NewQuest, Committed Advisors back $175m restructuring

Basil, which backs companies in Southeast Asia, India, and the US, was established by Rajeev Srivastava in 2008 as a family office. It seeded a string of IT services businesses, sourcing additional capital from high net worth individuals (HNWIs) and other family offices on a case-by-case basis.

As a result, the secondary was not a standard fund restructuring because there wasn’t a single fund to be restructured. Each of the six portfolio companies absorbed by the new vehicle had a different shareholder base, so it was necessary to negotiate exit terms with more than 30 counterparties, some of which had stakes in multiple businesses and others only one.

In each case, a sufficient number of passive co-investors were taken out so that – combined with the Basil team’s existing interest – the fund now has majority control. The plan was to institutionalize the platform, giving the portfolio companies greater strategic direction and supporting them as they continue to scale. Of the fund corpus, $30 million has been earmarked for follow-on investments.

The six companies, which have combined revenues of $300 million, are a collection of automation specialists, cloud infrastructure platforms, risk management solutions providers, digital transformation players, and IT consulting firms. They include Relevance Lab, Gavs, Accion Labs, and Apar Technologies.

The existing Basil leadership team of Srivastava and his fellow partner and CIO Sameer Kanwar, as well as India advisor Sanjiv Maheshwari, will remain in place. They will be joined by Soma Ghosal Dhar, formerly a partner and co-founder of Asia Growth Capital Advisors (AGCA), who conceptualized the deal. She will take on the role of partner and CEO.

Ghosal Dhar has previous experience in secondary restructurings. AGCA was formed in 2010 following a spin-out of the India and Southeast Asia teams from Credit Suisse Private Equity Asia. It managed the existing portfolio on behalf of the LPs before HarbourVest Partners and Axiom Asia supported a buyout of the assets in 2013. AGCA now pursues secondary deals of its own, primarily on a direct basis.

Amit Gupta, a founding partner at NewQuest, said in a statement: "The Basil transaction is a landmark transaction for Asia. It entailed a complex restructuring of a portfolio of previously disparate stakes and provides for additional capital. The transaction positions the companies well for capturing the next stage of growth with the guidance and specialist knowledge of the Basil team.”

NewQuest was created in 2011 following a spin-out of Bank of America Merrill Lynch’s Asia PE team. The firm primarily pursues single assets and multi-asset portfolios held by family offices, corporations, banks and hedge funds, as well as private equity firms. Fund III closed at the hard cap of $540 million in 2016. Earlier this year, TPG Capital acquired a minority interest in NewQuest.

Committed Advisors is a global secondary and co-investment specialist formed in 2010 by a team that previously worked for Ardian. It has EUR1.7 billion ($1.97 billion) in assets under management, having closed its most recent fund last year with commitments of EUR1.03 billion.

Capstone Partners acted as exclusive financial advisor and placement agent for Basil in the secondary transaction, while Dechert served as legal counsel for the LPs and the fund.

• Tweet  
• Facebook  
• LinkedIn  
• Google plus  
• Save this article  
• Send to  

• Topics
• Secondaries
• Technology
• South Asia
• Southeast Asia
• Secondaries
• NewQuest Capital Partners
• Basil Partners
• Committed Advisors
• India