Home-grown private equity firm ChrysCapital Management Co has overshot its $600 million target for its seventh fund despite a ‘tough’ fund raising environment, it said in a statement.
ChrysCapital has raised over $600 million for its seventh fund – ChrysCapital VII – from its long-standing limited partners (LPs) such as Singapore's sovereign wealth fund GIC, Asia Alternatives and Harvard Management Company, the private equity firm said.
New marquee LPs including global insurance companies, university endowments and family offices also contributed to the fund, it said without naming any of them.
ChrysCapital hit the road in November 2015 to raise its seventh fund. The LPs are spread across North America, Europe and Asia.
VCCircle had first reported in July last year that the private equity firm, which set out to scoop up funds for the latest corpus in late 2015, was inching towards the final close of its seventh offshore fund that has a target corpus of $600-650 million.
ChrysCapital by then had managed to raise around $500 million in just eight months. In January 2016, media reports said the fund has raised $300-350 million to mark its first close, which is a milestone in a firm's fundraising event that gives it room to start deploying the funds.
New fund’s strategy and investments
The new fund will continue to pursue the firm’s strategy of investing in minority growth and select control opportunities, it said. It will invest across its key focus sectors – business services, financial services, pharmaceuticals/healthcare, consumer and manufacturing, it said.
ChrysCapital has already made two investments from its seventh fund.
In July last year, the private equity firm came in as one of the anchor investors during the initial public offering (IPO) of mid-tier IT services company L&T Infotech which is part of the industrial conglomerate L&T Group.
Later in September, the fund along with Swiss financial services firm Credit Suisse made its second investment in a non-banking financial company (NBFC) Hero FinCorp Ltd.
Previous funds and exits
ChrysCapital's team is in the process of monetising the last few remaining investments from ChrysCapital V and expects to wrap up the fund during the first half of 2017.
"This will make ChrysCapital the only Indian private equity firm with five fully realised funds and its $4.5 billion of realisations would represent a disproportionately large piece of the Indian private equity industry’s total realisations," it noted.
Early this year, the private equity firm offloaded more stake in a fairly young portfolio firm as it sought to harvest handsome returns in the public listed space.
Last year, the private equity firm part exited Au Financiers (India) Ltd by selling some shares of the small finance bank licencee. It also made a loss-making partial exit in 2016 in the listed space when it sold shares of its six-year-old private investment in Pratibha Industries Ltd.
It is also gearing to exit another portfolio firm Ahmedabad-based pharmaceutical firm Eris Lifesciences Pvt. Ltd that filed a draft red herring prospectus with the capital markets regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) for an IPO recently.
ChrysCapital also said that it continues to strengthen its investment team with the recent additions of Sudip Nandy, former executive at Wipro and KKR-backed Aricent Group and Prashant Kumar, former principal at Warburg Pincus, among others.
Other large PE funds
ChrysCapital has the distinction of raising the biggest India-focused sector agnostic fund ever. The PE firm had received commitment for a record $1.25 billion for its fifth fund in 2007, at the peak of the previous bull-run in the market and fast paced growth in the economy.
This remains the single-largest India-dedicated private equity fund raised to date, excluding infra funds raised by 3i, IDFC and ICICI Venture-Tata Power besides special situations fund under AION Capital (Apollo Global and ICICI Venture). But in 2010, ChrysCap slashed the size of that fund to $950 million.
In 2015, three large PE funds were raised for India. Fairfax raised $1.06 billion through a public listed fund vehicle. In July 2015, India Value Fund Advisors (IVFA) achieved the final close of its fifth India-focused fund, Indium-V with a corpus of $700 million (Rs 4,471 crore). In September 2015, Everstone Capital announced the final close of its third sector-agnostic but consumer theme fund, Everstone Capital Partners III LP, at $730 million.
WestBridge Capital last year added $575 million to its evergreen fund to take its committed capital to $1.4 billion. This made it the single-largest running PE-styled investment fund dedicated to India. Evergreen funds keep adding corpus as they go and are different from conventional funds.
Multiples Alternate Asset Management Pvt. Ltd last year wrapped up the fundraising process for its second fund to raise the fifth-largest sector agnostic private equity investment corpus ever raised for India.
In December, Fairfax India Holding Corporation, part of India-born Canadian billionaire Prem Watsa’s Fairfax Financial Holdings Ltd, raised $500 million.
Many other India-focused PE firms are on the road to raise new funds. CX Partners is another sector-agnostic PE firm that is looking to raise $400 million in its second outing.
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