Reliance Cap to raise $500m PE fund, taps Deutsche Bank, JP Morgan

NEW DELHI: The Rs 4,500-crore Reliance Capital, part of the Reliance ADA Group, is planning to raise $500m from foreign institutional investors for a private equity fund, as part of its asset management initiatives.

This will be a general purpose private equity fund investing across all sectors of the economy. The company’s plans come at a time when several PE funds are buying the India story.

Reliance Capital is said to be in talks with couple of leading investment banks such as JP Morgan and Deutsche Bank. It expects to launch the fund in the next few months. The required approval by Sebi is already in place and final round of talks are on to tap foreign investments. A company spokesman, however, declined to comment.

Some of the major global private equity players like the US-based Blackstone Group, Carlyle Group and General Atlantic Partners and Britain’s Actis Partners have shown active interest in Indian companies.

Domestic companies such as ICICI Venture Funds and Kotak have also stepped up their investments and are beginning to play an active role in the PE space.

Reliance Capital plans to raise funds from external investors for private equity investments. Reliance ADA Group has till now invested only its proprietary funds and is now seeking to leverage this expertise to enlarge the scope of its operations.

The ADA Group has already made a name for itself with some savvy private equity investments over the past year — Adlabs Films, Financial Technologies, Jyoti Structures, Prime Focus, DTDC, Southern Wind Farms, to name a few.

The Group is also managing the $200m Reliance India Power Fund — a joint venture between Reliance Energy and the Singapore Government-owned Temasek — which has recently announced a series of investments in companies such as Su-Kam Power Systems, EMI Transmission, and Ravin Cables.

This apart, Reliance Capital manages the Rs 30,000-crore Reliance Mutual Fund, with an equity corpus of Rs 15,000 crore — the largest in the Indian mutual funds industry.