India Value Fund invests Rs 50 cr more in NeST

India Value Fund (IVF), which has a corpus of $600 million, has invested a further Rs 50 crore in SFO Technologies, a group company of the $200 million NeST Group.

The investment comes after a year when IVF invested Rs 100 crore in this Kerala-based group as growth capital.

SFO Technologies is a broad-based technology provider operating in the areas of software development, electronics design and manufacturing, optronics and fibre optics, broadband and RF solutions, and power systems and magnetics.

The group has operations in the Americas, Europe, West Asia, India, China and Japan.

According to the information available, SFO will use this additional fund to expand its manufacturing services business. No comments were available from the NeST Group.

IVF is the erstwhile GW Caps, promoted by Gary Wendt of GE, which also has HDFC and Ambit Group as sponsors. IVF has invested in Trinethra Retail, Centurion Bank and Radio City.

SFO Technologies is basking in this investment to tap into the growing demand for consumer electronic products in the Indian market.

It is understood that NeST will also hike its capacity to manufacture memory chips for mobile handsets and consumer electronics products in the domestic and foreign markets. NeST is intending to be on a trough when India's hunger for memory chips will peak in the near future.

According to a comprehensive report by the India Semiconductor Association and Frost & Sullivan, the semiconductor and embedded design industry in India is estimated to grow at 30 per cent annually to generate revenue worth $43 billion by 2015.

"The total consumption of electronic equipment would rise from the present $28.2 billion to $363 billion by 2015, pushing up the market for semiconductors globally. The reports have predicted a growth rate of 29.8 per cent in the electronics equipment consumption during this period," an industry analyst detailed.