"We were going slow earlier as the equity market was expensive," said Steven Wisch, the US-based managing partner of IEP. The fund was raised 18 months ago and so far 40 per cent has been used in investments in companies such as Bharti Infratel, Mannapuram Group of Companies and Hyderabad-based port management company Ocean Sparkle ITD.
"We will raise a substantially higher fund next year," he said.
India Real Estate Opportunity (IREO) Fund, IEP's sister concern, invested $1.4 billion out of its $1.6 billion equity in the Indian real estate sector in 2004-2007. IREO was started with a corpus of $150 million and then moved on to raise $1.1 billion. IEP is planning to raise $1 billion in a similar way.
"It is an exciting time for private equity," said Sid Khanna, who recently joined the firm as chairman and managing director after retiring as a global partner for Accenture in London. "We may finish our current fund for investment by next year," he added.
The firm has earmarked sectors such as financial services, education, media, infrastructure to be give a long term growth perspective for investments.
IEP has also brought K K Iyer and Sudarshan Sampathkumar, who were lead partners at Accenture, on board as managing directors.
The fund assists its portfolio companies in areas such as overseas customer expansion, acquisitions, and optimising the capital structure.
