India Investment Summit, Sinha said that the Strategic Opportunities Fund plans to invest in sectors such as manufacturing, financial services, social infrastructure and digital platforms.
“We are looking to back sizeable opportunities of scale. These have to be businesses which can be competitive, not just in India, but potentially globally as well,” Sinha said.
“The other thing that we are looking at is also partnering potentially with MNCs in India to become their local partners in some of these segments,” he added.
NIIF wants to invest in future ready and future proof businesses, Sinha said speaking at a panel discussion on whether India can beat its Asian peers to become a top manufacturing hub.
As a sovereign fund, NIIF is focussing on new-age manufacturing businesses in areas such as electric vehicles, battery storage, or electronics, he said.
“These are particularly centers of importance where the inflection point seems to be coming in and in many of these segments, the demographic is already there. Now, we have high quality entrepreneurs and management teams,” he said. He pointed out that the tax for new manufacturing units is competitive at 15% (plus surcharges).
NIIF invests in India out of three funds and has over $4.3 billion assets under management, according to its website. In addition to NIIF’s Strategic Opportunities Fund, the firm also invests out of the NIIF Master Fund, which invests in core infrastructure businesses while NIIF Fund of Funds invests in other private equity funds.
