NewQuest to invest $140m in India

The firm, which focuses on the direct acquisition of portfolio assets from GPs in the Asia-Pacific region, intends to capitalize on vast opportunities for secondary deals in the country.

"We are in the final stage of due diligence for a couple of deals in India," said Amit Dupta, partner and head of NewQuest's India business. He told LiveMint that his company was evaluating a number of potential secondary deals in both listed and unlisted entities across in India.

According to Gupta 1,500-2,000 investments were made in India between 2006- 2011. "We believe 20% of them are ripe for exits. Some of these could be through trade sales, capital markets, strategic alliance, a lot of them would be through direct secondaries."

NewQuest was established in 2011 following the spin-out of Bank of America Merrill Lynch's Asian private equity team. The fund acquired substantially all of its parent's non-real estate PE portfolio in the region, which includes more than 20 growth equity and buyout interests. NewQuest is backed by a syndicate of LPs, including Paul Capital, HarbourVest Partners, LGT Capital Partners and Axiom Asia.

The GP expects to invest 40% of its corpus in China, 30-35% in India and the rest in other parts of Asia.

Gupta said his firm will explore buying stakes in firms 3-5 years after the original investment. "As we are broad-based, the average ticket size would be between $5 million and $60 million. This range covers 80% of investments in India," he added.

 

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• Topics
• South Asia
• Secondaries
• Secondaries
• India
• Secondaries
• NewQuest Capital Partners