ICICI Venture, the biggest Indian buyout firm, plans to scale up the size of investments to earn bigger returns as company valuations surge and competition intensifies.
The firm, which has raised $2 billion, may buy stakes as large as $125 million, five times the average size of existing investments, Renuka Ramnath, managing director of ICICI Venture, said in an interview in Mumbai. That would include about $50 million from co-investors, she said.
Buyout firms including ICICI Venture, Blackstone Group and Carlyle Group are competing with banks, securities markets, hedge funds and other investment sources to fund Indian companies as accelerating economic growth pushes up stock valuations. The economy is on course to expand more than 8 percent for a fourth year.
"It has pushed up valuations, it has pushed up expectations," said Ramnath. "All my potential clients have five distinctive ways of solving the same problem; private equity is only one of them."
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