ICICI Venture commits $18m to India's Anthea Aromatics

Anthea manufactures and exports chemicals for the global food flavoring and fragrance industries. The company currently has four factories near Mumbai and two joint ventures with French chemical firm DRT. Its customers include global consumer goods company Procter & Gamble and Swiss flavor and fragrance maker Givaudan.

India's top fragrance and flavor producer by revenue is S.H. Kelkar, backed by The Blackstone Group. The GP made a partial exit in Kelkar's INR2 billion IPO last year, selling 13.2 million shares in its first exit in India via a public offering.

This is the first investment from ICICI's most recent fund, India Advantage Fund (IAF) IV, which launched in 2014 with a target of $500 million and recently reached a first close of $190 million. The fund focuses on late-stage growth and buyout investments in Indian.

ICICI currently has more than $3 billion in assets under management, including $1.7 billion in private equity, $625 million in real estate and $1 billion in special situations through Aion, a joint venture with Apollo Global Management. Investments from its third fund include staffing services company TeamLease, which it has backed since 2012 and part exited through an IPO earlier this year.

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• Topics
• South Asia
• Industrials
• Expansion
• Growth
• India
• manufacturing
• ICICI Venture Funds Management Company