Ex-3i executive Anil Ahuja Floating $100M India-Focused Hedge Fund
Private equity firm 3i Group Plc’s former Asia head Anil Ahuja has launched a $100 million India-focused hedge fund from institutional investors by the end of this year.
IPEplus
Fund 1, which invests in stocks, bonds and currencies, started in
October with $10 million of Ahuja’s own capital, he said. Ahuja, who
left the U.K.’s biggest publicly traded private-equity firm in February
last year, is seeking to raise the money by the year-end, with the first
$40 million by June, he said.
Ahuja,
51, is turning to a hedge-fund strategy as returns from private equity
in Asia’s third-largest economy slow and the number of unsuccessful
exits has exceeded winning ones since 2006. While India’s growth
prospects attracted global firms such as Blackstone Group LP and KKR
& Co., the average return of private-equity funds investing in the
country fell by more than half in 2013 from 7.7 times in 2004, according
to researcher Venture Intelligence.
“There
are a handful of people who have made money, but the Indian
private-equity domain has not performed,” Singapore-based Ahuja said in
an interview on Feb. 26. “The right tool kit for India has to be very
different.”
Source: Businessweek
