Rajiv Shukla, who was managing a hedge fund owned by Morgan Stanley till recently, is now headed to Citi Venture Capital International (CVCI), the private equity arm of Citigroup investing in developing markets, VCCircle has learnt.
Sources with direct knowledge of the development told VCCircle that Shukla will be joining as a partner and will be taking care of new investments at the captive private equity arm. Apart from Shukla, the PE firm has made a couple of other senior level hires, the details of which are not available. A Citi spokesperson declined to comment.
Shukla was most recently managing emerging market healthcare equities at FrontPoint Partners, the $7 billion hedge fund owned by Morgan Stanley.
A former senior director at Pfizer who has also worked as an executive director at the Indian investment bank Avendus Capital, Shukla was a director of investments at ICICI Venture, prior to joining FrontPoint Partners.
CVCI India is headed by Sunil K Nair, who works out of Singapore. The other managing director looking after India operations is Rahul Yadav, who is based out of Dubai.
The firm had seen a few top level exits in the last three years with Ajay Relan moving out in 2008 as India head to set up his own fund CX Partners. The other senior executives who left Citi to join Relan are Jayanta Basu as a founding partrner of CX and Vivek Chhachhi at a senior role in Relan's firm. PR Srinivasan, who succeeded Relan as managing director & India region head of CVCI, also quit last year to set up his own fund Exponentia Capital.
With over $6 billion assets under management, the captive PE major is currently investing out of a $4.3 billion CVCI Growth Fund II, founded in 2007.
The private equity firm has been making exits in India consistently as markets rebounded last year. In 2010 alone, the company made part or full exits from six of its portfolio companies – Jindal Drilling & Industries Ltd, Emaar MGF Land Ltd, KS Oils Ltd, Ind-Barath Power Infra Pvt Ltd and Jubilant Life Sciences Ltd.
The firm has presence in Singapore, Mumbai, New Delhi, Hong Kong, London, New York, Tokyo and Santiago.
