Evolvence To Raise $105 Million From London's AIM For India-Focused Fund and ICICI Venture To Make Investments As Large As $125 Million

The Middle East-based fund of funds Evolvence Capital is raising a close-ended fund from London's Alternative Investment Market. The Evolvence India fund, domiciled in Isle of Man, will initially invest in six Indian private equity funds.

  ICICI Venture, India's largest homegrown buyout firm, plans to increase its ticket size. In an interview to Bloomberg, Renuka Ramnath, Managing Director of ICICI Venture, said that her fund would invest as much as $125 million at a time probably with the help of co-investors. Currently, ICICI Venture invests a sum not bigger than $25 million.

ICICI Venture currently faces competition from foreign funds like Blackstone Group, Carlyle Group, Texas Pacific Group and others while the deals are hard to come by. Ramnath told Bloomberg: "It has pushed up valuations, it has pushed up expectations. All my potential clients have five distinctive ways of solving the same problem; private equity is only one of them."

This provision allows the allottees an exit mechanism on the stock exchange without having to wait for a minimum period of one year, which would have been the lock–in period had they subscribed to such shares pursuant to a preferential allotment.