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With India being the top destination for PE investments in 2015 and the inflow likely to increase this year, the USD 3.3-billion Everstone Group is on an expansion spree to beef up its top talent pool.
The India and Southeast Asia-focussed Everstone, with dedicated private equity and real estate funds, has already made five top-level appointments in the past few months.
The latest appointment, over the weekend, is Rajesh Mehta who is joining as an executive director in the private equity team, the Singapore-based Indians-promoted firm told PTI .
In less than one year, Everstone, which has raised USD 730 million for India last September, has made five senior hirings — three MDs, one head of capital markets and exits and an ED, said a company official. This takes the top-level headcount to 10, out of which eight are partners.
Some of the notable names are Bhavna Thakur (head of capital markets and exits in May 2015) and Roshini Bakshi and Rajev Shukla as MDs in the PE team in April last.
The top management is led by co-founders and managing partners Atul Kapur and Sameer Sain, both based in Singapore.
Others include L Brooks Entwistle (partner and CEO), Dhanpal Jhaveri (managing partner, private equity), P M Devaiah (partner and general counsel), Jaspal Singh Sabharwal (partner, private equity), Rajesh Jaggi (managing partner, real estate), Brian Oravec (partner and CEO for IndoSpace) and Avnish Mehra (MD, private equity).
Some of Everstone’s investments in the country include beauty major VLCC, fashion brand Ritu Kumar, acquisition of HUL’s Modern Bakery last September, acquisition of Aon Hewitt’s Asia-Pacific payroll processing business last April and buying out India franchise of Burger King early last year, among others.
Founded in 2006, Everstone now has around 200 people at its offices in Mumbai, New Delhi, Bengaluru and Mauritius, apart from its Singapore headquarters.
The market is expecting more PE and VC funds to flow in this year on top of the record USD 22.2 billion last year as the banks have been asked to clean their bleeding balance sheets by March, 2017 by the Reserve Bank as gross bad loans have crossed 12 per cent or Rs 8 trillion, as of the December quarter.
Banks reported a whopping Rs 1 trillion net addition to their net NPA list at Rs 4.34 trillion in the December quarter compared to Rs 3.3 trillion in the previous quarter, as per Capitaline data.
This will have more and more over-leveraged companies paring their balance-sheets to remain in the green, giving a big boost to the ARC sector, which in turn will have a positive impact on fund flows from PEs and VC funds.
Driven by the e-commerce and startup boom, the country saw the highest-ever private equity and venture capital investments in 2015 at USD 22.4 billion, a growth of 47 per cent over USD 15.2 billion in 2014.
The previous high was USD 17 billion in 2007, according to a report by Bain & Co India.
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