Capital Square Partners to raise its first PE fund

Capital Square Partners, a Singapore-based investment holding company that recently acquired BPO firm Minac's from Aditya Birla Nuvo is in plans to launch its first private equity fund soon. The fund size is expected to be in the range of $300-500 million, said sources.

Aparup Sengupta, partner, Capital Square Partners (CSP) and founder and executive chairman, Ananto confirmed the news that the company is planning to launch its first fund, though declined to comment on the size.

"We are awaiting for our investment banking license from the Singapore Government and then we will hit the road to raise funds," said Sengupta while declining to comment on the range of the fund size.

A part of the fund raised by CSP in its first round will also be used to fund start-ups. "The allocation will be small. We think the funding needs for start-ups is still very shallow in India. I think there is a huge start-up eco-system that is being created in India and we need to be part of it," he added.

So far CSP has three IT firms in its portfolio that it has co-invested. It acquired Chennai-based CSS Corp with a co-investment from Partners Group last year. Early this year it acquired Minacs with investments from CX Partners, and Ananto founded by Sengupta also has investment from CSP.

When asked if CSP will want to merge all the three assets overtime, Sengupta said that is was highly unlikely. "CSS is a completely different asset. Between Minacs and Ananto we do see synergies but do we intend to merge both these firms, is something we cannot comment on now," he added.

Ananto founded by Sengupta in 2012 is a big data analytics solutions and services company. Over the last one year the company has managed to get a dozen clients on board. Sengupta also claims that Ananto from day one has been founded on a non-linear model. "We have about 15 people on board and about 50 consultants who freelance for us from across the globe. The idea is to have domain specialist who along with us create IPs. It's like having capability on tap," said Sengupta.

Ananto supports firms with data insights, predictive intelligence, technology integration and advisory and professional solutions and services. "We want to convert data into dollars. We have proved to customers that having access to data is not useful, interpreting that and able to use it in a meaningful way is much more important. We have the data but there is a bridge to be crossed and that is to get domain and specialist together. That is our USP," he added.

For instance, while working with a telco, Ananto explained to them that form factor of a mobile handsets increases data consumption. Similarly by using predictive modeling one can determine the customer propensity to pay future renewals of insurance policy. "We found that after we segmented customer base according to their payment history we can reduce the call centre cost by almost 50 per cent," he added.

Sengupta says that he will be spending majority of his time on Minacs and Ananto. "We see synergies in these two assets and once we complete the take-over process we will start working on common grounds. Ananto will be like a product firm that will create IP and service product that is domain specific and can be replicated and Minacs is a services firm, where in we can leverage their customer base," he added.

For Sengupta the ultimate success of CSP will be exits. "We are looking at a period of five years to be invested in portfolio firms before we start looking for an exit," he added.