IL&FS to raise $150 m cross border funds

IL&FS Investment Managers (IIM) plans to raise a $150 million cross-border fund in the near future.

The company is understood to be in talks with various US-based funds, including SAP Partners, to raise the fund. If the company is successful in this, it will be IL&FS' seventh major fund and the first one which will look at cross-border opportunities.

A spokesperson for the company said that they are looking at such a cross-border fund but added they are yet to finalise the corpus of the fund and the partner.

IIM is the asset management company of IL&FS and manages private equity and venture funds and, besides IL&FS, has Asian Development Bank, International Finance Corporation and Bank of India as its institutional shareholders.

The company which has backed fast emerging technology firms like Tejas Networks besides a scores of others, is expected to finalise the shape of this fund within the end of this year.

"Given the vast scope to fund Indian and US-based technology firms, we are planning to tap this segment with this fund," a senior official of IL&FS noted.

This fund, if it materialises at the $150 million level, will be IIM's biggest surpassing its earlier AIG Indian Sectoral Equity Fund which has corpus of Rs 364 crore.

In addition to this AIG fund, IIM has South Asia Regional Apex Fund with a corpus of Rs 110 crore, India Project Development Fund with Rs 91 crore, and India Auto Ancillary Fund with Rs 65 crore.

Besides these diverse funds, IIM has two IT focussed funds - Tamil Nadu Information Technology Fund with a Rs 25 crore corpus and Information Technology Fund with Rs 10 crore, besides another fund with a less that Rs 10 crore corpus.

Said an industry analyst: "There is an increasing trend of Indian private equity funds moving upto the next level in raising big ticket funds and be part of the boom in the overall economy. UTI Venture Funds is also shaping up a Rs 700 crore private equity fund, a part of which has already been tied-up."