Mumbai-listed jewellery retailer PC Jeweller Ltd said on Thursday it will raise as much as Rs 427 crore ($64 million) from existing investor DVI Fund.
The transaction will be through a preferential allotment of compulsory convertible debentures to DVI Fund Mauritius, it said in a stock-exchange filing.
DVI held a 2.79 per cent stake in PC Jeweller as of December 31, 2015.
Another investor in the company is South- and Southeast Asia-focused private equity firm Creador, which invested about Rs 135 crore for a minority stake a year ago. That investment was through a secondary transaction, so PC Jeweller didn’t get any money out of it.
The company, promoted by brothers Padam Chand Gupta and Balram Garg, makes and sell gold, diamond and silver jewellery. The company opened its first retail outlet, in New Delhi, in 2005. It now has 60 showrooms across 50 cities in 17 state, according to its website.
The jewellery retailer went public in December 2012. It posted a net profit of about Rs 322 crore on revenue of Rs 5,361 crore for the nine months through December 2015, compared with a net profit of Rs 258 crore on revenue of Rs 4,328 crore a year earlier.
The company’s stock-exchange filing didn’t say how it plans to use the money to be raised from DVI, and an email seeking comment didn’t immediately elicit a response. However, the Press Trust of India cited managing director Balram Garg as saying that the proceeds will be used toward capital expenditure for expansion. Garg said the company is adding 15-20 stores every fiscal and is looking to set up new manufacturing facilities, according to the PTI report.
In February, the company had acquired bridal jewellery brand Azva from the World Gold Council for an undisclosed amount.
Warburg Pincus-backed Kalyan Jewellers and SAIF Partners-funded Senco Gold are among the other prominent jewellery retail chains in India.
India is the world’s second-largest consumer of gold and imports almost all its requirement. According to World Gold Council data, India’s jewellery demand for 2015 reached 654.3 tonnes, up five per cent from around 620 tonnes in 2014. This was the highest level since 2010 and the third-highest on record.
