Private Equity Firm True North Raises $600 Mn For Fund VI

Homegrown private equity fund True North Capital has raised $600 Mn for its Fund-VI, which is expected to raise $900 Mn.

According to the reports, the firm plans to close the Fund VI by October 2018 and also raise an additional co-investment pool of $500 Mn.

In nearly two decades of the journey from starting as India Value Fund Advisors to Fund VI, True North was founded with a view towards investing in mid-sized, profitable, India-centric businesses.

Till date, True North has launched five independent investment funds, with a combined corpus of $ 2 Bn. These funds have been raised from over 35 high-quality international institutions with a combined investable capital base of over $1 Tn.

The firm has invested $ 1.5 Bn across more than 30 businesses including Fedbank Finacial Services, Magma Fincorp, Homefirst Finance, Infinity Fincorp, KIMS Hospitals, Trivitron, Cloudnine Hospitals, Hicare and VKL Spices.

Currently, True North is investing out of Fund V, which has a corpus of $ 700 Mn.

Fund VI, which was launched in December 2017, is expected to complete fundraise in 10 months i.e. by October.

For the new fund, the average ticket size would be $100-200 Mn, which may go up to $300 Mn. About 75% of the fund will be used for buyout transactions, the report added.

True North has its focus on sectors such as financial services, consumer and healthcare.

True North will close its first deal from its new fund in a couple of months where it had acquired Glenmark Pharmaceuticals’ orthopaedic and pain management business in India and Nepal.

An email query sent to True North didn’t elicit any response till the time of publication.

Earlier this year, Vikram Nirula, a founding partner at True North resigned from his post to pursue new career options. Nirula had been with True North since March 2000 and was instrumental in several leading investments by the homegrown private equity firm.

Another PE fund which announced its first close of the fund was Mumbai based mid-market private equity firm SeaLink Capital Partners. The firm announced the first close of its maiden fund at $315 Mn (INR 2,045.45 Cr), which is significantly higher than its initial target corpus of $250 Mn.

Even though Private Equity firms have been growing steadily in the country, total private equity funding has been on a stellar increase.

According to Bain report, private equity activity in 2017 hit a record high, having witnessed $25 Bn of investments across 639 deals. The year 2017 witnessed a nearly 50% increase in deal value over 2016, which saw $16.5 Bn.

[The development was reported by ET.]