Prashasta Seth, CEO of IIFL AMC said today that IIFL IIFL AMC has raised Rs.1,800 crore in two months for the first series of its newly launched alternative investment fund called IIFL Special Opportunities Fund,
Special Opportunities Fund is the first India-based fund which will be dedicated to investing in companies during their pre-IPO and IPO phase.
The AMC plans to raise a total of $500-600 million through this fund. The asset management company is planning to raise the remaining amount within the next three months.
IIFL Special Opportunity Fund comes under AIF category II (private equity funds). Typically, private equity funds invest in unlisted securities, which are likely to be listed in 5 years. However, IIFL Special Opportunity Fund would invest in securities, which would be listed within 6-12 months.
“Currently there is no institutional player that focuses on companies which are going to be listed in 6-12 months and hence we wanted to utilize this space,” says Prashasta.
According to him, due to the excess liquidity in the listed space, there is a reasonable valuation gap that exists in companies looking to go for IPO. He believes that it makes an attractive investment opportunity for the HNIs and institutional players, as it takes into account the arbitrage opportunity that exists in the current scenario.
Prashasta, further said that the fund is planning to deploy 80-85% of the total fund in pre-IPO situations which are up to nearly Rs.300 crore. The rest of it will be invested in initial public offerings. “In fact, we have deployed 25% of the corpus in pre-IPOs. We would invest in 15 pre-IPOs,” says Prashasta.
