Kotak Investment raises $268 mn for maiden pre-IPO fund
Kotak Investment Advisors Ltd, the alternative asset management arm of private-sector lender Kotak Mahindra Bank, has completed the fundraising exercise for its first late-stage and public market investments fund.
The firm said Tuesday that Kotak Pre-IPO Opportunities Fund, a Category II alternative investment fund (AIF), raised Rs 2,000 crore ($268 million). It had made a first close at Rs 1,386 crore (about $185 million) in July.
According to the Securities and Exchange Board of India’s AIF regulations, Category-II funds include private equity funds and debt funds.
The fund was originally targeting Rs 1,000 crore in corpus with a green shoe option of Rs 386 crore.
The pre-IPO fund will invest in a range of India-focused late-stage new-age businesses with a strong moat of technology, the firm said.
The fund has already made investments worth Rs 653 crore in five deals and has another Rs 405 crore worth deals in various stages of evaluation and execution. Some of the investments made so far by the fund include API Holdings, the parent company of PharmEasy; Pine Labs; Mobile Premier League; PolicyBazaar and Nykaa.
Srini Sriniwasan, Managing Director at Kotak Investment, said: “The swift pace of digital adoption by individuals, SMEs or enterprises has opened up the opportunity for the tech eco-system to respond with unique and scalable business models with significant long term growth potential. Kotak Pre-IPO Opportunities Fund enables our investors to participate in this growth story as these companies become part of public markets over time.”
The investors in the fund include several family offices such as Catamaran, the family office of Infosys co-founder NR Narayana Murthy, and Skywalker, the family office of Rubamin group.
The fund may invest between Rs 25 crore and Rs 200 crore in target companies with an average holding period of three years. Its preferred sectors include fintech, consumer-tech, ed-tech, health-tech and software as a service.
Kotak Investment was set up in early 2005 to bring a sharper focus to Kotak’s alternative assets practice. It has cumulatively raised, managed, and advised $4.9 billion in different asset classes including private equity, real estate infrastructure funds, special solutions fund listed strategies and investment advisory.
