Religare floats $150 mn fund

Religare, a diversified financial services company founded by the promoters of Ranbaxy Laboratories, has, jointly with US-based advisory and investment firm "� Evercore Partners, launched a $150-million private equity fund.

The fund, registered in Cayman as Evercore Religare GP and managed by Mauritius-based Evercore-Religare Investment Advisors, will target high-growth small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the retail, infrastructure and healthcare sectors with operations in tier-II and tier-III cities.

Evercore has put in $20 million as the sponsor's commitment to the fund. Religare would not invest any amount on its own as it does not make any proprietary investments in any of its businesses.

"We would be looking for 10-12 deals in the range of $10-$20 million," said Sunil Godhwani, CEO & managing director, Religare.

Malvinder Singh, promoter of Ranbaxy and chairman of Religare, said the private equity fund is part of Religare's plan to be present in every financial services segment. The fund will target SMEs in smaller cities as bigger financial services players are still to reach these places.

Religare has plans to enter insurance and asset management businesses and, hopefully, banking as the regulatory scenario is expected to ease at some point, he said.

Ranbaxy is already in talks with potential joint venture partners for its foray into the insurance business, but the company's official declined to name the prospective partners.

Religare, with its presence in equity broking, commodities broking and fund-based financial services to investors and wealth management services through different subsidiaries, has a total of 2,500 people on its rolls in 200 offices at 180 locations across the country.

It plans to double the number of offices in India by the end of this year and increase overseas offices to 16 from the current two over the next two years. The overseas offices will provide wealth management services for investments into India to begin with.