Axis PE to double corpus to $1 billion

Axis Bank-promoted Axis Private Equity plans to raise an additional $500 million as it sees an increasing opportunity in the infrastructure sector. It had established a $500 million (Rs 2,000 crore)fund last year to focus on infrastructure investments in the country,

"We'll complete the entire fund raising process in the next 4-6 weeks," according to Alok Gupta, MD & CEO of Axis PE.

Axis Infrastructure Fund has an anchor investment of Rs 200 crore from Axis Bank.

PE funds such as Axis are looking to buy equity stakes in infrastructure companies, as these are expected to benefit from investments of $500 billion set to flow in the next five years.

The existing fund is close to investing $100-250 million and is doing the final due diligence. "We will be investing $20-50 million each in four to six companies shortly. One of the companies we are keenly looking at, is an oil and gas pipeline company," said Gupta.

Axis PE joined 3i, Blackstone, Old Lane, JP Morgan, Citigroup, ICICI Ventures, IDFC PE and ICICI Bank in starting infrastructure funds. According to industry estimates, these private equity players have committed close to $10 billion to the Indian infrastructure sector.

Citigroup, Blackstone IDFC and IIFCL announced a plan early last year to set up a $5 billion fund for investing in infrastructure projects. The fund, which will be collected from both international and local investors, will invest in areas such as power, transport, telecom, logistics, oil & gas, warehouses and hospitals, among others.

The Axis fund has been registered with the Securities and Exchange board of India, and in Mauritius. The fund has a team size of about eight and is in the process of recruiting another five people more.

The aggressive more on the private equity front comes after the change of name from UTI Bank to Axis Bank.

Earlier, due to UTI AMC's private equity fund, there was some restriction on Axis Bank to use the UTI brand name for its PE fund.

---

FUND HUNT

Axis Infrastructure Fund has an anchor investment of Rs 200 crore from Axis Bank

PE funds such as Axis are looking to buy equity stakes in infrastructure companies as these are expected to benefit from investments of $500 billion set to flow in the next five years

The existing fund is close to investing $100-250 million and is doing the final due diligence